Foiled Again

I was planning to do a solo scenario wherein Tim's Tornados did an assault on the house formerly owned by Ace Nubunto, for which I had an awesome map.  However, my cat puked all over the map.  O, well.

Successful Computer Necromancy

I did manage to replace my dead hard disk on my old laptop.  And then installed the Ubuntu operating system on it.  The whole process turned out to be one of the simplest error-free computer processes I've ever had to do.  I was sure I'd "roll a fumble" somewhere along the line.

It's kind of amazing that Ubuntu will run the computer just fine for free, comes with a free set of office software that approxmates Microsoft Office, and with an internet browser.   It seems to take a fraction of the space that windows does too.   I kind of feel like a goofus spending money on Microsoft products now.   I suppose you're paying for compatability with everyone else.  I also suppose you should begrudge another fellow his racket.

Anyway, now I have a functioning spare computer that might be awesome for use at the table.   I know I'd like to reduce the amount of paper piles sitting around me.   I've got all the Traveller books on CD, so maybe I should install them on the thing.

What other sorts of things might we use it for at the table?

PC teams

I liked it when you guys sent just a part of your crew off to Porozlo last session (although Jason didn't get the memo and brought all his guys and npcs).  I just think there's more role-playing and creative solutions when working with a handful rather than a throng.

So, I was thinking that perhaps we could semi-permanently divide the crew into three teams or sections.  Each player would have one character in each team.  You would decide which team is best for each mission and that group would go.

We almost have a clear division:

Team A (assault team):  Colonel Lee, Jack Murdoch, "The Remedy", and Dorkon

Team B (sophisticates):  Verdun Thul, Roland McGintley, Reginald Stuffington, Chum Lee[?]

Team C (streetwise):  Rat Lee, Yes Paul, Doc Spurlock, Skip Jockley

The only one who doesn't really fit is Chum Lee.  Maybe we can consider letting Marlon replace Chum the barbarian (who is perpetually caught bringing a knife to a gun fight) with a Space-oriented guy of some sort (maybe even swapping one of the NPC's and making Chum into an NPC).

Anyway, it's an idea for the "landing party" missions.

One thing I love about Traveller

One of the most interesting and fun things for me as a GM about Traveller is the UPP--universal planetary profile.  Each planet is described by a series of 8 numbers/letters.   It makes it very easy and fun to create a new world description instantly when the crew arrives.    I particularly enjoyed Garrincski and Notoko this past week.  The system also make for a different environment for planned adventures, that can be used for a framework or skeleton for adventure details, without running into the Chekov's gun situation where you are compelled to only give details that are plot driven.

Entertainment Update

Prometheus:   meh

Perception (new series on TNT):  poo

S.W.A.T. (from the 70's):  so terrible, it's good:   padding Joel, padding

North by Northwest (Alfred Hitchcock):   it would have been great if it were an hour and a half, but it was 2 and a half hours long:  IT WAS TOO LONG SIR

Son of a Diddly

I had a complete hard drive crash Saturday Night.   I'm really kicking myself for not backing up my documents last month,  I mean I did it for my work computer, but blew off my home computer.  Luckily, I had all my documents up to 3 years ago on CD's, and all the Traveller stuff for the last few months was on my flash drive.

What surprised me most was that I did indeed have all my old Traveller files on CD.  I thought I had lost them all 3 years ago when my last computer died.  So, I did find the Traytor's Raiders logs.

I guess the only thing I'm really missing are some of the Badlands info.  Much of it is still there on our wiki.  If there's anything from March of 09 until the start of the Badlands, that might be gone, but that shouldn't be too much.  Should it?

What you found out about Ace Nubunto

While various other things were going on, your characters found out the following important facts about Ace Nubunto and his current whereabouts: 

·         Ace is a well-known scammer, seems to be into the fake treasure map game for some reason now, but doesn’t charge for the various “maps”

·         Ace is working with the Invisible Transformation Assassins

·         Ace sent a large number of X-boat messages to a general delivery box on Garrincski

·         On day 75, the messages stopped. But another from “Mace Mubunto” sent later that day.

·         Ace ran a credit check on Dorkon the minute he landed on Rhylanor.

·         Huge uptick in missing small civilian ships in subsector (in the 200-400 ton range)

·         Ace seemed only interested in talking to ships’ captains.

·         A funny looking guy with orange skin has been asking around about Ace too.

·         Ace bought a high passage to Porozlo the day he arrived on Rhylanor

·         Steve Hitler bought one as well, 10 minutes later.

·         Ace transferred money to his new account from a company called Condor Exports

·         The Condor money was 200,000cr, and this closed the account.

The Results of the Space Denny's Shoot Out

Here is the legal upshot of the Space Denny's Shoot Out:

RHYLANOR PLANETARY DEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC SAFETY

TO:  Colonel Gun Lee, Detective Skip Jockly, Jax Tyvoid, Chum Lee, Doctor Horatio Spurlock,  Captain Travis Bentley ,  Bill Watson,  Simon Wahabi, Louis Fishbeen, Rodrigo Cortez, Albert Mufasa,  Francis Polaski, and “Big Lou” Williams.

FROM: Judge Randolph P. Sakamoro,  3^rd Circuit Court, Rhylanor

RE:  Incident in Space Denny’s 233, yesterday

DATE:  Year 1111---Day 117

Gentlemen, after consulting the Omni-Eye 10,000 crime monitoring computer, the criminal actions that occurred yesterday have been adjudicated and sentences have been passed.

Captain Bentley, Mr. Watson, Mr. Wahabi, Mr. Fishbeen, Mr. Cortez and Mr. Mufasa, you have all been found guilty of attempted armed robbery, assault with a deadly weapon and breaking the peace against the persons of Francis Polaski and his above named acquaintances.  You have all been sentenced to 15 years in the Magic Joyful Educational Fun Center, and have 7 days to report to the nearest police station to begin serving your sentences (once you have all been released from the hospital).

Doctor Spurlock, you have been found guilty of assault with a deadly weapon and armed robbery against the person and property of Francis Polaski and have been sentenced to serve 20 years in the Magic Joyful Education Fun Center.  You have seven days to report to the nearest police station to begin serving your sentence.

Colonel Gun Lee, you have been found guilty of receiving stolen property (namely a briefcase which you accepted into bailment by deactivating the circuits of your carrying robot).  You have been sentenced to 180 days in the Magic Joyful Education Fun Center, and have 7 days to report to the nearest police station to begin to serve your sentence.

Detective Jockly, Chum Lee, Mr. Tyvoid, Mr. Polaski, and Mr. Williams, you have been found innocent of all charges, having acted in self-defense.

