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.

Throw for getting the grenade from hand to intended target, Knowledge: Military Hardware for the capabilities of different grenades (or any other weapon). Demolitions might work, but it would probably be a difficult role - going through the Army demo manual there is almost nothing on grenades. The EOD manual has more information, but not nearly as much as Jane's.

Something like a new hardsuit is an incredibly complex piece of kit with different user interface, maintenance routines, emergency procedures, balance, etc. Learning how all of that works is going to take time and building the muscle memory to be familiar is going to take longer. Maybe after a successful skill check means you know the emergency extraction technique, but it is not likely you can do it from memory in a high stress situation. That takes muscle memory and muscle memory only comes from lots of practice. Best way I can give an example is to use the pistol. Take a police officer who has trained with and carried a Glock for a couple of years. he knows the gun and has practiced so he can perform routine tasks without thinking. He gets a job with another agency and is issued a Sig P226. Five minutes with the gun and manual and he knows how the gun works, but I guarantee you that without a lot of practice the first time he pulls the gun from the holster he will forget to take the safety off. Muscle memory from his training with the Glock will kick in and the Glock does not have a manual safety (unless said individual is in Spain). Now imagine being 100m down in a new hardsuit and all the emergency alarms go off. Instinct is going to have you going through emergency procedures as you are are familiar from the old suit and in the new suit that could be disastrous. I would suggest assigning a familiarity penalty based on the complexity of the new item, reduce the penalty for training and have the rest of the penalty go away with practice/use time. Example; Mk.X Hardsuit, -60 familiarity penalty, reduced by 20 for training course, and reduced by 1 per hour of use/practice. Take the class and four 10 hour days of work/practice and the penalty for the Mk.X would be gone.

I generally treat failures as minor issues and fumbles as the big "sheep dip" but in high stress/risk situations the failure result becomes "treat as fumble". Fail a swim/diving roll while moving some equipment is not the same as failing a swim/dive roll on a panic ascent.

Sorry, but that is completely false. Recompression is the recommended treatment for Type 1 DCS simply beacause of the risk that symptoms and pain are covering the symptoms of the more serious Type 2 or AGE. Even with Type 2 death is not certain without recompression. It is possible for nitrogen bubbles to migrate and DCS to worsen even hours after the dive (especially with physical activity or alcohol consumption), another reason for continued evaluation and recompression for even mild symptons. 100% oxygen is very good at lessening symptoms of Type 1 DCS. DAN (Diver's Alert Network) only publishes studies involving recommended treatment, 100% oxygen followed by recompression, so there are no statistical studies on survival without treatment (that I am aware of), but if you read the reports on the early caison workers you will see the full range of DCS symptoms and generally surviving. Many are the reports of workers coming to the surface dizzy and with joint pain, suffering through the night and looking forward to going down the next day because the mysterious malody symptoms went away. Death rates only skyrocket as technology improved which resulted in deeper and longer working hours. the nitrogen bubbles that are the cause of DCS (and AGE) will disolve naturally given time.

CoC seems to have a very lethal and unrealistic take on DCS.

What about 2d6-2 just for the chance of that cinematic loosing consciousness just before breaking the surface? It does not happen often but it would make for a good "Oh crap" moment.

Yes, successful swim rolls will keep the character safe from DCS, but a character can fail dozens of swim rolls and never risk DCS if the situation is not correct. Fumble a swim roll and get DCS just does not cut it. Fail a Swim roll while ascending and there is trouble, move on to DCS roll. In situations like this I don't require a fumble roll for the brown stuff to hit the fan, but there again I am probably working outside the norm. Use of a CON roll is a tough choice for DCS effects. Honestly, I would prefer a straight percentage roll, but roleplayers seem to prefer some variability and I find a stat better then a skill which really has no impact on phsiological outcome. With DCS there is a huge range of results and onset times and some sort of roll is needed. The steriotypical collapsing unconscious upon breaking the surface of the water is a very unlikely result of DCS. Being a good diver is of no use for this roll.

Because of your equipment suggestions I have started working on diving rules for possible inclusion in MODERN EQUIPMENT CATALOG Volume 2. Won't see the book until the end of the year at best so that does not help now. I am not inclined to use skill rolls for environmental affects, as can be seen in the Altitude Sickness rules in MEC, so the chances of getting "the bends" will be based off CON rolls for exceeding safe ascent rates. Skill roll fumbles will typically be reserved for equipment failures, or more likely the failure of the character to correctly use equipment. For a sci-fi hard suit you have to consider that the interior pressure would very likely be kept at surface pressure levels, which would negate the need for ascent rate restrictions or risk of the bends. Of course, if there is a breach for some reason then it is squishy time and no skill roll is going to help. As your suits are powered, maybe the base DEX penalty should be a little lower, say -5/-10, but greatly increased for tasks involving "fine manual dexterity", or increase the Difficulty of the roll. Breathing medium and depth of dive are another factor. Wrong mix, or equipment, at the the wrong depth and serious problems result. Probably be easiest if this aspect has been dealt with in your setting. I am still a long ways from having rules for this yet. hope that helps

Good luck to you. I tried something similar a few years ago and had the kids going for a couple of years until video games sucked away their imagination and attention span. Of course, I rally cannot talk since I will shortly be surrendering my soul to Mass Effect 2.

How about a group that is out to turn all planets into a representation of their home world, earth or otherwise, by introducing flora and fauna, or screwing with the weather. Nothing like having the players hired to run a quarantine and smuggle 10,000 head of cattle onto a planet or hunt down someone who is covertly dispersing genetically engineered wheat seeds and ruining all the native crops.