WFRP 1e: Min-Max/Narrow Path Optimization

Recently I was looking at narrow-optimization paths* in WFRP 1e, i.e. if you wanted your character to be very good at one thing, then which career should you choose. Some of them are relatively obvious, some a little less so. Here they are:

 

Weapon Skill: Giant Slayer or Judicial Champion, enter from Pit Fighter, Troll Slayer, Protagonist or Watchman. (Troll Slayer is a no-brainer for a combat-focused Dwarf, I like Protagonist best of the others) (400XP)

 

Ballistic Skill: Targeteer, enter from Bounty Hunter, Gamekeeper or Outlaw (all of these are good; Gamekeeper is strictly the best, since all Gamekeepers get Marksmanship, whereas the other two only might get it, and thus may need to expend another 100XP if they don't) (400XP)

 

Strength: Giant Slayer entered from Pit Fighter; if a non-Dwarf, either Free Lance from Noble or Squire; or Slaver entered from Jailer. If the character gets Very Strong as a starting skill, then Troll Slayer works fine as a Dwarf, and Free Lance is definitely the way to go as anything else. (3-400XP)

 

Toughness: Giant Slayer, again entered from Pit Fighter. If not a Dwarf, Outlaw Chief entered from Pit Fighter. If the character gets Very Resilient as a starting skill, Dwarves can go from Troll Slayer to Giant Slayer, others can go from Bodyguard, Mercenary or Outlaw to Outlaw Chief (3-400XP)

 

Wounds: Giant Slayer, entered from Pit Fighter or Troll Slayer, if a Dwarf; otherwise, Templar via Judicial Champion from Pit Fighter, Protagonist or Watchman; or via Free Lance from Noble or Squire (900-1000XP)

 

Initiative: Highwayman entered from Coachman, Footpad,Outlaw, Outrider, Roadwarden or Toll-Keeper (400XP). I don't think any career grants you the chance of Lightning Reactions, but ideally you would want that as an initial skill too.

 

Attacks: Assassin, entered from Bounty Hunter is the most straightforward way. (400XP), but there are actually lots of other routes for careers which allow taking the free advance in attacks (which Bounty Hunter does not), e.g. Soldier, free advance, 100XP to Bounty Hunter, 100XP to Assassin, 200XP to get Attacks 3 then Attacks 4, so basically: Bodyguard, Marine, Protagonist, Soldier, Watchman (via Bounty Hunter); Noble (via Duellist), Outlaw (via Targeteer). In fact, very strictly speaking, these non-Bounty Hunter routes are better, as you will get the second attack from the beginning.

 

Dexterity: Forger, entered from Scribe OR Thief or Tomb Robber - why the choice? Well, in the main entry, I think that the only way of getting to Forger is from Scribe or Artisan. But the Appendix offers a bunch of different career paths into it, but not including Scribe or Artisan! So, if you go with the logic of the main entries, then Scribe is the way to go; if what is written in the Appendix, Thief or Tombr Robber are better, because you can take the free advance in Dexterity, which Scribe's don't get. (400XP)

 

Leadership: Mercenary Captain, entered from Squire (n.b. the Appendix specifies that a Squire can jump straight to Captain, but this is implied rather than stated in the main text). (400XP)

 

Intelligence: Lawyer, from Exciseman, Scribe or Student. (400XP)

 

Cool: Spy, via Charlatan, which can be entered from Physician's Student, Raconteur or Seer (500XP)

 

Willpower: Witch-hunter via Assassin or Judicial Champion (I have already covered the entries for those; none of the relevant basic careers allow the free advance in WP, I think) (600XP).

 

Fellowship: Demagogue, from Agitator, Entertainer or Raconteur (Raconteur is the best of this bunch) (500XP). 

 

Movement: the Movement system is lame and there is no way to optimize on it really.You can't do much better than be a Thief or, if a Dwarf, a Runner. 