The contents of the briefcase in question cannot be legally determined, since the court has no cause for a warrant to access the Omni-Eye to determine those facts.

Sentenced Felons are reminded that your I.D. codes, biometric data, facial recognition are on file across the planet and at the star port exit terminals and that flight of the jurisdiction is impossible.

OMNI-EYE:  There is No Unsolved Violent Crime on Rhylanor

Ship Card minor update

I made a minor change to the ship cards on the Wiki.  The Commercial Vessels document had a mistake in the Fuel, Cargo and Maneuver Drive ratings for the "Far Trader" vessels, I've changed the document there to the correct ratings.

Andrew comes to Heroni

Having mustered out on Rhylanor,  Yes Paul, Roland McGintley and Jax Tyvoid were recruited by Baron Carlo Fossi to join an expedition to the more backwater half of the Rhylanor Subsector.   Baron Fossi is on a mission to survey his family’s holdings in the subsector and search for business opportunities, now that the Fifth Frontier War has come to an end and things are settling down.  The Baron has decided to use one of his family’s Far Traders,The Countess Cassandra, for this leg of his trip.  Yes Paul signed on as ship’s engineer, Roland McGintley as the pilot on The Countess Cassandra, and  Jax Tyvoid as a bodyguard for the Baron. 

One  evening in orbit around Belizo, the baron charts a course for a jump to Heroni.  Roland is a bit puzzled, since Heroni is a dead-end, nowheresville of a planet, with no water, no gas giant and a joke of a starport.  The Baron says that he has a deal worked up with a man named Ace Nubunto to collect a package of ancient documents from the starport on Heroni which will allow him to lay legal claim to the planet, ousting the Ling Standard Products fief-hold.

Recruiting

The rules for recruiting employees are as follows:

RECRUITING

1. DECKS: There are 5 decks of NPC’s for use as potential Employees.

GREEN:  mercenaries—with an Army Background

RED:  mercenaries---with a Marine, Sailor or Flyer Background

PURPLE:  thugs---with a Rogue, Barbarian, Pirate or Assassin Background

YELLOW:  ship crewmen---with a Scout, Merchant or Navy Background

BLUE:  specialists---with a Doctor, Scientist, Bureaucrat, Diplomat, Hunter, Agent or Entertainer background.

2. RECRUITNG SKILL: GENERAL SEARCH:  To look for employees, requires 1 week of active arrangements, and the response is based on the Tech level and population of the world.  The search requires at least 1 character with Recruiting Skill 0+ to pursue it full time, and only one attempt is made per firm, unit or ship per week.  Multiple characters cannot make multiple attempts, but can apply their skill bonuses separately.

Very Low Population:  if the population code is 0,1,2 or 3 then recruiting is going to be on a role-playing basis, since the players can actually meet everyone who’s there.

Low Population:  if the population code is 4 or 5, then draw one card per point of recruiting skill from each deck after one week of work.

Moderate Population:  if the population code is 6,7 or 8, then draw 1d6 cards, plus 1 card per point of recruiting skill,  from each deck after one week of work.

High Population:  if the population code is 9 or greater, draw 2d6 cards, plus 2 cards per point of recruiting skill, from each deck after one week of work.

Low Tech:  if the Tech level of the planet is 4 or less, treat it as a Low Population world, regardless of actual population.

3. TARGETED RECRUITING

If a character has Recruiting Skill, he can attempt to find a specific employee, instead of making a general search.  He rolls a Recruiting roll equal to 12 minus the Population code of the world.  If he succeeds, he may search a particular deck and pick out 1 card of his choice per level of recruiting skill.

4. OTHER SKILLS:

Streetwise: may be used in place of Recruiting, but character only may draw from the Purple Deck.

Liaison: may be used in place of Recruiting, but character only may draw from the Blue Deck.

Carousing: may be used in place of Recruiting, but character only may draw from the Red Deck.

Steward: may be used in place of Recruiting, but character only may draw from the Yellow Deck.

Leader: may be used in place of Recruiting, but character only may draw from the Green Deck.

Next Session Priorities

It seems that next week, the players priorities are:

1) Getting the fudge off of Heroni
2) Finding the dirty bastard who sent you to Heroni
3) Finding the dirty bastards who currently have the Festivus
4) Seeing  if Dorkon can be revived (probably Rhylanor is the closest place with an adequate hospital)
5) Finding the parts needed to fix the totally awesome Death Ranger
6) overhauling the weaponry in the Death Ranger locker
7) Informing the finance company that the Festivus was stolen (not a problem if Dorkon stays dead)
8) Avoiding prosecution for murdering a starport administrator and hijacking the beat-up free trader.

Besides #1, I don't know in what order you consider these to be important.

Tim's Tornado

I just had an amusing idea.   I did the Tim's Tornado solo adventure because I had all the stuff for the asteroid assault all ready and it seemed a shame to waste it.  But now, maybe through the summer I'll just have Tim's Tornado follow the PC's around, getting hired to clean up the messes that the PC's make.  We could even run short TT adventures during the regular session if it's convenient.

I don't need you, I can do this act alone.

Since Bob and Jason decided to skip the chance at 150,000cr for assaulting the asteroid base in session 1, and since I had 2 NPC's who were capable of attempting it and had been present for the chance, I decided to see if they could do it.

Baron Church and Sgt. Griswald each had a fairly large credit balance so, they pooled 120,000cr and recruited 9 employees to form "Tim's Tornado".  I'll send everyone a log of what happened, and put it on the wiki as Rhylanor 3.

Honestly, they were almost massacred.  3 of the 11 had mortal wounds, and they were about to be swamped by 12 or so bad guys with much better weapons.

 In fact, gunnery and Forward Observer were the two key skills,  They entered the base by landing on the asteroid by surprise and then creeping up to the entrance and using Forward Observer to direct a missile to blow the door in, and then to blow the inner cargo door in too.   But, having 2 crappy accelerator rifles and 6 cutlasses is no match for a crap load of laser carbines.   The captain then sees that the bad guys are clumped together by the entry hole.  He orders the back-up pilot to rush the ship's boat right over, fired a Sand Caster and shreaded the bad guys.  My freaking glob!  a sand caster in personal combat is just completely murderous.  If you are in the danger space and not in some very sturdy vehicle (not even an ATV will do), you are just dead. 

Also, having a first rate doctor is really nice, they recruited one by good fortune, and he saved all the injured troops.  Dr. Hakamora may only be Medic-5, not 7 like our own Dr Spurlock, but that still gets the job done.

