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RUBBLE & RUIN - A World Gone Mad with Killing


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  • 2 weeks later...

after reading the book multiple times now (I printed it out, remember what I did say about that ;) ), I know what you mean with "I did not get the organization perfect". ;) Overall it is good and easy to read, but I find the background information a bit scattered in the book.

I think it would have made it easier to put all the History, background and example city close together. The Risk table and "how to build a weapon" could have fit into the Equipment section (End Matter) together with the Armour part. Risk should have been explained together with armour and Trading rules in a Spot rules section and a following short example for Risk would have been nice.

But that's all about it. Overall not a big deal, but sometimes a bit time consuming to find the right page. ;)

Maybe that's in for the second printing of the book ... :D

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  • 1 month later...
  • 1 month later...

This came up on another thread, but I put it here also -- for future reference.

Hi guys, can I post here a question about a houserules find at pag. 115 and 45 of Rubble & Ruins manual? I've undestand the rule of "AV/Risk" about the armors: how does it function?

Thanks

Hello Scarecrow,

Below is a reposting from the Rubble and Ruin thread under BRP Publications. I am going to double post your question to that thread, and I have added a few "design notes" to see if that helps clarify what I was trying to do in R&R.

R&R uses three kinds of armor; layering, non-layering and ballistic. Layering and non-layering refer to BRP p.261 and the special rule of layering armor. Basically (as I read it) you can have one layer of soft (or layering) armor and one of non-layering. As an aside, I have always allowed two layering armors if anyone wanted to that.

Ballistic armor comes from R&R p.47. Basically melee armor provides negligible protection against modern firearms – true fact, try it someday – instead to stop bullets you need ballistic armor. Ballistic armor has the property that it either effectively stops a bullet, or it provides almost no protection. That is Type I ballistic armor will stop a .22 round but provides almost no reduction in penetration to a rifle bullet (this is measured using a ballistic gel and measuring how deep a given round will penetrate – then you put the armor over the gel and fire again). To simulate this in R&R ballistic armor will either remove all of the risk of a bullet or failing that, it will only reduce the risk by one point.

[edited on report] So for example “layering” cybernetic armor (cyber armor 2/6) under, say, synthaweave (5/0 AV) will protect for 7 (2+5) points of melee damage and 6 (6+0) ballistic.

So Rich (I hear you cry) why in the world did you do this?

R&R presents a mid- to high-crunch interpretation of modern firearms. It is trying to capture the feel of movies where the hero fears for his/her life whenever someone points a gun at them. Since this is a reasonable response in the real world, what I did was to try and develop a system that modeled many details of firearm combat, while at the same time keeping it simple enough that it plays quickly*. What you get if you use all the R&R mechanics is the nicely balanced damage by hit location system of “old school” Runequest for melee combat and a separate system with only modest bookkeeping overhead for firearms.

I do want to add that I am not claiming this is the best way to run all games in the world and everyone should make the distinction between melee and firearms. Instead, I view game mechanics as taking the same role as cinematography -- mechanics draw the audience (in this case the players) attention to certain details of the world, while ignoring others. In a R&R story, the lethality of firearms plays a critical role in defining the “feel” of the world -- in other stories it will not be so important and other rules can be used.

Does this help any? If not, please feel free to ask additional questions, and I will try my best.

Thanks for your interest,

Rich

* At this point I should confess that my “typical” gaming group has players evenly split between PhD scientists and undergraduate engineering students (with the occasional bachelor’s level computer scientist through in for variety) -- YMMV with how quickly the system plays, but it works great in my hands.

--------------

Thanks for you answer, Rleduc :)

But, I don't understand how you calculat, for example, the values 5/0 AV of synthaweave trasforming them in 2+5 points of melee damage. And, also, what is the A/V Risk of the armor? How shall I read this value when I study an armor on R&R?

There are two issues; layering and Ballistic protection. In the example a character is layering two different armors -- they have some cyberware armor and over it they are wearing synthaweave. As per the page cited in BRP you can only add the protection together if one of the armors are classified as "layering" and since, in this case, one is, then the melee protection is 2 from the cyberware and 5 from the synthaweave to a total of 7. But, if someone shot this character those 7 armor points will not help them; bullets ignore normal armor. Instead the characters ballistic protection is 6 from the cyberware (ballistic AV is always the second number) plus 0 from the synthaweave to a total of 6.

Now, if the character is shot with a Risk 6 or less weapon it will be fully absorbed by the armor. Ignore the attack. If the attack is 7+ Risk then all the armor does is reduce the Risk by 1: 7-1=6, 12-1=11 and so on. In effect the armor takes about one point of damage off the attack -- in most cases the Risk value is the top of a uniform distribution between 1 and the value (except that is it tweaked for easy dice rolling).

Does this help?

Rich

Edited by rleduc
Added more "for the record"
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  • 1 month later...

I am still confused by the psionics rules.

You have POW/2 points to spend on psionics (assuming you go this route)

That is about as much as I clearly understand.

