T2000 Hexcrawl Campaign

Although most of my gaming time recently has been spent on GM'ing Shadowrun, I have found a bit of time for some Twilight 2000 gaming too. Once I got the procedures more sorted out, it became apparent that the setting and mechanics really lend themselves to hex-crawling.

 

I started the game using the more exciting beginning suggested in T2000 1e, where the characters start off just after the destruction of US 5 Division around Kalisz, rather than the 2e alternative which suggests that the characters start a few weeks later, having successfully hidden up until the action dissipated. I think the danger and excitement of the first is much superior.

In any case, the group consists of:

Jay (an English infantryman)

Barbara (a Polish medic)

Jose (an Hispanic American mechanic)

Karl-Friedrich (a German panzer crewman)

Elizabeth (a US Engineer officer)

The group begins with a 3/4t truck and a 2&1/2t truck.

Moving South from Kalisz, the group encounter 5 refugees. The encounter is pretty hostile (the refugee leader is both brutal and ruthless) but violence is avoided.  The party decide to move on quickly, feeling fairly sure that the refugees will inform local Soviet forces about them.

 

In the woods between Kalisz and Wielun,  the group finds an abandoned BMP-1. Although hardly in pristine condition, with some good work, Jose gets it up and running. 

Later the group find a derelict convoy of a UAZ-469, a 5t truck and a 3/4t truck outside some woods north of Prazka. Jose manages to get the UAZ-469 running, whilst stripping the trucks for parts. Since they have no need for a BMP-1 gunner at this point (no ammunition), then the group can handle driving the four vehicles.

 

North of Krzepice, the group encounters a couple of stragglers. Although Polish, the pair are happy to exchange news and cigarettes through Barbara. Their story is that they have nothing left to be loyal too - they are headed towards Krakow to seek their fortunes.

The rest of the day and the following day is spent on rest, maintenance and foraging/alcohol production. Whilst out doing the latter, the group finds another derelict convoy: 3 trucks and a UAZ-469 in various states of disrepair; they do contain some useful 73mm and 9mm ammunition though. They are all stripped for parts.

Shortly after, a Marauder group of 9 is encountered. Happily the leader has no real interest in fighting another group in a similar position (especially as the PCs got the drop on him) so is happy to talk. They apparently deserted after their senior officer started ordering his troops to carry out massacres in a seemingly random fashion.  Things end happily when Jose suggests that he could fix up one of the abandoned trucks in exchange for an AT-3 Sagger possessed by the marauders. This is agreed, and the exchange is made.

In the evening, the group gets going again, and finds a Soviet repair yard poorly concealed NE of Krzepice.  A quick attack with the BMP quickly kills one of the Soviets and wounds another 3, including the commander: the remaining 6 run off. There are two vehicles, a BRDM-4 and a BTR-80 but wasting no time, the group simply takes some machinegun ammunition and spare parts and quickly heads off to find somewhere secure to camp. They take the wounded prisoners and treat them.

During the night, the group spots a Soviet field hospital (horse-drawn) about 2km away, just setting up.  At dawn, the group approach. Although initially a bit difficult, the group trades the 3/4t truck for some medical supplies and hands over the wounded prisoners - except one, Yevhen, who decides to stay with the group. It turns out he is Ukrainian and claims just to want to get home and thinks he has a better chance this way. 

Trusting that the medical staff and prisoners will keep their word not to inform on them, the group is a bit perturbed to find a couple of trucks, one towing a Rapira anti-tank gun heading their way soon after. The group evades them into the woods; and since the Soviets weren't keeping a great lookout, they concluded it was merely chance.

The remainder of the day is given over to resting, foraging and producing alcohol. Jay manages to kill a wild boar for dinner!

The next day (day 4), just after dawn, the group encounters quite a large group of refugees (30) on the road SW of Krzepice. It turns out that they are looking for a promising place to start a new village and rebuild their lives. the group gifts them some medical supplies.