 

So if you played and survived The Oldenhaller Contract and Mistaken Identity, then you could potentially have a Toughness 8 or an Attacks 4 character before you even enter Bogenhafen. Of course, you might want a more balanced character and there is nothing wrong with that, but if you want to, and as ever, subject to GM agreement, then you can have a character who is genuinely top-of-class at one thing. 

 

*I wasn't actually looking at these directly, I was working out what the humanoid minima and maxima to look at WFRP 1e attribute distributions in the population, but this sort of fell out of it...

 

Prices and the Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay (First Edition) World - Part One

I have recently been exploring some of the prices/costs in the WFRP 1e rulebook and trying to tease out some of the implications for what the world is like. A price, after all, contains lots of information in the real world, and it does in a fantasy world no less.  For example, it influences how the players, including the GM, think about food, travel, loot and enemies.  Valuable things should be objects of envy which are fought over and sought after, whereas some things are too common to steal. The points below are not intended to be exhaustive, but just some things for GMs to consider in their games:

 

1.  Chicken and ale is cheap: A chicken costs 1/-; a simple meal at a tavern is 3/-. An Imperial peasant or labourer must love chicken pie and stew and sandwiches, washed down with beer. And as a further implication, starvation must be somewhat rarer in the Empire than it was in our own world.

 

2. Beef and wine are definitely luxury, status goods. Even more so than today, a dinner of beef and red wine marks out status and success.

 

3. Illumination is somewhat expensive - a dozen tallow candles are nearly a labourer's daily wage - although heating is not, and so life at night is concentrated on rich houses and institutions; and taverns really are bustling places in the winter: basic food is relatively cheap, so taking advantage of the lit-tavern is a real thing in the winter months. Even more than in our own world, they are centres of entertainment, gossip, business and gambling. 

 

4. Armour is rarer than you might imagine. The basic fighter in the Empire is a shield and spear armed militiaman with a helmet, who might or might not have some light armour. Mail armour marks out real, professional fighters, and plate is quite rare, for elites only.  The armour costs and types are indicative of a real world equivalent of about 1350-1400, rather than 1500. The implication is that other marginal societies (e.g. goblinoids) are much the same but more so - the average Orc has a shield and spear, but no armour.

 

5. Cavalry are somewhat rarer than in real life, and true Heavy Cavalry is much rarer: Mounted Sergeants are not riding warhorses, they ride riding horses. Firearms are very expensive (and there is no way that taveern landlords like Gustav have them, or tavern hustlers like Descartes; coachmen might though, because coaches are very expensive too). 

 

6. Guilds are much more powerful than is perhaps indicated, specifically artisanal guilds. Most of the surplus value in the economy is not based on raw materials or cheap goods, it is based on finished goods, and most of that surplus is extracted by guilds or similar organizational heads, rather than the Artisans themselves (a sword costs 28 days of an artisan's wages, for example). Guild discipline must be extremely strictly enforced through a combination of ordinances and implicit or explicit threats of violence.   Conversely, the conflict between Emperor, nobility, merchants and guilds must be very, very real.

 

7.    Peasant music resembles that of the Dwarves in The Hobbit (film version): it is based on recorders and drums and so on, mixed with singing. String and brass music is largely a professional endeavour, and keyboard music is a noble pastime (or through noble patronage).

 

8.    Basic members of society thrive by living at home and sharing costs, eventually saving a dowry for their own house and family.  The dinner scene at Farmer Maggot's in the Lord of the Rings (book) is a reasonable indicator, with maybe 10-12 people sharing a table (although the dish in the Empire would be more likely to chicken and mushrooms: Maggot would be showing his successful farmer status by using bacon). Itinerants on the other hand survive on a very narrow margin. Adventurers are basically in it for quite big scores, and their everyday costs are significantly higher, and anything that involves 3-4 career characters should be in the 'many hundreds of gold pieces' range as a basic minimum. But adventuring can reasonably be pretty dangerous.