I also saw one more time how melee weapons may be useful, but the fact the enemy gets a "return fire phase" with guns before you can hack, and that hurts.

Behind the Screen, Rhylanor Express #2

I'm still ambivalent about the multiple characters.   There are good things and bad things, and I can't quite decide which is better.  It was nice to have a variety of skills, but it seemed like a bit of a mob, and the focus wasn't nearly as tight as it had been in session #1.

The main adventure was actually, for once, based on an adventure I found online called "Dismal Luck." I had to change some features, move it from the Solomani Rim to the Spinward Marches, change a few details to match the sector and planet details.  I had to change some of the combat details to match the Striker based system I'm using, and also decided to change a few names to make them more pronounceable.  (For example, Bigsby's name in the original was much longer and much more French).  Luckily, Heroni was just as much of a butthole of a planet as Dismal was in the Solomani Rim, so it was easy to put the adventure there.

I enjoyed the Hobos and how everything with their exploding barrels of gunpowder worked out.   It was just so wrong that your ATV, running noisy, managed to surprise the first group who were cautiously concealed in the mountains, but bad luck can't always fall only on the PC's I reckon.

I was a little surprised when the security dude killed Dorkon.  I had assumed he had picked up some cloth armor or a vacc suit by then, but apparently not.  Without some armor, shotguns are super bad.

It is going to be interesting to see how you manage to get off planet.   I suppose the easiest thing would be if Andrew happened to roll up a guy with a ship and happened to wander by.  But, that probably won't be the answer.

Belters and Hunters

I was making up some NPC cards for potential employees.   I do have to say that Belters and Hunters kind of suck.   They both get piles of levels in a peculiar skill (Prospecting and Hunting respectively) and I think that these two skills are of limited appeal.  I suppose the upside to both careers is that it is really easily to get a ship without working too hard, but mostly all a Belter is likely to be able to do in a game session is use his vacc suit really really well.

Flyers and Sailors weren't really necessary.   They are part of the Planetary Defense Forces of a world (otherwise called the Army) and Army characters get a lot of chances to get Vehicle skill.  If they choose "Watercraft" or "Aircraft", boom, you have a Sailor or Flyer. 

When I was making some potential ship crewmen, I noticed that Navy characters (the Space Fleet guys) are really good at everything on a spaceship, except actually flying the thing.   Your best chance of finding a Pilot is going for a Scout.

I decided to hand-write the NPC cards (just Stats, Skills, terms and service), since I had fair number of colored 3x5 cards.  My printer doesn't print on 3x5 cards for some reason, only 4x6 or better.   I have 5 mini-decks now:  Green --army guys,  Red---marines, sailors and flyers,  Yellow--ship crew: navy, scouts, merchants,  Blue--specialists:  doctors, diplomats, bureaucrats, scientists, agents entertainers, and hunters, and Purple:  goons:  rogues, pirates, barbarians and assassins.

For most of the mini-decks 3/4 of the characters are fresh 1-term guys and 1/4 fully developed characters from Supplement 1 or Supplement 4 (with Special Duty rolls added and level 0 skill levels added).  The Blue deck is all fully developed characters.   So, if we need to recuit mercenaries or ship's crew in the future I should be ready.

The Multiple Character Question

In Bob's comment on the last post, he brought up the idea of running multiple characters in the campaign, and how he was sort of on the fence about it.   Well, you don't know how close I was to telling you guys to run multiple characters on Sunday.  I ended up just letting you share Jimmy Saxobeat.   Near the end, I did give you the opportunity to use your other characters, but you ended up using the two pre-gens instead.

I am really torn about the whole multiple-character question.  On the one hand, a variety of skills and talents is very helpful in Traveller, and the characters are pretty fragile.  Everyone is only a snub pistol shot away from death.  On the other hand, running multiple characters is injurious to the role-play across the board.

If everyone is really interested in running multiples, let's give this a try.  Next session we'll let everyone play their three characters and see how it goes.  That way all 9 characters will be connected and part of the same team.  If it works just fine, we'll keep going, if not, we'll find a way to return to a single character.    We could even work out some sort of compromise where you can "tag in" and "tag out."

In the long run, having a PC and "employees" (i.e., henchmen) works out better than multiple characters, because the players don't forget who the story is about, where the focus lies.  Nevertheless, your characters are sufficiently distinct to at least give it a try.

Behind the Screen, Rhylanor Express Session 1

Our first real Traveller session was a cracking good time.   The constant failure was of immense entertainment value.   It was probably a very good idea that we were using non-lethal weaponry for the first few encounters.  The crew managed to avoid the really dangerous areas, and the only casualty was do to side-line criminal activity.

Gear Notes:
The "Thud Gun" was a total piece of crap.  It was supposed to be a piece of crap and lived up to its billing.   There's nothing better for murdering unarmored chumps up close than a Snub Pistol, it's positively brutal.  I had given the stats for Hand Stunner and Shock Batons (Chaka Khans) in ranged weapon format, when I should have given them as melee weapon format.  It's not hard to work around, they're just clubs with superpowers added on.

Adventure Design:
We ended up doing two different adventures on two separate worlds.  The longer one, "Welcome to Skull" or "The Adventure of Skull Laser Plot."  was completely written up ahead of time, and ran to 6 or 7 pages.   Much of it they avoided (never going to the deadly spider and cannibal dome;  nor actively entering the enemy office building or asteroid base).  But, they completed the mission and got paid.  

I started by going to the "Drudge Report" website on June 4th, and found the most outrageous headlines on the page:  "Robots take Chinese Factories to New Heights",  "Swarms of Tarantuals invade an Indian town",  " Man beheads wife, throws body parts from balcony" and "Zombie Summer: Gruesome cannibal attacks in Miami, Texas and Maryland".  Then I found an interesting planet to start the campaign: an armpit on the Spinward Main, called Skull.  Then I worked in a still-secret meta-plot element and then tried to work the whole collection together into a series of encounters that allowed the players to use a wide variety of skills.

The second advenure was totally unplanned:  "The Adventure of the Equus Fishy Guns" was entirely spur of the moment.  The players were on Equus, they were looking for work, we had a couple of hours to kill.  I just went to the patron encounter list, rolled an "Arms Dealer", so figured the adventure was recovering lost or stolen weapons.  Then I rolled on the random encounter table once for who had the weapons (Religious Group) and to whom the weapons needed to be delivered to (Bandits), factoring in that it was a water world and the adventure created itself.