 

In the mid-morning, the group accidentally blunder into a Soviet supply dump, a bit too well concealed in a patch of woods West of Czestochowa.  There are 6 guards, all armed with AKMs. Both sides are surprised, but the PCs recover first: Jay shoots the leader, and the second round goes right through his forehead.  A gun battle commences but with the support of the BMP, the result isn't in doubt and after one more Soviet guards is killed and another is wounded, the remainder surrender - after patching up the wounded guard, the group let them go with their weapons and food.  The supply dump is full of ammunition and the group take their fill of Soviet ammunition types. The group then put a few kilometres of distance between them and the site, in case the guards are able to find reinforcements quickly.

Game Notes: The group has generally had the run of the green so far; most of the encounters haven't been too dangerous and they have generally had the option about whether to initiate or avoid combat. The only unavoidable instances of the latter have been when they have almost literally driven into concealed supply dumps! The processes have gone pretty smoothly although there are a couple of areas I have needed to add stuff, clarify struff or tighten up some stuff. 

This is quite a 'procedural' form of hex-crawl. What I need to do next is to stock this portion of the map with some additional, slightly richer possible encounters. There is some useful information in the sourcebooks and also in 1e for this. One weakness in T2000 considered as a campaign is that the published scenarios seem to push for the group to go towards Krakow then Warsaw first, there is actually very little reason to do that. Given the stated goals - for American and Western European characters to get home, for instance - there doesn't seem to be any overwhelming reason to do so.  One possibility might be for the scenario hook into the 'Free City of Krakow' to be presented quite early on during the characters' escape from Kalisz.

That said, the procedural generation of encounters and situations has been quite fun so far. Some of the sub-systems are a bit calculation-heavy but nothing too effortful, as long as you are clear about the structure you are trying to follow.

Firing Fully Automatic: when should it be done?

Chris Turner, British paratrooper, is at the corner of a solid stone farmhouse. Three Polish scouts are approaching, unawares.  Chris opens fire, fully-automatic, at about 30m distance…

 I am quite interested in when it is optimal for characters in 'modern'-themed role-playing games to  use automatic fire from assault rifles and submachineguns. My impression was that in some games it is pretty much always pointless, and in others nearly always optimal.  My initial survey somewhat confirms this...

In Twilight 2000 2.2, Chris has a Small Arms Asset of 16 (Strength 8 + Small Arms (Rifle) 8).  He is carrying an M16A2, with the following stat-line.

Weapon	M16A2				Recoil		Rng
ROF	Damage	Pen	Blk	Mag	SS	Brst
3	3	1-Nil	5	20/30	3	5	55

Chris can fire up to 5 bursts per round, each of 3 bullets (the weapon’s ROF). He fires a fully automatic burst at each Polish scout.  The range is short (under the printed range).

Each round counts as an ‘Impossible’ shot, i.e. resolved at ¼ of the asset, 4.

No rounds are lost from each burst due to range.  Total recoil is 15-8 for a total of 7, however, which is more than the number of shots in the burst. Therefore the fire is wasted!

However, if Chris fires two bursts, the total recoil is 2; these 2 shots are taken from each burst, thus Chris only rolls for one hit with each.  He is better off staying with single-shot.

But if Chris fires only a single burst, then he will get to fire all three shots, even if he only hits on a 4 or less.  If he had fired three single shots, he would hit on a 15 or less with each.

However, supposing he is with Jason, a driver who has an asset of 12, but greater Strength (10).  If Jason fires two bursts, he would get to roll six dice.  He would need a 3 or less to hit on each of them.

Usually single-shot fire is much better than automatic fire in Twilight 2000; this is particularly true for ROF 3 weapons. But imagine Doug is a British soldier, who has Strength 12 and an overall asset of 16.  He could fire two bursts of 5 rounds, for 10 rolls needing a 4 (i.e. a 20% chance) or more to hit.  He could still fire 4 rounds single-shot, but each hitting on a 16 or less (i.e. 80% chance).  Doug is still more likely to hit with the single-shots. This equation only changes a little at longer ranges: John’s hit chances will go down, but the number of effective bullets from the bursts goes down too. 