 

9.     Basic resources are so cheap that most bandits don't even bother: the ones that do are more like violent beggars. Real bandits are looking to steal armour, prestige weapons, horses and other animals, expensive clothes, wine, books etc. So they are somewhat more popular than in the real late medieval world, since they are mostly more like Robin Hood. Class conflict is real, and the labourers and peasants are more on the side of the bandits.

 

10.    Moving goods by river is the lifeblood of the Empire, particularly for bulk items, as it is about x12 cheaper. Road transport is for small, high-value goods and people. Bandits therefore target coaches, not boats or farms, typically.  Taking a coach is a big decision and wouldn't be done lightly. This is important for Mistaken Identity.  It might be better if coach exterior travel is very cheap, and encouraged (extra protection against bandits).

 

11. Starting with any or all of metal armour, firearms or a horse is a really big deal, as is obtaining or losing one. For a more gritty campaign, it might be better to give the characters who have them, with the exception of nobles and squires perhaps, 20% of the value of the item instead. 

Converting 2e WFRP characters back into 1e - Skills and Talents

When WFRP 2e came out, naturally there was some interest in converting characters back into WFRP 1e, both PCs and NPCs, into appropriate 2e forms. But I don't think there has ever been much on how to convert the other way - now that both editions are very old, then playing either is a conscious retro choice, and each edition has its separate version and appeal, not so different from OD&D and BECMI D&D and AD&D 1st edition.

The skill system interacts with a lot of the changes that were made from 1e to 2e. Apart from a general cleaning up, 2e differentiated between Skills and Talents formally; in practice, the main things were that skills were core, and were stackable bonuses to attributes; talents were non-stackable further bonuses to attributes and tests. Talents were also used as part of the new Magic system, to bound what each character could learn and cast.

In experimenting with converting 2e characters back into 1e, one is left with a few decisions to make. Most things are straightforward, so I will concentrate on areas where this might not be the case.

Skills

Academic Knowledge is a skill which is divided up into lots of independent sub-skills, which groups somewhat similar 1e skills together. For example, 1e History and Theology become Academic Knowledge (History) and Academic Knowledge (Theology) respectively. Of the examples, only Academic Knowledge (Arts), Academic Knowledge (Magic), Academic Knowledge (Philosophy) and Academic Knowledge (Strategy/Tactics) don't have a straightforward fit. I think that Academic Knowledge (Arts) can best be covered simply by the Art skill, but testing against Intelligence, and modified by History and Theology as appropriate. Academic Knowledge (Philosophy) can be thought of as simply a combination of History and Theology (and perhaps Chemistry, depending upon your game world). There is no very obvious fit for Academic Knowledge (Strategy/Tactics), so one could insert a new skill here. The 2e careers which have it are:

Admiral

Cadet

Captain

Crusader

Faceless

Grail Knight

Grandmaster

Horse Archer

Knight

Knight of the Blazing Sun

Knight of the Inner Circle

Knight of the Raven

Knight of the Realm

Knight of the Verdant Field

Knight Panther

Noble Lord

Outlaw Chief

Questing Knight

Sea Captain

Sergeant

Wall Warden

Warrior Priest

Winged Lancer

I see a mostly common thread through this, although I am a bit unsure about including Horse Archer in there. I haven't converted a lot of these into 1e terms, but I think that the following are the closest fits:

Free Lance, Mercenary Captain, Outlaw Chief, Sea Captain, Templar. A new skill could easily be added into these careers. Alternatively, one could say that Battle Tongue is actually the qualifying skill - a bit of a stretch, but plausible. It then makes Strategy/Tactics a much wider skill - all battle combatants are likely to have it. Adding the new skill (or just ignoring it) are probably the more conservative options here.