The example on page 35 says that Robert Longeye has PSI[ESP] 15. How did he get a rating of 15, considering that POW/2 will give you 10 at most?

If you look at the description of ESP it says ESP Strength is 1 per +5 PSI [ESP]. Does that mean that Robert Longeye has a 75 in Clairvoyance?

Which is bought by using your skill points?

And if this is the case, what do you use the POW/2 points for?

The one bullet point on page 36 says "Characters may only buy a power if they have first bought at least one level of the governing strength". Is this what you use the POW/2 points for? What is the advantage of buying a second 'level'?

As you can see from my questions I am totally confused by the psionics. Maybe someone who understands them could just do an example for me.

Thanks

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Hello Redstone,

Each PSI discipline has its own strength stat that is used very similarly to POW – you spend points to fuel your psionic effects, and you can keep doing things until you run out of the appropriate points.

You also get POW/2 points to buy your “super powers” as normal (from the big yellow book) and these POW/2 points are what are spent in order to buy both psionic effects (“spells” if you would) and the strength points to fuel them.

Now imagine you have a guy with POW=16 with the “wizard” profession. This character has POW/2 or 16/2=8 points to buy “super powers” – and since he is a wizard we are going to drop them all into nanopsionics. Let’s make this guy an ESPer. First we need some effects. Each effect is a separate skill, but before we can start to buy the skill, we need to have the power – in the game context the power comes from funky tattoos that are embedded with nanites under the characters skin – before the character can learn the skill of how to use these nanites to cause physical effects, he first must have the tattoos – and that costs “super power” points. The Wizard profession lets us count up to four of these powers as professional skills, but there are only three ESP powers – we will take them all. It costs one “super power” point to buy clairvoyance, another for clairaudience and another for sense mind.

Points so far: POW=16 -> 8 “super power” points.

-1 for clairvoyance,

-1 for clairaudience,

-1 for sense mind;

So we now have 8-1-1-1=5 points remaining.

But, we do not have any ESP strength to power the above effects. For each “super power” point we spend on ESP Strength we gain +5 ESP Strength, so for four of our “super power” points we will have an ESP Strength of 4x5=20 (the maximum allowed under normal circumstances).

Let’s do that.

So now our running total is:

POW=16 -> 8 “super power” points.

-1 for clairvoyance,

-1 for clairaudience,

-1 for sense mind,

-4 for ESP Strength = 20.

At this point we have 1 “super power” point left that we could spend on something else, or we could take up to 3 points in Failings and buy another PSI category. Let’s do that.

Three points of Failings are taken giving us +3 “super power” points. Plus we are going to take Kinetics power of Telekinesis. Our new running total is:

8 “super power” points

+3 for Failings

-3 for clairvoyance, clairaudience, and sense mind,

-4 for ESP Strength

-1 for TK;

Leaving three points.

But we do not have any Kinetics Strength to power our TK, so the three remaining points are put into Kinetics Strength at +5 Strength per point or 15 Kinetics Str.

So after spending all of our “super power” points the wizard has:

ESP Strength = 20,

Powers of: clairvoyance, clairaudience, and sense mind

Kinetics Strength=15

Power of: TK

Now clairvoyance, clairaudience, sense mind, and TK are each separate skills that start with a basic of 10%, but all four of them can be counted as professional skills for the wizard, so points from the professional skill point pool can be used to increase them. Let’s say we put +40% in clairvoyance skill bringing it to 50%, and +65 in TK making it 75%. The wizard would have a 50% chance on a given turn of entering a trance and projecting his vision anywhere up to 20 meters away. Each time he does this, it would temporarily cost one of the 20 ESP Strength points per minute the power is maintained – but his maximum range will stay constant at 20 meters no matter how long he keeps the power up. He might use this power to look through a wall, and see into the next room. Because of the cross power with Kinetics, he could also move things in the next room using TK. He has a 75% chance of activating a TK power – once activated the power acts as if the character were standing there with a physical strength of 15/2 or 8, and a physical dexterity of 15/4 or 4. So the effect is very clumsy, and not too strong, but it can none-the-less be useful.

I hope this helps,

Rich

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  • 1 month later...

Hi Rich,

I'm finally giving this book a thorough read (been on my shelf since it first came available, what over a year ago now). I really like the tone of the book - it does a good job of capturing The Road Warrior and even The Road. The gritty tone is exactly what I want from a post-apoc. game. I may have more questions later and I progress through the book, but one question is burning a hole in my brain right now:

How do you pronounce "Spikemo"? :)

"Tell me what you found, not what you lost" Mesopotamian proverb

__________________________________

 

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Hi Rich,

I'm finally giving this book a thorough read (been on my shelf since it first came available, what over a year ago now). I really like the tone of the book - it does a good job of capturing The Road Warrior and even The Road. The gritty tone is exactly what I want from a post-apoc. game. I may have more questions later and I progress through the book, but one question is burning a hole in my brain right now:

How do you pronounce "Spikemo"? :)

For the benefit of others who might read this, Spikemo is a somewhat recurrent example character. He shows up whenever I want to explain something with a concrete example but don’t need to make a big deal of the specific characters. I pronounce the name “spike” “mo”, as in “want me to spike you mo?”