The only really useful thing is that the bullets that don’t hit the target might hit anyone else who moves in the vicinity, so it at least has some kind of potential suppressive effect.

 

 In Twilight 2000 1e, things work in a very different way.  Essentially every 'shot' of ROF represents 3 rounds fired for most weapons - you can work out exactly how many by the number they have divided the number of bullets in a magazine by.  Our M16 has a magazine of 10 rather than 30, so each shot represents 3 rounds fired.  The chances of hitting at 30m are 48% for each of the four shots, so not too awful for Chris in these rules. Incidentally, if I recall the rules correctly, if Chris spends a turn aiming, his first shot is fired at a 96% chance of hitting.

If the same situation took place in Shadowrun1e, imagine Chris has a Firearms skill of 6.  He is armed with an FN-HAR assault rifle; this has a 20-round magazine and a Damage code of 5M3; and it also comes with integral laser sight and gas-vent recoil compensator (2).  30m counts as medium range in Shadowrun 1e for an assault rifle, so the base target number is 5.

On fully automatic fire in Shadowrun, the number of bullets fired can be up to firearms skill +1, so in this case 7.  However, the number of shots is applied as modifier to the required target number: in this case it would move it up to 12. 2 points of this can be offset by the stabilizers on the FN-HAR, leaving the final target number as 10.  Chris rolls 6 dice for each round (i.e. 7 times) requiring a 6, then a 4 or more on the additional die rolled for throwing a 6 (i.e. a 1-in-12 chance).  It would be much more effective for Chris to limit himself to two shots, where he has 6 dice and only needs to score a single 5 or 6 to achieve a hit. And he has a reasonable chance of getting the 3 hits he needs to shift the damage from ‘Medium’ to ‘Serious’.

If the FN-HAR is the ‘smart-gun’ version, then bursts are much more worth it: one could try 4 shots and there is a quite decent chance of taking down an unarmoured target.

The damage code of 5M3 indicates the ‘Power level’, the ‘Wound Category’ and the ‘Staging Number’.  The ‘Power level’ is the Target number for anyone hit by the fire to try and reduce the damage of the attack; the ‘Wound Category’ is the base level of damage the weapon does; and the ‘Staging Number’ is the number of additional successes either the attacker or the defender need to change the ‘Wound Category’ up or down.  Interestingly, Shadowrun rules that the ‘Power level’ increases if a weapon uses automatic fire – but since the bullets are supposed to be rolled for separately, it is difficult to see why this is the case.  To make sense of this, I would suggest that each burst is considered to consist of 3-, 4- or 5- individual bullets.

 

 RECON has a more idiosyncratic system although it does have its points. All weapons of the same type have the same rate of fire; this rate of fire that you roll for is explicitly NOT the same as the number of bullets fired. So all submachineguns can fire 5 ‘shots’ on full automatic; the only modifier is a further -10 to all hit probabilities (which are given in percentages). The RECON 2e rules (i.e. the ones published by Palladium) use a ‘situational’ rather than ‘simulationist’ system, whereby the main modifiers are the combat situation: attackers in  an ambush are likely to roll at nearly their base skill level, those being ambushed fire with big penalties.

So, to go back to our example, Chris has a base skill of 80% with assault rifles. He can fire 5 times on full-automatic.  He can split his fire between the three Polish scouts. Because he is ambushing them, he will roll twice at the first two and once at the third with a 70% chance of hitting.  Ammunition is dealt with in a somewhat ‘quantum’ fashion: everyone has ammunition until they haven’t, the relevant factor being the character’s Alertness rating – more Alert characters pay more attention to their ammo expenditure, less Alert characters blaze merrily away.  This doesn’t affect their likelihood of hitting, just how many stoppages, whether through magazine changes or jams, they have. There is actually quite a lot to be said for this approach, as long as ammunition shortage isn’t a significant tactical factor.  It might be taken into account by demanding a ‘weapons check’ (i.e. a stoppage check) after every occasion on which a character fires fully automatic, but not when they fire on semi-automatic.