Academic Knowledge (Magic) is a bit more of a puzzle, and also a setting challenge: do we want non-magical characters to be able to fundamentally 'know' about Magic? There is a bit of me, which thinks no, and this is one of the things which gives clerics their social and political power, as the 'establishment' magic users, even though their magic works on slightly different principles. It makes the 'truth/power-seeking' element of becoming a Magic-user more pronounced. If not, I suggest using 'Magical Sense' as a proxy. Now, the skill description says that it is unique for magic-using characters. However, it is also a skill available to the Scholar career. So what we might say is that acquiring 'Magical Sense' makes any character somewhat 'magic-using/magic aware' and knowledgeable of the background lore of Magic in the world.

Command isn't an issue. Just use advances to Leadership instead.

Common Knowledge is a great skill and I wish it had been in 1e, as a way of incorporating different types of Lore skill. On the other hand, you can almost infer Common Knowledge skills by a mixture of background and career choices.

Gossip is actually a really useful skill in 2e and it is a pity that it wasn't in 1e. I think there are two options here - incorporate the skill, or ignore it entirely. Gossip is quite common as a skill but if you can be bothered, I think it is probably worth it.

Intimidate is also a great skill, because it allows a mechanism for 'social interaction' by mean characters, without a high Fellowship or Leadership rating. Even more than gossip, I would suggest including it; at least include it as a test which is based on Strength or something, even if you don't include it as a skill.

Navigation is an interesting one. In 1e, 'Orientation' was a very powerful skill, which basically meant auto-Navigation. In 2e, 'Orientation' is a talent which is basically an additional bonus to 'Navigation'. I think the simplest solution is replacing all instances of Navigation or Orientation in 2e with Orientation, in the 1e sense. Otherwise, you will need to include Navigation as a new skill; not too hard, but there are a lot of careers which have Navigation as a skill, or at least an option. Or, one potential variation, would be to make 'Orientation' the land-based skill, and 'Navigation' the sea-based skill. I think a lot will depend on how much you want to make navigating a meaningful part of your game.

Outdoor survival is a great skill. On the other hand, in 1e terms, one could make it a property of the 'Ranger' class (plus Explorer, plus Scout) rather than a skill per se.

Perception and Search are conceptually quite similar, explicitly overlapping in certain areas. They work as a bonus to Intelligence in 2e, whereas in 1e this kind of thing would be based on Initiative. I think 2e is entirely superior in this respect. I am quite inclined to include these in a 1e adaptation as a single 'Perception' skill.

Performer is similar to Academic Knowledge, as it is a bucket of separate sub skills rather than one single skill. Performer is for all the individual entertainer skills, and they all map onto an existing 1e skill.

 

Sleight of Hand is Palm Object renamed.

 

Trade works in the same way as Academic Knowledge and Performer.  Many of the trade skills map quite straightforwardly onto 1e equivalents, but by no means at all. However, the Artisan career in 1e gives us some clues as to how we might approach this conversion, but with the minimum of new skills:

Armourer: Metallurgy, Smithing

Bowyer: Bowyer (I don't see a way round of having this as a separate and new skill - unless Carpentry plus Specialist Weapon (Longbow, Repeating Crossbow, Crossbow Pistol, Sling)

Calligrapher: Art

Cooper: Carpentry 

Embalmer: Embalming (likewise, I don't think there is an alternative)

Farmer: Animal Care, Haggle, plus either Agriculture as a separate skill, or have it represented by Herb Lore, if necessary limiting it to agriculture, or even specific types of agriculture.

Goldsmith: Art, Metallurgy

Gunsmith: Chemistry, Metallurgy, Smithing, Specialist Weapon (Bomb, Incendiaries, Artillery, Firearms)

Herbalist: Heal Wounds, Herb Lore

Merchant: Evaluate, Haggle

Miller: Miller (I think this has to be a new skill if you want to include it, unless you think of it as an unskilled task).

Prospector: Metallurgy

Shoemaker: Tailor (I think this is best expressed as a special class of Tailor)

Tanner: Chemistry

Weaponsmith: Metallurgy, Smithing, Specialist Weapon ( Polearm, Double-handed weapons, Flail weapons, Fencing sword, Parrying weapons, Lance)

Hopefully the logic of these kind of choices is fairly cleary, trying to cover the space with a combination of skills.