I honestly don't know which one was more fun.  It was a good time doing both of them.   The depth and framework of the Traveller system is what makes coming up with adventures so enjoyable.   It can be fun to pack in the details ahead of time, but the stats are really simple to come up with on the fly too (Bad guys have 7 in all their attributes and skill 1 in whatever it is they're supposed to do, done).  It's also a fascinating feature that there's no difference between "Boss" type NPC's and ordinary schmoes, there's no difference between ordinary dudes on the street and PC's.   I've always found that a particularly appealing feature of the game.

The News from Skull

TRAVELLER NEWS SERVICE

SKULL-LANTH UPDATE

001-1111

ROBOTIC IMPROVEMENTS INCREASE FACTORY OUTPUT

The installation of robotic equipment has significantly improved the out-put of the electronics factories across the planet.   The increase in out-put should significantly improve the current accounts situation and allow an increase in food imports.

NO PROGRESS IN RIGELLIAN FEVER OUTBREAK IN DOME 32

The quarantine continues in Dome-City 32.  The train network continues to remain sealed in transit through the contaminated city.   It has been positively proven that the Rigellian fever does not come from contact with our recent wave of immigrants from Victoria.   The joint declaration of the Dome Elders has strongly condemned any ethnic violence against the immigrant community.

DELGADO TRADING SKULL PROFITS SHOW LARGE QUARTERLY DROP

The balance sheet for Delgado Trading, our Mega-corporation trade partner, has fallen dramatically this past quarter.   Delgado has cited a spree of unexpected cancellations by Skull electronics suppliers, but the newly formed “Planetary Unity” block of the Council of Elders has dismissed this as corporate propaganda masking a series of bad marketing decisions by Delgado officials.

Welcome to Skull

I was looking for a good planet on the Spinward Marches map, and then I found one called "Skull", at that point the search was over.   Here's a summary about the wonderful world you'll find yourself mustered out upon.

Location:  Skull, Lanth Subsector, C-2237C7-9  Poor. Non-agricultural.  Naval Base

Library Data:  Skull is a barren, desolate planet with a very thin atmosphere, tainted with heavy metals, requiring respirator and filter mask combination to breathe outside.  There are two small oceans, which are stagnant and have a very high metallic content.   At the South Pole is located a Naval Base, home to two cruiser squadrons and a marine battalion.  All the people live in one of a hundred city-complexes.   The greatest proportion of each city is located underground, but the best properties are located in above ground domes.  Because the atmosphere seals are so important, the possession of all firearms, ammunition, explosives, and energy weapons are strictly forbidden and it is a major felony to be caught with such weaponry.  The planet is ruled by the Council of Dome Elders, a self-selecting committee of one individual citizen from each recognized dome city.  The Elder for the Dome acts as its governor and also as its representative on the council.   There is a chairman who runs all meetings and handles formalities with foreign dignitaries.  The chairmanship, however rotates every 6 months, in a fixed scheme.

What is it like on Skull?

                Skull is a planet you wouldn’t send your mother-in-law to, even if you lost a bet.  Most people live in crowded underground quarters that are both cramped and stinky.  The corporate big-wigs live like school teachers or insurance salesmen do on decent planets.  Nowadays things are even worse, every where you go you are accosted by homeless immigrants (know as orange-heads because of their orange skin tone) constantly trying to get you to buy all sorts of worthless crap. (The orange-heads are from the Red-Zone planet Victoria, and their orange skin pigment comes from their adaptation to an atmospheric taint).

Character Generation

I could do Traveller Character Generation all day long.  I've always loved it.  That being said, I have never seen such a run of bad luck for survival rolls in my entire life.  I mean Marlon failing a survival roll of 3+ on 2 dice!   Bob, losing every character he tried, and these not even in the really high risk careers like belter or scout.

Marlon ended up with one really cool ex-army Colonel, and two punks.   Jason ended up with 2 excellent characters, a Flyer, who had a long career, but couldn't get past the first officer rank (pilot); and a Diplomat.  The diplomat was fascinating, since he started with a 2 intelligence, and Jason was just diplomating him as a sort of laugh, but by the end of mustering out, his Intelligence had risen all the way to 6, and he was over-maxed on his total skill ranks.

Unfortunately, I didn't achieve my goal for the session.  Since I don't know what Bob is going to play, I don't know whether the parry will begin with a ship or not (neither Jason nor Marlon's characters have a ship to start).   I don't know which adventure idea to fully flesh out.   I guess I've got plenty of time to work out something that won't matter for next time.  Oh, my, having to spend amply free time playing with Traveller stuff, woe is me.

Space Combat Tutorial

I think people got the hang of the Space Combat (a mix of LBB #2, Mayday and a few extra details from Megatraveller and High Guard).   Bob's an old pro, and everyone else got the hang of the vector movement really quickly.

SPACE COMBAT TUTORIAL:

Imperial Side: (Bob)  
X-boat Tender (3 turrets, carrying an X-boat, and a Scout Courier);
Patrol Cruiser (4 turrets, carrying a ship's boat).

Outworlder Side (Jason and Marlon)
Zhodani Patrol Frigate (6 turrets, carrying a ship's boat)--Marlon
Varge Corsair (4 turrets)--Jason

Goal:  when an X-boat appeared out of jump space, the Imperium must retrieve the passenger and jump him out system, or the Outworlders must capture him and jump him out.

The Battle:
The Vargr swung far left, the Zhodani swung far right, the Imperials slowed down and crawled straight ahead.

The ships never got to close range.  The Zhodani's computer advantage was huge and allowed him to knock out the maneuver drive of the X-Tender.   It was only then that the Tender launched protective sand which defeated most subsequent attacks.   A huge pile of missiles were launched at both Outworlder ships.  The Zhodani frigate maaged to intercept them all, while the Vargr was pummeld by a large number of impacts, which battered it badly, but didn't cripple or destroy it.

When the X-boat finally appeared, the Patrol Cruiser's ship's boat was in excellent position, but the Zhodani frigate crippled it and captured the X-boat, winning the day.

LESSONS:  I think everyone picked up the combat system really well.  I thnk we all know what to expect from a space battle in the future (by which I mean the next time we have a space battle in game, not 5000AD). 

 If I wanted to re-balance the encounter, I should have replaced the Patrol Cruiser with a Mercenary Cruiser,  the Merc Cruiser has a Computer-5, which is only 1 less than the Frigate's Computer-6, rather than the 3 less of the patrol cruiser.   The Merc Cruiser would have meant a lot more guns, so perhaps adding a second Vargr would have made the whole thing more square.   The Impies could have beaten the Frigate, but it would have imvolved getting to close range before swamping it with missiles.