Thus there is a fair amount of disagreement about how accurate or not automatic fire is and thus how and when it is most worth using. In very broad terms, the answer seems to be  - always in T2000 1e, very rarely in T2000 v2.2 except when doing a form of area denial or at certain ranges when spray'n'pray works a little better, nearly always in Recon, and a little bit in Shadowrun 1e i.e. to the extent that the weapon is rigged out to avoid recoil, although these rules overall don't seem to make that much sense in any case. 

Twilight 2000 v2.2 - Playing the Game - Clean Procedures & Structures

I have been playing some more Twilight 2000 2nd edition recently and it has been quite fun. The setting has always been reasonably compelling in terms of its premise, and the detail around that premise has been satisfactory enough to get a game out of it.  Mixing military, survival and exploration themes in a plausible way in a modern setting isn't necessarily so easy, but the game gives it a good go.

 

However, elements of the execution of this in practice are not good. I have some issues with character generation, equipment and overall calibration which I will write about another time, but here I want to concentrate much more on how the game is actually played.  I have tried to codify it so it has a more logical flow - please have a look at this page for details.

Fundamentally, Twilight 2000 v2 resembles a hex crawl game.  Unlike a very traditional hex-crawl, the players and characters know the approximate shape of the world and the local environs but not the exact shape or contents. I think there is a hidden premise in the game - there certainly is when I play it - that the Twilight 2000 world both is, and is not, the world of real life. The big cities, even small towns are there, but it doesn't have fidelity down to area/village/street level, so players and GMs aren't expected to research every area in which the world takes place, hence farms and villages can be generated as random encounters. Of course, there is nothing stopping you from trying to take the level of granularity down further especially in the age of Google Maps, but I don't think the expectation in the rules is that you will do that. The level of expectation of fidelity probably - definitely guessing here, based on the scale of the supporting materials - got lower between Twilight 2000 1st edition and 2nd edition, even.

Almost all of the mechanics one would need for a hex crawl are in there: movement rates & quite detailed encounter tables, rules for survival (food, fuel, fatigue, sickness) etc. The most recent version of the game (edition 4, which I have not played yet), because it is explicitly designed as a hex-crawl, has a free hex map of Poland (and Sweden) to download. So 4e recognized the logic of where this game needed to go and went there, which is possibly a vote of confidence in the idea that the same design logic can be applied to earlier versions.

However, although almost all of the individual mechanics are there, the structure is emphatically not. And I am not on about the explicit lack of 2e hex maps or anything as relatively trivially as that. No, I mean the way the rules are organized within the rulebook makes using it generally difficult. They aren't optimized for play; it would be some excuse if they were optimized for learning but they aren't really done that way either, although the organization of the book makes a little bit of sense in terms of the latter. And I think this lack of structure really diminished the amount of times I played it when it was first out: it felt like, it was, quite hard work to get a game out of it compared to games where it was all more obvious what one should do.  When you add in to that the individual complexity of certain mechanics (explosive weapons for instance) then the game just becomes too much, even though most of the individual rules are quite well done and thought out.

Twilight 2000 - Second Edition

Twilight 2000 is set in an alternate past (alternate future when it was written!) in which World War 3 has broken out and led to widespread devastation and the breakdown of governmental control (in the main).  The players are typically a group of soldiers stuck in Poland when their division is overrun, who now face the challenges of survival and (maybe) getting back home, which may well be equally devastated but hey, home is home...

Obviously whether a setting appeals for gaming is a matter of taste but it appealed to me a lot as a teenager and still does to a certain extent.  On a functional level, the setting is an answer to the question "how can we have a role-playing game that offers a lot of freedom of action to players without playing in a strict military heirarchy but which uses modern weapons and equipment?" and it broadly succeeds in that.