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  • 3 weeks later...

I've finally finished reading Rubble and Ruin.

I really enjoyed it - I think you've captured this particular near future vision really well. Here's a micro-review:

What was well done:

Well, most of it really. For a monograph, the layout, writing, and editing were very good. The illustrations, too (way to go Puck!). I like the added detail in car creation and firearms especially. The adventures looked fun, too.

What needed work:

The only issue I really had was in understanding some of the concepts at first (such as the concept of 'risk'). I thought they could have been better explained, but in particular the tables that went with these explanations needed to be labeled better. I did eventually answer my own questions and figure these things out, but just a few additional words would have helped, I think.

What I wanted more of:

Adventures, I think. When I got to the end of the book, I wished it wasn't over so soon! I would have liked to have seen another one or two adventures - and preferably something with a darker edge to them that evoked the 'world gone mad with killing' monicker. Maybe that's something to think about for a future monograph. :)

"Tell me what you found, not what you lost" Mesopotamian proverb

__________________________________

 

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Thalaba,

Thanks for the review. It has become clear to me since the publication that you are absolutely correct with regards certain of the mechanics sections being unclear. I have tried to clarify things on this thread as best I can -- and if there were ever a reprint I would certainly want to work on those areas. (I wonder if Dustin would let us resubmit an improved manuscript as version 1.1?)

I again want to thank Puck for the cool art work. I think it added a lot to the final manuscript.

Lastly, I am currently play testing a full length R&R adventure (we had a great session last night –- or at least, I enjoyed it). I have not approached Dustin with the idea yet, but once it is complete I want to submit it as a second R&R monograph –- we’ll have to see if they take it.

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Well I had a blast last night and that's not just the beer talking:) It's not often a SIZ 4 rat can give pause to 3 SIZ 20+ bruisers! Wish we'd been able to put a little dent in the chud population, but Scott & Chris' new armor ought to help even up the odds a bit.

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I wonder if Dustin would let us resubmit an improved manuscript as version 1.1?

I was able to submit an update of my monograph which they are now using as their hard copy version. However, for some strange reason that I can't seem to get an answer for, they have not updated the PDF.

Rod

Join my Mythras/RuneQuest 6: Classic Fantasy Yahoo Group at https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/RQCF/info

"D100 - Exactly 5 times better than D20"

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Lastly, I am currently play testing a full length R&R adventure (we had a great session last night –- or at least, I enjoyed it). I have not approached Dustin with the idea yet, but once it is complete I want to submit it as a second R&R monograph –- we’ll have to see if they take it.

I'd get that! I'd ask for a synopsis, but I see you can't hide from your players here...;)

"Tell me what you found, not what you lost" Mesopotamian proverb

__________________________________

 

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The illustrations, too (way to go Puck!).

I again want to thank Puck for the cool art work. I think it added a lot to the final manuscript.

Thank you very much. The pictures were a lot of fun to do. Right now I am trying to do a few picts to help out with Classic Fantasy II.

Rleduc, If you need a few more pictures for the new Rubble and Ruin, let me know as things start getting close. I would love to work on a few more post apocalyptic type pics.

294/420

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  • 1 month later...

I'd get that! I'd ask for a synopsis, but I see you can't hide from your players here...;)

I don't want to spoil anything, but the adventure Rich is working on really is a lot of fun. The basic premise is clever, yet familiar. I can't say anything else. :)

It will be a great adventure for any groups wanting to get started with R&R.

129/420

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  • 1 month later...

Question about Psionics. I noticed under skill descriptions there is Craft/Psionic Tattoos. The skill description says "The art and science of using psionic nanites to give psionic characters new tattoos, allowing a character to gain new powers or increased psionic strength."

Is there anywhere else in the rules that talk about increasing Psionic abilities?

Also, I have a player who is going to try an Uber-rat. Any thoughts about starting age? And do they follow the Age-20 bonus rule for the technology skill?

Edited by Redstone
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Question about Psionics. I noticed under skill descriptions there is Craft/Psionic Tattoos. The skill description says "The art and science of using psionic nanites to give psionic characters new tattoos, allowing a character to gain new powers or increased psionic strength."

Is there anywhere else in the rules that talk about increasing Psionic abilities?

Yes, Page 109 has "Buying Psionics" under Miscellaneous services, and Page 112 has a section on buying nanites.

Also, I have a player who is going to try an Uber-rat. Any thoughts about starting age? And do they follow the Age-20 bonus rule for the technology skill?

I just treat them the same as the other bioengineered races. (So, yes I do use the Age-20 rule for them.) I let one of the current player have a 35+ year old rat with cyberware, and have had no problems.

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