I'm still slightly unsatisfied with the missile fire aspect of things.   I don't like having to keep track of what ship fired the missiles, as well as the target.  I also need a more elegant way to track missile impact time.  Bob thought there should be a way to out-run missiles, and perhaps he's right.  Maybe ships with 6-G acceleration can make some sort of pilot roll to escape.

Ground Combat Tutorial

The ground combat tutorial scenario was a lot of fun, I got to use my Bag of Clowns miniatures, and the poster making feature of my photocopier to create deckplans.

GROUND COMBAT TUTORIAL:

Scenario: defend the ship from axe-wielding clowns.

Stan Darsh:  marine with combat armor, ACR and cutlass:  (Marlon)
Rick Turtles:  army captain with combat armor, SMG  (Andrew)
Eneri Jamison:  merchant with laser pistol, combat armor  (Bob)
Bill Redbone:  other with snub auto, combat armor  (Jason)

Location: a non-functioning Subsidized Merchant parked at a star port.
Enemies: 50 Bozite cultists in mesh armor with battle axes

Summary:  Turtles was on the upper deck, Darsh, Eneri and Redbone were on the cargo deck, when the rear door and starboard cargo door were blown open and the clowns rushed in.  Eneri was alone near the bow and was surrounded by a dozen clowns.   Darsh and Redbone were almost surrounded, but withdrew to a side corridor.   Darsh put aside his ACR and switched to cutlass and made an excellent defense for himself.  Redbone stood in the corridor and brutally blew the head of one clown after another as they came down the corridor one at a time.   Turtles gets to the opposite side access hatch and drops his grenade down onto the clowns, wounding a few, but only knocking one out of the fight.  He then begins a constant barrage of SMG bullets down the ladder way, with the clowns only rarely getting an axe attempt when he had to stop to change magazines.

Things start to look bad for Eneri.   He takes 2 light wounds and 1 moderate wound, and is only 1 END for exhaustion.    He's too wounded to get any hits with his laser pistol, and is surrounded and cornered by a dozen clowns.   So, in desperation, and counting on his combat armor, he rolls his demolition charge onto the deck and activates it only a meter or two from his feet.  It kills or seriously wounds all 12 clowns, and doesn't scratch Eneri himself.  The tide has turned!

The clowns keep trying to overcome the cutlass, come down the corridor to Redbone and climb up the ladder for another 2 turns, but finally they fail morale and flee.  Only a dozen or so escaped out the rear door. 

LESSONS:  I think everyone got the point about how the penetration and wounds work,  There is still a little confusion about what numbers go for what roll, but everyone appreciates the joys of autofire, the horror of explosive rounds, and some of the melee details.  The turn sequence went pretty smoothly, except I kept wanting to skip the player's return fire phase before the melee attack, which they would quickly remind me about.

The Turn Sequence track play aid I made was crucial and kept the game flowing smoothly.  Man a Snub pistol really is just the best thing for making things dead in shipboard combat.  I was really pleasantly surprised about how the melee weapons worked.  The Battle Axe has the best penetration of all the weapons, but nevertheless, against a guy trained with a cutlass it's hard to get a hit.

Update

I've put a couple of quick reference sheets for ground and space combat onto the wiki.

http://www.lordsofhack.com/traveller/doku.php?id=document_page
I'm getting seriously jazzed.

Adventures

I've been working my way through a lto of old Traveller adventurers, and have noticed a few things.  First of all, they are remarkably low on plot.  The adventurers are mostly ship deck plans, subsector space maps and rumors and patron encounters.   Most of the details are just left open. 

Second of all, most of them are remarkably low on action with the exception of the two I actually bought back in the old days (Broadsword and the Chamax Plague), which are just chock full of action.  There are almost no space battles at all.  Broadsword has one big space battle, and Leviathan involves wandering around in a big merchant cruise, loaded for bear, with the possibility of stumbling into hostile spaceships.

There are also a bunch of neat adventures and adventure seeds online.   I'm in the process of stichting together an online adventure with one of original adventures, with an overall background plot suggested by an episode of MST3K. 

From my tests, I'm thinking that the actual adventures might go quite a bit differently than our typical campaign.  There might end up being fewer gun fights overall, since they can be so deadly.  Space battles might be preferable since they aren't so lethal, even if they are much more expensive.  I think its better to have flunkies involved if you want to have lots of gun battles..

My plan for Sunday is still:
Step 1) several test scenarios in space and ground using pre-gens.
Step 2) create characters
Step 3) I'll have a shorter  adventure ready to go (one that can be used whether the PC's have a ship from character gen or not). 

Character gen is not time consuming.  I'm even thinking that we may roll 3 guys each, choosing the best one.  If the test scenarios go quickly, then we may get a significant amount of adventuring in.

Oh, one more thing.   I think I've finally found a use for a pair of "averaging dice" I bought years ago.  These are 2 d6's which have no 1's and no 6's, instead they have two 3s and two 4's apiece.  Its normal to roll 2d6 for ability scores in Traveller, and I'm thinking of allowing the option to use the averaging dice for those who fear getting low rolls.

Publishing Update

I've made 3 hard copies of the Sky Mall and 2 copies of the Rule Booklet for use at the table.  I have one copy of the character generation charts for everyone for use at the table, and a pile of 20 character sheets.

Over at the Traveller wiki, I've uploaded all the Starship cards and Vehicle cards I've made.  So, if you want to try a space battle or two before Sunday, get a few cards and the Rule Booklet from the wiki page and you'll have everything you'll need.  Wiki page is here:

http://www.lordsofhack.com/traveller/doku.php?id=document_page

P.S.  I've put a link from the Lords of Hack wiki index page that led to the Badlands wiki that will also lead to the Traveller wiki.

P.P.S.  Blogger has certainly improved between the time I slacked off blogging in the winter and my recent return this month.  The comments are less buggy, and the navigation is generally improved.

Time to Publish

I've finally done enough testing and think I'm ready to release my two main documents.  I've put them up on Andrew's most excellently provided wiki on the Traveller documents' page at this link:

http://www.lordsofhack.com/traveller/doku.php?id=document_page

The first two documents are THE SKY MALL, which contans all the weapons, armor, vehicles, robots and assorted gear we should need,  and the RHYLANOR EXPRESS RULES BOOK, which contains some notes on character generation changes, but more importantly the Space Combat Rules and Ground Combat rules.  You can't generate characters with just this booklet, but the combat rules are complete.

I'll have character generation stuff in hard copy for everyone on Sunday, unfortunately my scanner doesn't support my computer's OS, so it's become just a photocopier. 

I may add some more documents (starship and vehicle data cards) at some point soon.

Boarding Action--with ROBOTS!