The general action mechanic is very simple.  A character rolls a d20 and tries to get underneath the sum of the characters "skill" in a given task and a supporting "attribute" (Strength, Agility, Intelligence etc. the standard "D&D" set of six), which might be increased or reduced depending upon the difficulty of the task.  Sometimes only the attribute is tested and is modified in a slightly different way to make sure that attribute tests aren't much harder than skill+attribute tests. This is dependent upon the opinion of the GM, although certain tasks are given example difficulties for guidance.  A fair amount of attention is given to travelling and foraging and sleep and so on, as well as avoiding disease, all of which seems sensible and crucially, well-calibrated.

I found the combat system to work okay and moves reasonably rapidly with a little practice, a lot of dice handly (buckets of d20s anyone?) and a system of having all the important information to hand.  The drag on the system is actually one of making sure all the necessary information is to hand in an easy-to-follow fashion rather than the steps being difficult.  It works basically as: roll-to-hit, roll for hit location, check for armour penetration, roll for damage.  It is more complicated than the average wargame, but not too bad for a role-playing game.  There is some chrome but less than in Advanced Squad Leader, say. Small arms fire is not typically very deadly but can be damaging enough (rather than the "padded sumo" of the Shadowrun First Edition combat I looked at previously) and crucially, seems to scale between knife fights and firing 120mm smoothbores at each other reasonably well. There is plenty of detail in the equipment, a lot of it reasonably spurious as far as I can see, but that isn't untypical for a role-playing game, although it does pad out the book quite a lot.   

There are a couple of things about this ruleset which are fairly woeful however.  Character generation is pretty fraught because of the way that the skill and experience system works.  There are rules for both random generation and points allocation, the first being that attributes are generated by 2d6-2, the second being to split 32 points between the six attributes as the player sees fit.  Since performance is measured by attribute + skill, attributes are incredibly, laughably more important than skills.  Most of the combat skills rely on Strength as a supporting attribute, so having a high Strength is far more crucial than any rating in individual skills so min-maxing a character is very, very important, particularly since the standard NPCs are quite strong (Veteran NPCs will have combined skill + attribute of 13 with their primary weapon, Experied NPCs will have 11).  If you play with the random generation, a player needs to understand that a low roll in a given area means that the character will never be good in that area.  This is particularly true since skills are gained linearly in character generation but have exponential costs in game play i.e. if you have 4 skill points at a point in character generation, you can put them all into "Mechanic" and have a skill level of 4 but it will take 5 experience points to raise it to 5 during gameplay (on the other hand, the game does at least have rules for develoment by training as well as experience for a change). A "skill level" doesn't in any way mean how skillful a character is in a certain area: what it means is how much better a character is in a given area in one skill than another.  So "Mechanic" and "Small Arms (Rifle)" which both use Strength as a governing attribute, are both improved by increases to Strength as an attribute but only individually when improved as skills.

There are no differences between male and female characters statistically in the rules except for in physical build, which is of no rules importance.  In some ways I find this surprising, although given the vital importance of Strength in these rules, I can perhaps see why.  The next iteration of these rules (Twilight 2013) was more amusing: in that there are restrictions as to which roles female characters can play (basically, no close combat roles) but there is no statistical reason for this.  Female characters are more effective though, since they have certain higher abilities in resisting disease etc. but are otherwise exactly as physically capable as male characters.

There are quite a large number of different careers to go into to develop one's character.  Basically characters choose a form of education or a job or a particular branch in the military for four year periods, in which they gain a certain number of skills and may be promoted too.  Most of these careers have some kind of prerequisites in terms of attributes to permit entry.  After each 4-year period, the character rolls to see if war breaks out.  If it does, civilian characters are conscripted and serve a term in the military before the start fo the game. As well as different skills, certain careers give bonuses to a character's "initiative" (basically how fast characters react in combat), so it can sometimes be an advantage to change into a more combat-orientated military speciality for this last phase (military characters are allowed to move between branches).  The game is broadly geared to playing characters from the United States, although most nationalities in NATO and the Warsaw Pact are supported (or restricted) to a playable degree in terms of roles and equipment and so on.

