Rob Thomas

Nice looking campaign. In that part of the world a bush pilot with a couple small planes would come in real handy and increase the team's operational radius.

Modern is the only time frame I play - actually run since it has been decades since I was last a player. Playing within the confines of a military organization, with the inherent structure and regulations requires a bit of work but is certainly possible. Special Operations Forces, HUMINT oriented intelligence cells and CID have a level of independent operations capability well beyond Joe Grunt and can make a reasonable short term campaign - then tend to do the same thing over and over. Intelligence agencies, law enforcement advisors/trainers and PMCs are not in the military structure, but work with them and have considerable freedom. My next mini-campaign will be based around a DEA team operating in Afghanistan.

The good folks at Chaosium are the only ones who can answer that. All I can tell you is that we are trying to scrape together time to work on Volume 2. Lots of good stuff we want to include, but schedules have been hard on both of us and getting the manuscript to Chaosium by the end of the year is looking unlikely.

You want the players to be gritty, they are playing evil. This is not a game issue that can be dealt with by slapping the characters around. Odds are they will only escalate their evil acts or get mad at you for being "unfair". To deal with this you need to talk to your players, explain what you are looking for out of the game and feel like you are not getting. Hopefully, they will meet you somewhere in the middle and change their play style. If not, maybe it is time to let someone else GM for a while or look for players who want the same thing out of the game you do.

I have always believed the more skills you have the less time the GM has to spend going, "How the hell do I deal with this," when a player decides they want to do something unusual. And if the players pick odd skills for their characters that just gives me more fodder to use in creating adventures.

A member of a fire team does not get rewarded if he provides covering fire for his teammates but he does get a boot up the backside if he does not. Your players are part of a team and if the don't work as such you should squich them. Want to run off from the group and do your own thing, fine - SPLAT your dead. Want to grab the cool kit for yourself, fine - someone steals it from you in the night.

Trying to fit low-tech gritty into a world of genetically-enhanced, cyber-linked mech jockeys who are supported by massive orbital fleets is going to be challenging. I guess the easiest way to manage it is if the players start as the low-tech Fringe, looking in on the flash kit of the "empire" and dreaming of the day it is theirs, which if they survive long enough it will be. Taking the high-tech boys and dropping them onto a dustball planet is going to get old quickly.

I have done a good bit of bow hunting over the years and there is no way I would take modern archery equipment much less historical bows (crossbows) and arrows against major game. I know of people who have taken moose (Alces alces) with a bow and they are lucky fools. A single hunter putting a crossbow bolt into something like a muskox would be trampled into the ground and the muskox might or might not die of infection in a week or two. My spot rule for hunting animals is that damage below low 1/2 the animals HP is non-fatal, start tracking and hope for a second shot. Damage above 1/2 HP is fatal, but not immediate - figure the animal will run 10m + 10m per damage/HP difference (10 points to a 18 HP animal means 90m run and the chance to loose the animal). Even a "kill shot" will see the animal run a short distance. Last season I put a broad hit perfectly through heart and lungs of a mid size mule dear (Odocoileus hemionus) and he still went 8m into a thicket before expiring. I have had animals that took a "good hit" go 100m+. Only way to drop them where they stand is a head/upper spine shot and those aren't going to work with a bow.

Keep the prologue short, say 2 or 3 sessions. The main event is what it is all about. You will have to explain the switch of characters, but rather then being specific and saying parents just go with "relations". The players are probably going to expect some sort of traumatic transition to their real characters so go ahead and kill away. Roll the dice behind your screen and say, "Wow, another critical." I have never run a parent-offspring campaign, but I have reincarnation campaigns where the players go in with their characters and the whole party is wiped out. The players then get to make a few minor changes to the characters and the story picks back up twenty years later. An option to consider.

Regain control of airship from hijackers. Repel pirates in other airship or find out what they want and give it to them. Bioweapon is on board; 1) players have to figure out who/where before landing/release, 2) bioweapon has been released and infected everyone on board. Find cure and then figure out who/why.

Propaganda to convince the populace that this take over is a good thing. Get the old law enforcement force back up and running, though under your tight supervisor. People will feel much more secure if they see policeman plod on the street corner even if there are two carbine-armed goons behind him. Create a public face using some low-charisma/low-intelligence members of the previous government - stooges so it looks like you are working with the locals. Try and turn some low ranking members of the bureaucracy to your cause (payments/coercion/blackmail/whatever) so that if a resistance forms you have locals you can hopefully get on the inside/early. Potentially create a resistance of your own using turned individuals as a core, both to identify people who would join and discredit any resistance efforts - if the resistance suddenly targets soft locations such as food distribution centers that impact the locals more then the invaders, the populace is less likely to view resistance efforts favorably. Travel restrictions. Shutting down/monitoring/ or co-opting local religious institutions and leaders - local religious bigwig extolling peace and patience can be quite useful. House arrest is a bad idea. When you target someone, you want them out of the public eye and preferably in an unknown location where people cannot look to the family home as a focus of hope. This is fun. have to think about his again when not befuddled due to lack of sleep. [Edit] A couple more before collapse. Control of utilities. A sudden increase of power consumption in a building can be a sign of resistance activity. Also, you have the ability to punish areas of resistance activity by temporary suspension of water, electrical or fuel services. There will be smuggling activity so find it but instead of shutting it down you use it. Maybe you put some explosives out in the system that have chemical markers or even electronics trackers. You might loose a patrol but the intelligence gained would be worth the loss. Increase the flow of alcohol and “mood relaxers”. A stoned populace is a peaceful populace. Resist the urge to pump a little “relaxer” into the water supply, nothing builds conspiracy theories faster then the idea that food and water supplies are being tampered with. Keep the indoctrination/re-education of the young low key, nothing gets people up in arms faster then seeing their kids threatened.

The way I handle NPC's is to give them application rolls rather then masses of skill rolls. Say you have an NPC who is handling the resistance propaganda operation. I would give him a Propaganda Application roll which would be an average of Persuade, Knowledge (Psychology), and Knowledge (Sociology or Politics). Cuts it down to one roll without having to resort to a new skill. Same would easily work for Scouting and Recruiting. Nice thing about it is that you can change the skills that contribute to the Application based on the situation. Say you have to do a beach reconnaissance, you add swimming and Knowledge (Hydrology), and recalculate the Application value. ready to roll.

Propaganda, reconnaissance and recruiting sound like applications rather then skills. For Propaganda I would be looking at Persuade and Knowledge (Politics, Psychology, etc) For Reconnaissance the Perception skills should be adequate. Recruiting would be the same skills as for propaganda

Use you wound level idea for the player characters and normal ablative hit points for the badguys. Simple and accomplishes what you are after. Just remember that if players get a sense of invulnerability they are going to think even less then players normally do before wading into combat.

I have to agree with Vile. When I started going to conventions in the late 70s most participants seemed to be high schoolers like myself. Now, most are going gray (like me) and it is very rare to see a teenager.