My group of 6 guys, back from the dead, are sitting around their scout ship (plans from the poster feature of my copier) when they are suddenly boarded by 4 EVIL ROBOTS!

Side A:
Major Arnold--Army:  smg, Auto-cannon
Sam the Scout:  heavy laser rifle
Mack the Marine:  RAM grenade launcher
Nick the Navy Guy: hides in a closet
Melvin the Merchant: hides in a different closet
Otto the Other: hides in a still different closet

Side B
War Android laser rifle, blade
Kill-bot: power saw hands, laser eyes
Heavy Repair Bot, reprogrammed for evil, huge arms, laser welder
Security Robot:  tranquilizer pistol.

Turn-1
Once again the high Tactics of Arnold and Mack allow the crew to take up position, hiding in doors along the corridor from the common area to the bridge.  Robots come batteling into the common area and start firing.  The security robot fires a tranq round at Otto, misses.  Killbot fires 2 laser eyes at Sam, but misses as well.  The android fires laser rifle at Mack, but misses too.  The repair bot has no clear target.

The crew returns fire.  Otto's, Melvin's and Nick's weapons are ineffective against the robots.  Mack fires his grenade launcher at the killbot, the crew spends 3 of its 6 tactics pool to score a hit.  It is a minor penetration, jamming the killbot's legs.  Sam fires his laser rifle against the killbot too, but the bolt does not penetrate.  Major Arnold then mans the Auto-cannon installed by Sam just to repel boarders and lets rip.  He hits the Killbot 1 time, but it does not penetrate.  He hits the Android 4 times for 1 surface hit (loose 1 turn).  He hits the Security bot for 4 surface hits.  He hits the repair bot for 4 minor penetration, one of which is pushed up to a major and causes the repair bot to explode.

Turn-2
Mack fires his grenade launcher at the the killbot, exploding it.  The autocannon fills the remaining two robots with a flurry of surface hits, causing them both to lose their turns.

Turn-3
The crew finishes off the robots.

LESSONS LEARNEDYou absolutely must have heavy weapons to fight robots.  Cover is very good.  The crew was well covered when the robots burst in.  The -3 penalty saved the crew a bunch of pain.   It was also fortunate that the robots had single-shot weapons.  I also realized that I need to clarify the damage results for the robot tables.

A More Ordinary Test: PC's vs Army

Side A:
Sam the Scout:  vacc suit, med kit, laser pistol
Arnold Army Major: cloth, SMG, scanner, Tactics Skill-3!
Mack the Marine Lt: combat armor, gauss pistol, RAM GL, Tactics 2!
Nick the Navy Guy: vacc suit, shotgun
Melvin the Merchant: cloth, light assault gun
Otto the Other: cloth, auto-rifle

Tracked ATV, Auto-cannon

Side B
Sarge:  flak jacket, assault rifle, Tactics-1
7 troopers, flack jacket, assault rifle

Heavy APC, Auto-cannon

Surprise Check: both sides spot each other easily, driving around in big, noisy tracked vehicles.  Since Side A has 5 Tactics points, vs. 1 on Side B, Side A chooses to be Intruder.

Turn-1
Adventurers drive ATV behind stone wall, 4 jump out for cover.  Arnold fires Auto-cannon against APC, but it proves too well armored.
Army guys return fire with their auto-cannon, impeding the tracks on the ATV and jamming the adventurers' auto-cannon.  Arnold tries to clear the jam, but since he has no mechanical skill, he fails.
6 of the army guys disembark from the APC along another stone wall.  They let loose with their auto-cannon again, totally jamming the ATV tracks and shearing off its antennas.

Turn-2
Arnold and Sam jump out of the vehicle.  Mack fires his RAM Grenade launcher at the APC, and despite spending a tactics point, he misses by 1.   Nick fires his shotgun at long range and misses.  Mevlin fires his light assault gun and misses, and Otto fires his auto-rifle and misses too.

The six army guys return fire, spraying the line with bullets,  Melvin is hit for a serious wound, 2 light wounds and a graze and is out of the fight.  Otto takes a a light wound but keeps fighting.  Mack's combat armor shrugs off the bullets.  The auto-cannon fires too, missing 3 targets, but hitting Arnold for a serious wound, knocking him out of the fight too (a Tactics point from the pool saves him from a mortal wound).

They continuing firing, the auto-cannon killing Nick and Melvin, seriously wounding Sam.  Regualr bullets give Otto a serious wound, taking him down too.

Turn-3
Mack, alone and wounded, fires his grenade launcher one more time at the APC, hitting it.  It manages to moderately wound the auto-cannon gunner, but Mack, realizes he's been beaten and surrenders.

LESSONS LEARNED
This was the most fun of the battles so far.  Having actual player character types involved made it more enjoyable.  The adventurers were outnumbered, by a little.  The heavy armor on the APC made it immune to the adventurers' auto-cannon, and they had to rely on Mack's launcher.  Trouble was, no one in the team had more than launcher-0 skill. 

The adventurers had a metric pile of Tactics.   I was too stingy on how I allowed people to spend tactics points.  I had limited it to 1 point per roll.  I'm going to change it to any number per roll, and you can spend them after you roll (to Mike it, as it were).  I seem to remember doing that back in the old days (or at least I remember Tom Larkin calling out "tactics point" a lot). 

If the adventurers could have spent their 6 ponts (3 from Arnold, 2 from Mack, 1 from their battle computer) all at once, then they could have hit with the first grenade, and perhaps saved themselves from being raked by 2 rounds of auto-cannon fire.

Also, man, someitmes a weak space guy is just no good in a ground fight.  The fact that the army troops all had Rifle-1 skill made a huge difference, especially when they shot twice with their assault rifles and many of the adventurers were firing with gun combat-0.  Also, whoever came up with the idea of giving each character level 0 skills for all their service skills chart was a genius, he immiediately made everyone more useful in a variety of situations, without making them over-powered super monkeys.

More on Vehicle Battles

After thinking it over a bit, I modified the damage effects tables a little bit, making it slightly easier for marginal weapons to score a Surface Damage result, and slightly harder to get a Major Penetration.  Still, if you use the big freaking tank guns, things blow up.

Interface Battles:
Always the whole in Traveller, I finally tested a starship vs. vehicles.   I used a Heavily Armored Troop Carrier starship attempting to land while opposed by a tracked crawler mounted with a starship grade missile launcher, and by a armored grav fighter with a fuzion-Z gun (the nastiest vehicle weapon around).

I thought it went the way I'd have expected it to go.