There are some very useful sample NPCs given, a random NPC motivation system (based on a deck of cards, very good) and some sample encounters and a long list description of the military units and their current state in Eastern Europe.  There are also broader summaries of how the war came about, what happened and the current state of the world (so there is a paragraph or two on how Australia is doing, if you wanted to set your game there, for example).  For me, stuff like this isn't really helpful since it isn't detailed enough to use but does constrain the setting.  What do I care what state some random Soviet division is in?   The whole game implies quite a motivated GM and group as far as I can see, since guidance as to how it is all going to fit together in game terms is insufficient.  In the PC-version of the game, the team was turned into a kind of "A-Team" outfit solving problems in the Krakow area to try and get round this problem.  The game does discuss the issue in the abstract, but lacks detail in actually solving it.  There were a reasonable number of modules which were released to support the game which offer more detail in this regard.

Although I really want to love this game, I don't think I can because I think the character generation system is so poor, in which randomly generated characters are so ineffective compared to NPCs and points allocation characters are strongly enouraged to be weird two-dimensional things each being one-part combat monster, one-part specialist, although I can see that there are gaming groups that might enjoy the challenge either way.  It is hard to revise this kind of system as well because of the way that skills and attributes are integrated although with enough work it might be done (I liked the way that this was done in the Shadowrun PC games by making specific skills unlock useful abilities in the way that attributes didn't, although because it was based on a (roughly!) 1-6 scale rather than a 1-10, the maths was different.  If I did revisit it properly, I think I might make changes along the following lines:

Reduce the importance of Strength as an attribute by making Agility support firing weapons and Intelligence more important in fixing stuff.
Cap or ratio down Strength for female characters
Consider making Attributes a cap for skills rather than a bonus
Increase the number of Skills gained to increase their importance relative to Attributes, and/or allow linear skill development from experience and instruction during play.
Reduce some of the differences between largely identical weapons (for example, no-one in their right mind would ever carry an FN-FAL or FN-FNC since the G3 and M16A2 are simply the same but better). 

Sample Combat:

The PCs are a group of Brit soldiers that have picked up some useful help in the form of Sam, a USMC sniper.  They start in the middle of the area, on the outskirts of a devastated town somewhere in Poland, exploring the rubble and abandoned buildings for anything of value.  The black buildings represent houses that are more or less intact and have local civilians in and around them.

The conceit of this encounter is that the PCs are going to unwittingly find themselves in the interface between the turf of two rival gangs who are trying to secure this area for themselves.  Each group has sent a small scouting party as an advance guard to recce the area, but will each encounter the PCs first.  I draw motivation card for the leader for each group, since that might help me determine their actions: one leaders has 3-Spades (somewhat ambitious) the other 6-Hearts (moderately sociable).

So there are a group of 6 PCs around the area of the warehouses and the rubble to the centre right of the map.  5 of them are rummaging, whilst Sam is on sentry.  Sam spots the advance of the two recce parties, each consisting of 3 people.  One group is spotted at the the bottom right of the abandoned warehouse (bottom-left) the other skirting through the rubble (top-left).  Both groups are approximately 110m away from Sam.

Sam communicates quickly to the remainder of the group.  4 of the others adopt defensive positions - two with Sam in the rubble, two move into the abandoned warehouses adjacent., whilst the remaining PC (Veronique)is in the centre of the rubble, well-hidden and merely observing.  Since both groups were spotted by the PCs first, each group tests to see if they can see any of the PCs.  The first (top) group noticed some of the movement of the PCs getting into cover in the rubble, the second group didn't.

Ordinarily I might try and hide / bluff my way out of this, but for the purposes of this game, the PCs simply ambush the remaining scouting group.  There are three PCs facing South (Sam, Kate & Jamie), with Veronique staying hidden.  Doug and Mike are in the warehouses and thus can't see this group.