Talents

Most talents work well, can be straightforwardly imported into 1e. In 2e, the 'standard' is for a talent to give a conditional +10 bonus in a couple of situations, or a +5 bonus to an attribute - this makes sense in 2e, when in 2e, advances are in increments of +5, but in 1e they are in increments of +10. When importing to 1e, I have gone for +10 for everything: clearly that makes some talents just better than others (e.g. Warrior Born is just better than 'Grudge-Born Fury', but I find I don't have too many problems with this - it just postpones slightly the point where characters need to choose between wider performance or narrower specialization. Note that I haven't bothered writing down talents when they are just versions of a 1e skill (like 'Lightning Reactions' or 'Excellent Vision').

Aethryic Attunement: +10 to Channelling (i.e. spell casting) and Magical Sense

Alley Cat: +10 to Concealment - Urban and Silent Move - Urban

Armoured Casting: Ignore Restrictions on Armoured Spellcasting

Coolheaded: +10 to starting Cool

Dealmaker: +10 to Evaluate and Haggle

Dwarfcraft: +10 on tests related to brewing beer, cutting gems, making guns, mining and all smithing

Fast Hands: +20 to WS when casting Touch spells (i.e. for Spellcasters trying to touch their targets)

Fearless: Immune to Fear, reduce Fear to Terror

Grudge-born Fury: +10WS against Goblinoids (or potentially other targets, depending on background. I actually dislike this, I would prefer it to be +1 melee damage)

Hardy: +1 starting wounds

Keen Senses: +20 to all Perception tests

Lightning Parry: forego an attack for an extra parry; don't think this works in 1e due to minor differences in the combat system, but we could either make it a free extra parry (powerful) or allow a character another go if a first parry has failed (but using an Attack to do it).

Master Gunner: Reduce firearms reloading time by half an action

Master Orator: Multiply the effect of Public Speaking by 100 times the number of people.

Menacing: +10 to Initimidationa and Torture tests

Mighty Missile: +1 damage to Magic Missile attacks

Mighty Shot: +1 damage to Missile attacks

Quick Draw: instantly draw a single weapon

Rapid reload: reduce missile weapon loading time by half an action. can stack with master gunner

Resistance to Chaos: +10 to WP to resist Magic and other Chaos effects, immune to mutation, cannot be a magic-uer

Resistance to Disease: +10 to T to resist Disease (renamed for 1e Immunity to Disease)

Resistance to Poison: +10 to T to resist Poison (renamed for 1e Immunity to Poison)

Rover: +10 to Concealment - Rural and Silent Move - Rural

Savvy: +10 to Intelligence

Schemer: +10 on tests involving intrigue, or resisting it

Seasoned Traveller: +10 to common knowledge and speak language tests

Sharpshooter: +20 to aimed shots

Stout-hearted: +10 to resist Fear, Terror and Intimidation

Streetwise: +10 to Charm and Gossip tests in the criminal world

Strong-Minded: Change the Insanity Point threshold to 8 points, with no automatic Insanity until 14 points.

Sturdy: No movement penalties due to armour

Suave: +10 to Fellowship

Sure Shot: Ignore 1AP when using ranged weapons

Swashbuckler: Jumps/leaps take only half the time, increase all leaps by 1 yard.

Trapfinder: +10 to finding and disarming traps

Tunnel Rat: +10 to Concealment and Silent Move when underground

Warrior Born: +!0 to Weapon Skill

Magic Talents

 

These talents are all new, due to the new magic system. They are more-or-less replacements for a combination of 'Arcane Language' and 'Cast Spells'. I won't say too much about them here, since the Magic element of the game needs a longer discussion of the ways of adapting 2e to 1e.

 

Dark Lore (Chaos, Necromancy, Nurgle, Slaanesh, Tzeentch)

Dark Magic (this is like a risk/reward way of casting spells, increasing the power at increased risk; plus you have to use it for casting spells from 'evil' traditions. 