  Lander fires 2 beam lasers at the Crawler, hitting once and destroying its engine.  It then fires a beam laser and 2 missiles at the fighter--scoring 6 hits total and destroying the fighter.  The crawler misses its return fire missile.

Crawler takes its turn, firing a missile, hitting the lander for 5 hits.  destroying the cargo hold, one of its G-carriers, damaging its man-drive 1 level, 1 fuel hit and damaging its computer 1 level.  The lander returns fire and kills the crawler's crew.

Lessons;  A 200 ton ship vs. a 10 ton crawler and 8-ton fighter, that went as one would expect, the lander wiped them out, but suffered noticeable damage on the way int.

I think vehicle battles are going to end up very short and to the point.

Tag Team Battle in the Sky: next test

I've been working on vehicle stats, and deiced to let the top-of-the-line duke it out.
So, it was a tag-team match in the skies among a handful of TL-14 or 15 grav vehicles.  They could all fly, some very fast, some very slow, but they had the best armor and weapons that could be had.  As soon as one went down, a new one would arrive to replace it.

Turn-1:  TL-14 Light Grav Tank with Fusion Gun and TAC missiles vs. Tl-14  Armored Attack Speeder with VRF gauss gun and TAC missle.

The Tank's fusion gun doesn't score a hit due to the speeder's fast speed, but the TAC missile has a huge hit bonus to overcome that.  The missile slams into the speeder and scores 3 major penetrations, the second of which explodes the speeder all over the landscape.

Turn-2:  a TL-15 Armored Grav Fighter streaks in to avenge the speeder.  It also misses with its fusion gun and hit the tank with a TAC missile, killing the crew and knocking out the drive, electronics, and main weapon.

But then, a Heavy Grav Tank-14 shows up.  It also fires a fusion cannon and a TAC missile.  The fusion cannon misses, but the missile hits the Grav Fighter, knocking out its electronics, but the fighter still flies!   The fighter returns fire, launching another missile and fusion shot.  The fusion shot misses, and the TAC missile would have hit, but the Heavy Grav tank has a point defense system and manages to shoot down the missile first.

Turn-3:  The Grav fighter decides to save its last missile, seeing how effective the Point Defense was, and simply fires its Fusion cannon,  which hits!  It destroys the grav locomotion systems of the tank, which plummets to the ground.

Turn-4  a Grav APC-14 arrives to avenge the tanks.  It fires off a missile, which hits the Grav fighter, knocking outs its engine, fusion cannon and drives, and it also plummets to the ground.

LESSONS:
It is perhaps not surprising that anti-aircraft missiles do most of the work in an aerial battle.  The armor system is very unforgiving.   The armor ratings run from 0 up to 70, the weapons penetration ratings run from 0 to about 79.    However, if your armor is 6 points higher than the penetration of the weapon shooting at you, it cannot ever hurt you.   If the penetration is 5 better than the armor, it will score a major penetration (which are really, really, permanently bad) every time. 

I'm thinking that maybe I ought to change the roll for penetration after the hit.  I'd like to have seen more minor penetrations or surface hits.  Maybe a 2d6 roll that parallels the Personal Wound chart.

Not an Ambush this Time, ground combat test 3

Not an Ambush this time!

I decided to re-try the 4 TL-14 Battle Dress guys vs. the 8 TL-10 guys.  This time I gave each side a sergeant with leader and tactics skill, and a spotter with Observer skill and a scanner.

Side A—the New Battle-Dress Badasses:

Sergeant Ator:  heavy laser, advanced battle computer

Spotter Bilko: RAM auto-GL, advanced battle scanner

Trooper Clangor:  FGMP-14

Trooper Dunlevy: laser pistol, TAC missiles

Side B—The Returning Champions

Sergeant Florus:  laser rifle, disposable rocket launcher, battle computer

Spotter George:  RAM grenade launcher, battle scanner

Trooper Hank: Advanced Combat Rifle, 2 rifle grenades

Trooper Irving: TAC missile, laser carbine

Trooper Jimbo:  ACR, 2 rifle grenades

Trooper Kastor: ACR, 2 rifle grenades

Trooper Louis: ACR, 2 rifle grenades

Trooper Mike: ACR, 2 rifle grenades

Spotting Round:

Both Sides spot one another since they have both the equipment and skills to make a good attempt.

So, Florus and Ator must compare Tactics, they’re tied, but the Advanced Computer gives a better bonus so Ator wins, and chooses to be Intruder.

TURN 1

Intruder Movement:  Ator and Bilko “stand” behind a stone wall waiting for targets.  Clangor and Dunlevy run up to get cover far ahead, but Dunlevy falls short and is partially exposed to fire.

Intruder Direct Fire: only Dunlevy has a shot and fires his laser pistol at Mike, but misses.

Native Return Fire: Mike fires at Dunlevy with a rifle grenade and kills him dead.

Morale Phase:  since the Badasses have lost 25%, they must check morale, and fail.  I have a tantrum and rule that colonel Klink rides past and rallies them.

Command Phase: Klink rallies Badasses.

Native Movement: The entire squad moves into shade of building on the opposite side where Clangor is waiting. 

Native Direct Fire: no targets available

Intruder Return Fire: no targets available

Native Command Phase:  Mike reloads his rifle grenade.

TURN 2

Intruder Movement: Ator and Bilko stand, waiting for targets; Clangor runs behind a shed farther away from the enemy.

Intruder Direct Fire: no targets

Native Return Fire: no targets

Intruder Command Phase: none

Native Movement: Mike stands but pokes his head around the corner.  Louis walks around the corner to the next alley.  Jimbo and Kastor stay under cover behind Mike.

Florus, George, Hank and Irving rush around the other side of the building to the shed.

Native Direct Fire:  Mike fires at Bilko, but misses due to the cover of the stone wall.   Louis also misses Bilko because of cover and his snap-shot penalty.

Intruder Return Fire:  Bilko turns his RAM AutoGL against Mike and Louis, pumping 10 grenades down line.   Louis is hit 4 times and is turned to grease.  Mike is only hit once because of cover, but once is enough and he’s grease.

Morale Phase:  The Champions hold morale.

Native Command Phase: none

TURN 3

Intruder Movement:  Ator and Bilko stand still waiting for targets.  Clangor ‘evades” from the back of the shed toward the stone wall.

Intruder Direct Fire: none

Native Return Fire: None

Morale Phase: none

Command Phase: none

Native Movement:  Florus, George, Hank and Irving “walk” out to form a skirmish line to get shots at Ator and Clangor.

Native Direct Fire:  the Snap-Shot penalty combined with the cover or evasion bonuses are too much, and all four miss their shots against Ator and Clangor.