When the recce group is 40m away, the group open up.  Kate has the highest initiative and fires first.  Armed with an L85, she fires four single shots, the first "Aimed" and the remainder "Quick".  At this range, an Aimed shot is an average task, so the "asset" (i.e. skill + attribute) is doubled.  Kate's asset is 19, so this is doubled to 38.  She rolls a d20, only a 20 misses.  7, a hit.  Rolls hit location, left leg.  Damage is 3d6, rolls 17.  Because this is an "Outstanding Success", the damage is doubled to 34.  This is a serious wound (the NPC has 24 hit points in this location).  Next shot is Difficult, rolls 10 which  is under the target of 19, rolls 5 for hit location (abdomen), 10 damage inflicted.  Kate's third hit strikes the right arm, causing 15 damage and the fourth hit hits the right leg for 28 damage.  So she has hit with her four shots and caused 2 serious wounds, one slight wound and one scratch.

Sam shoots next.  He is using an M21 and fires three shots, with the same number as Kate used.  His first shot hits the target in the chest.  A chest shot qualifies for a possible "quick kill", which happens if a d20 roll is equal to or less than the damage value of the shot.  Sam rolls a 4 which is equal to the M21's damage value, so the target drops dead (Kate, with her 5.56mm assault rifle, would not have achieved the kill on the same result).  With Sam's next shot, he switches fire to the third group member, a Difficult task.  A hit, again in the chest.  No quick kill, it does 15 damage, a scratch.  Last shot, hits again, right arm, 14 damage, a slight wound.

In a different situation, the NPC group would act next since they have the same initiative as Jamie (3) but less bulky weapons which entitle them to move first.  However, they are both surprised and the group leader is out of this combat, cannot move and is in effect in permanent panic.  So Jamie opens up with the GPMG...

From a bipod, each burst has a recoil value of 4.  With the 3 bursts, the total recoil is 12, which Jamie can manage (he has Strength 12, the game maximum).  Jamie has an "Asset" value of 19 (Strength 12 + Autogun skill of 7 - are you spotting a pattern here...?).  This is divided by 4 and rounded down for "Impossible" tasks like firing on fully automatic...but you still roll a dice for each round.  So I roll 10d20 looking for scores of 4 or less...and get 1 hit.  13 damage to the left arm, causes another slight wounds.  Next burst again acheives a single hit. 16 damage to the right leg, a slight wound.  Last burst also achieves one hit, goes into the abdomen, 9 damage, a scratch only.  So 30 rounds fired, 3 hits achieved, rather less than Kate managed with her SA80...

With two of the recce group out of the fight (one dead, one badly hurt) and a third walking wounded, Veronique calls out on the two injured Poles to surrender (happily she speaks good Polish (Asset: 14 from CHA 10 + Skill 4; there are native speakers less good than that...).  Given the tactical situation, this feels like a Difficult task only against Persuasion.  Veronique rolls against her asset of 19 (Charisma 10 + Persuasion 9) and gets 8, an outstanding success.  Breaking into narrative time, Veronique, Kate and Jamie go forward, disarm the Polish group leader and pull them into cover.  Sam covers the operations, whilst Doug and Mike remain hidden in their positions covering the Northern approaches (the other gang's recce team has withdrawn, except for a single man left to observe; fairly miraculously, despite his woeful intelligence and observation skills, Doug has spotted the man (rolling '1' for automatic success) but has been content merely to keep him in his sights rather than begin a second engagement).

Veronique interrogates the captured gang members whilst Kate administers first aid, both being outstandingly successful (rolls of 4 and 7 against assets of 19 in interrogation and medical).  Veronique obtains the full story and arranges a deal with the captured recce group leader.  Explaining how they have no interest in getting involved in the gang fight, they will be traded for safe passage.  Since the guy is captured, realizes that they are outgunned by the PCs and have nothing to gain, the plan is agreed.  Tentative handshakes are exchanged and the PCs bug out south, hearing the report of pistol and rifle fire as the groups resume their battle...

Hopefully that gives a little flavour of what the rules and game is all about.

The Player Characters:
(I include a summary of the player characters for reference.  Or even use!  I haven't bothered to include all their gear and contacts and son on...)