Divine Lore

Hedge Magic (can cast Petty Magic (Hedge) spells without arcane language, at extra risk)

Lesser Magic

Meditation:This is a tricky one, because it is used in a very different way from Meditation in 1e. In 2e, it is a bonus to ritual spell-casting. Here, I suggest renaming it to 'Ritual Magic', with the effect of magic levelx10 bonus to ritual magic casting.

Petty Magic (Arcane, Divine and Hedge)

Characteristics

2e also used Talents as a way of defining and grouping together certain features which creatures/monsters have. This was a great development, since it meant that the DM and the players were 'playing the same game' which is almost always a good thing, rather than having them as independent 'Special Rules'.

Flier

Frightening

Hoverer

Natural Weapons

Terrifying 

Undead

Unsettling

Rewards & Rewards in Shadowrun & Other Games

No, there isn't a typo in the title - it is rather a nod to two separate ideas of reward.  All will become clear...

Because game money cannot be converted into real money, then the main rewards that can be given to players is new abilities. Whether these abilities are 'skills' or 'equipment' is functionally quite irrelevant: they both increase the ability levels of the character that the player is playing, and thus expand the scope of what is possible for both player and character within the confines of the game.

Original D&D famously tied advancement to money (or treasure anyway); magic items and killing monsters also provided a route to advancement but since they were obtained in the same way, that doesn't change anything important here. It got some stick for doing this but it had one great advantage: the reward to the characters and the players was very directly for doing the things that they ought (in the premise of the game) to be doing. In my opinion, it also provided a very useful degree of moral hazard: it was perfectly possible to play a bad - or very bad - character simply because the incentive to do so readily existed: optimize for getting more money, whether from friend or foe.

Later RPGs and D&D itself moved away from this but something important was lost: the reward system tended to become more complex, nebulous or both; whereas the OD&D approach basically successfully optimized the reward system to the essence of the game. Complex systems tended fundamentally to want to model some kind of 'real world' process for skill improvement whilst nebulous systems that rewarded 'good roleplaying' were intrinsically subject to GM fiat and caprice as well as, potentially, creating tension at the table since 'playing in character' as a player goal can interact quite badly with other players, although doubtless some groups really thrived off this.

 

And so to Shadowrun.  Shadowrun is a game dominated by money, since it is in a world dominated by money - even more than the present. The tag line from 5e, Everything Has a Price, kind of epitomizes this. So there might be quite a good case for linking 'Karma' awards in Shadowrun to money, with the big-earning characters definitionally playing in the big leagues, so to speak, whereas 'street-level' characters earning street-level money would be slower to advance (and hopefully, face lower odds). What this might be precisely is open for debate and experimentation, but maybe 10000Y per karma point might be a good start point.

However, there is another use for money in Shadowrun and that is to track 'reputation' - think 'Reward' as in Wanted: Dead or Alive.  The value to/for/or against a corporation, or any other organization in the Shadowrun world can be tracked via nominal money gained or lost.  And given the nature of the corporation in the Shadowrun world, this makes a lot of literal sense: everything would be done on a cost/benefit basis. This is in addition to any other considerations: killing someone's family in the course of a run goes above and beyond the money, but that motivation applies to family and friends, not the 'organization' as a whole (and especially not a corporation). And this creates a specific mechanic that players can take advantage of: is their beef really with the thrill gang, or just with a few members? And if the players benefited the rest of the gang to the extent that they were in a positive relationship...well, that could be very interesting in terms of roleplaying. Conversely, it also gives an incentive to limit the damage - why generate pointless emnity by ratcheting up the Nuyen cost even more...unless, of course, your other friends are secretly delighted by this. In any case, I have been using it in my current Shadowrun campaign and it is working nicely as a way of tracking who friend and foe is, and who will get out of bed to make their life a misery, and to whom they are just too insignificant to even watch.  As a last thing, it could/should/would determine the resources that an organization would expend to get them, but I haven't made that procedural yet. Coming soon.

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.