Intruder Return Fire:  Ator hits Florus with a heavy laser rifle and evaporates him.

Morale Phase: Champions fail

Command Phase: none

TURN 4:

Intruder Movement: none

Intruder Direct Fire: Ator evaporates George.  Clongor evaporates Hank

At this point it’s over and the remaining champions flee the field.

LESSONS LEARNED:

Not ambushes are much more interesting than ambushes.  I know the turn sequence may seem clunky on paper, but I actually really liked it in practice, far more than I expected.  It was basically the Striker turn sequence made to match the Space Combat sequence in terminology.

Man, running around in front of guns is really stupid. Now this was a fight where everyone was using weapons that way over-matched the target body armor.   In normal fights where people will be shooting guns and wearing ballistic cloth armor, there will actually be wounds instead of gruesome disintegration on every hit.

Dirty Dingus Magee

I just watched the 1970 movie "Dirty Dingus Magee", starring Frank Sinatra and George Kennedy.  It was supposed to be western-comedy.

Worst
Movie
Ever

Poster Success

I figured out once again how to get my copier to may poster-sized out-put.  You just have to keep punching a variety of buttons.  I managed to take a half page map and make it into a 4 page plan.  So now I have a deckplan of a scout ship that has squares just about right for putting miniatures onto it (it's a little tight, but works).

To Shreds, You Say--Ground Combat Test 2

I decided to try out the the biggest baddest armor.   Tech Level 14 Battle-Dress is Armor Value 18, which is pretty huge.  Basically, bullets stand no chance against it.   I made up 4 Tech14 troopers with a variety of weapons, and put them up against 8 tech-10 troopers, wearing Combat Environment Suits (Armor Value 6).

The laser rifles and Advanced Combat Rifles carried by tech 10 troopers simply can't hurt the Battle Dress Troops.  But, they had a good supply of support weapons:  1 grenade launcher, I disposable rocket launcher, 1 TAC anti-tank missile, and each rifleman had 2 rifle grenades.

As luck would have it the tech 10 troopers got surprise.  They figured they had to go for broke up front, since they only had 1-2 rounds of grenades and rockets and then they were helpless.  So they didn't worry about cover or anything and just let 'er rip down the line.

Trooper Florus fired his disposable rocket at Trooper Ajax and missed.,

Trooper George emptied a magazine of RAM grenades at Ajax and hit him twice, utterly destroying him beyond all revival chance.

Trooper Hank fires a rifle grenade and missed.

Trooper Irving fires the Anti-tank missile, and missed.

Trooper Jimbo fires a Rifle Grenade, and blows Trooper Bootes to complete shreds.

Trooper Kastor fires a Rifle Grenade and misses.

Trooper Louis fires a rifle grenade and kills Trooper Callimachus dead.

Trooper Mike fires a rifle grenade and utterly destroys Trooper Diomedes.

LESSONS LEARNED:

This battle went completly against my expectations.  The super high tech equipment wasn't a match for a rocket powered grenade.   Once again, don't get surprised.  Both tests so far were decided by who got surprise.  Choosing where and when to start shooting is awesome.   Now, none of the example guys have had any Recon Skills, and I didn't give anyone any Scanners.   I need to start seeing about that.  If both sides spot each other, then cover etc., will be more important.  Just one or two points of cover would have made a huge difference.  Also, HEAP grenades are just plain brutal.  Even if they hadn't killed all their targets stone dead, their explosive effects would have increased their wound severity by one.  Ouch.

Multiple Targets problem

In the Striker miniature game, from which I'm taking most of my weapon data for Traveller, many weapons can shoot at more than one target a turn.  

It is, however, unclear to me whether it is permissible to use the multiple targets to completely mess up a single target.   So, if you have a VRF Gauss gun on your G-carrier, and it has 16 permissible targets, if there's only one guy out there, can you roll to hit him 16 times, or only once, with the rest of the bullets tearing up the ground in front of and behind him?  

It's a hard question to decide.  One the one hand, it's awesome to mess guys up really badly.  On the other, it would definitely be better to give than receive.

Traveller Personal Combat Play Test 1

I finally wrapped up my rules revisions for a simplified integration of Striker with Classic Traveller (without turning it into MegaTraveller).  Here's my first gunfight test, 4 army guys against 4 thugs in a modern-day tech level fight.

The Army Ambushes Thugs

Army: 

Lieutenant Luke,  flak jacket, sub-machingeun (-1 to hit, poor Dex)

Trooper Alvin, flak jacket, assault rifle
Trooper Bill, flak jacket, auto-shotgun
Trooper Chaz, flak jacket, rifle

Thugs:

Boss Man:  flak jacket, auto-pistol  (pathetic Str, Dex and Endurance)

Xavier: jack armor, auto-pistol  (poor Dex)
Yancy: flak jacket, gauss pistol
Zeb:  mesh armor, shotgun  (poor dex)

Surprise Check:

Both sides fail to spot the other on the first attempt.

Army Spots the Thugs on the second attempt and achieves surprise.

Surprise Round:

Trooper Bill and Trooper Chaz walk into the room and clear the entry corridor.

 Lt. Luke fires his SMG at Xavier (at effective range) and Yancy (at long range).  He hits Xavier three times, inflicting 2 serious wounds and a kill shot.  Xavier learns that Jack Armor isn’t worth Jack.    Luke misses Yancy, due to the range.

 Alvin fires his assault rifle at the Boss and at Yancy.  The Boss is hit once for a Light Wound, protected by cover.  Alvin his Yancy 4 times for 2 moderate wounds, a serious wound and a graze.  The serious wound crumples Yancy and he’s out of the fight.

Now Bill fires his auto-shotgun at the boss.  Despite the fact that he’s well protected by cover, the mass of shotgun pellets hits the Boss 5 times.  However, the flak vest reduces the hits to 3 light wounds and 2 no effects.  However, the boss only has an Endurance of 2, and with 4 light wounds now, he crumples exhausted out of the fight.

 Trooper Chaz has a simple rifle and fires at Zeb, just barely hitting him (-2 snap shot penalty for moving).  However, the hit is a serious wound and knocks Zeb out of the fight.

LESSONS LEARNED:

Don’t get surprised.  Automatic fire weapons are way cooler than non-automatic fire weapons.   Body Armor makes a huge difference, don’t cheap out on your protection.  Using the 2d6 scale and the fact that people have limited skill levels (everyone had gun combat skills at only level 1) means that every single bonus or penalty makes a freaking huge difference.  

 I guess it was pretty realistic, if heavily armed gunmen burst into a small room and blaze away at you from close range, everyone’s going to crumple quickly.