Sam, American, USMC Sniper, Master Sergeant

ATTRIBUTES: STR: 12 AGI: 1 CON: 10 INT: 10 EDU :1 CHA :1 IN :4

SKILLS : English 10, Spanish 10, Unarmed Martial Arts 5, Survival 3, Tracking 3, Farming 2, Armed Martial Arts 0, Autogun 0, Grenade Launcher 0, Ground Vehicle (Wheeled) 1, Small Arms 7, Swimming 1, Tac Missile 0, Thrown Weapon 7, Observation 9, Stealth 2, Leadership 1, Instruction 1, Persuasion 1, Navigation 1

GEAR: M21, M9, Kevlar Helmet, Kevlar Vest

Mike, English, Royal Marine Commando, Sergeant

ATTRIBUTES: STR: 12 AGI:10 CON:9 INT:1 EDU :1 CHA :1 IN :5

SKILLS : English 10, Ground Vehicle (Wheeled) 9, Unarmed Martial Arts 7, Small Watercraft 2, Riding 2, Armed Martial Arts 0, Autogun 0, Grenade Launcher 5, Small Arms 7, Swimming 1, Tac Missile 0, Thrown Weapon 1, Leadership 1, Instruction 1, Persuasion 1,

GEAR: L85 w/GL, Browning, Kevlar Helmet, Kevlar Vest

Doug, Scottish SBS Officer, Captain

ATTRIBUTES: STR: 12 AGI:1 CON:10 INT:1 EDU :9 CHA :1 IN :6

SKILLS : English 10, Small Watercraft 8, Unarmed Martial Arts 4, Riding 2, Computer 5, Armed Martial Arts 0, Autogun 0, Grenade Launcher 0, Small Arms 7, Swimming 2, Ground Vehicle (Wheeled) 1, Tac Missile 0, Thrown Weapon 1, Combat Engineer 9, Leadership 2, Navigation 1, Scuba 1

GEAR: LSW, Kevlar Helmet, Kevlar Vest

Kate, English Officer (Airborne), Major

ATTRIBUTES: STR:12 AGI:1 CON:9 INT:1 EDU :12 CHA :1 IN :6

SKILLS : English 10, Unarmed Martial Arts 4, Computer 6, Swimming 3, Riding 5, Biology 4, Chemistry 4, Geology 1, Metallurgy 1, Meteorology 1, Construction 4, Excavation 1, Medical (Trauma Aid) 8, Observation 1, Small Arms 7, Ground Vehicle (Wheeled) 1, Thrown Weapon 1, Autogun 0, Grenade Launcher 0, Leadership 2, Navigation 1, Parachute 2, Tac Missile 2

GEAR: L85, Browning, Kevlar Helmet, Kevlar Vest

Veronique, English Military Intelligence Officer, Major

ATTRIBUTES: STR:1 AGI:1 CON:5 INT:7 EDU :6 CHA :10 IN :1

SKILLS : English 10, Language 8 (Russian), Language 4 (Polish), Language 4 (German), Survival 2, Instruction 3, Persuasion 9, Small Arms 2, Unarmed Martial Arts 2, Swimming 1, Ground Vehicle (Wheeled) 1, Thrown Weapon 1, Autogun 0, Grenade Launcher 0, Leadership 3, Disguise 1, Interrogation 9

GEAR : Browning, Kevlar Helmet, Kevlar Vest

Jamie, English Tank Crewman, WO2

ATTRIBUTES : STR:12 AGI:1 CON:12 INT:8 EDU:1 CHA:1 IN :3

SKILLS : English 10, Unarmed Martial Arts 4, Survival 2, Farming 2, Tracking 2, Small Arms 2, Swimming 1, Ground Vehicle (Wheeled) 1, Ground Vehicle (Tracked) 2, Thrown Weapon 1, Autogun 7, Grenade Launcher 0, Heavy Gun 7, Leadership 1, Persuasion 1, Instruction 1, Mechanic 7

GEAR: GPMG, Browning, Kevlar Helmet, Kevlar Vest