Mercenary Action?

[Dyson Logos]

So, I've got a bunch of old-school military action RPGs - stuff like MERC, Twilight 2000 (three editions + Twilight 2013), Delta Force, Phoenix Command, and so on. Well, and a few modern ones too.

Some even stick pretty close to their D&D roots. But not THAT close.

I'm thinking it would be fun to rebuild Labyrinth Lord into a military action game somehow. Well, more likely using some of the ideas from Mutant Future (so leveling up doesn't provide such a huge difference in your hit points).

Anyone out there familiar with this style of RPG? Want to help me as I bounce ideas off the wall?

[Bob]

It's been a while (like a decade or two) since I played any of them, but I'd love to toss some ideas around.

[Dyson Logos]

All right - first off, my source material to make this thing.

1. Goblinoid Games' Mutant Future as the initial base
2. FGU's 1981 MERC
3. TSR's Top Secret
4. GDW's Twilight: 2000 1st Edition
5. Task Force Games' Delta Force
6. Sine Nomine's Stars Without Numbers

Any other recommendations?

My goal is to make a game that doesn't have much in the way of skills - I like the way Top Secret handled all things espionagy by using sub-stats. Need to be sneaky, you have a stat for that. Need to kill someone, got a stat for that too! Need to stand up to torture, hey, more stats!

Games I'm specifically avoiding:

Phoenix Command
Espionage!


Games I would like to emulate a bit, but no longer own:

Recon

[Dyson Logos]

In the tradition of old school RPGs, first up is Ability Scores.

Strength we can keep. It's important not just for fighting, but for humping your hardware. I might also grab a rule from a lot of the AD&D1e era derivative games of minimum strength requirements for various weapons, particularly heavy military hardware and big automatic weapons. To keep it important though, I think that encumbrance will be vital to track (although a simple tracking system will also be needed, not actually tracking "pounds" but some other encumbrance unit to make it easy) and we'll add something to the Strength stat tables allowing for more or less encumbrance to be carried.

Intelligence is pretty obviously good to stay. But at the same time, I have issues making it important in play. I'll get back to this one. It might even take on a few attributes normally given to Wisdom in more modern games (ability to notice bad shit going on).

Wisdom needs a name change. Something to make it suit the setting better. I'm thinking Courage. Courage is a key stat in Top Secret, and should come up a lot in a military game. Maybe even too much? Maybe Courage should be a saving throw instead of a stat... Same thing for resisting torture and stuff (typical willpower / wisdom stuff). CyberPunk had Cool instead of Wisdom which works too. Definitely a stat that needs to be jiggled with.

Dexterity is an obvious must-have stat in a modern military game. Guns work better if you are quick to point them at your enemies, right? We'll just leave this one alone.

Constitution is also a standard must-have. No problems here.

Charisma I intend to make more important. MERC tracked a sub-stat called Voice, which you used to get your pinned and under fire buddies to get their acts together. By allowing a high Charisma character to support his friends when the shit goes down, we can make it pretty important in combat, not just in hiring retainers and getting better pay.


- - -


So, back to Wisdom. What do we call it? What does it cover? How do I make it important without making it TOO important? I was almost worried about making Strength a useless stat, so that's why I think we'll go with Strength minimums for weapons and the encumbrance modifiers, so it sucks to short-change it too much. So I want Wisdom to be practically as important. My first response is that it is vital in post 2000 era games because it is tied to searching, spotting and other senses, but I think I would rather tie that to Intelligence instead of Wisdom. Ideas?

[Dyson Logos]

Oh, on the basis that anything worth doing is worth overdoing?

Yeah.

(big image, small file size - 12k)

[greyarea]

I'd suggest Will as the stat for wisdom, as in "will to live" or "will to power" or "where there's a will there's a way". I'd have it affect a courage saving throw as well as morale checks. It could also affect a persistance saving throw, as cool saving throw, as well as a breaking/torture saving throw.

I'd suggest (if you're using a class-based system) having it be a prime requisite for special forces (Green Berets, SS, etc) because among other things, their will to be that much better is a major driving force for them, as I recall.

Chaplins would have Charisma being the prime requisite, as their job is partly to improve morale with troops as well as offer spiritual guidance.

[Dyson Logos]

Will works great.

Charisma is also vital for officers and non-coms, obviously, as they use it to rally the men when the shit hits the fan.

I also need a different silhouette for the guy on the cover. That one is too... static. Needs a bit more action, less boredom.

[Dyson Logos]

Guns - real world versus fun games

Firearms combat in the real world involves a LOT of not hitting other people. Military hit stats are ludicrously low when compared to how combat works in most RPGs, and even firearm stats in environments where automatic weapons fire isn't the standard are a very different show than in most games. Of course, the effects of being hit are also very different than most people think. I could go into FBI stats and all that jazz (roughly 80% of torso hits from a medium caliber handgun will render a target out of the fight, even if no "serious" damage was done - humans are well trained to fall down when shot; and most gunshots occur within 15 feet of the target, and still less than 10% of them hit), but that's not all that much fun. I want to get some of that across though - I would like a system that doesn't involve a lot of actual hits in combat, but when they occur they are serious.

At the same time, I can see people not being impressed with round after round of not hitting their targets.

Twilight: 2000 handled this in an interesting manner - outside of seriously heavy weapons, a "shot" from a weapon was typically firing three rounds of ammo. So a colt 1911A1 only has 2 shots (7 rounds of ammo), and an M16 with a NATO STANAG magazine would have 10 shots (30 rounds). This immediately made it so there was a lot of lead flying through the air that wasn't doing anything except ... flying through the air.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1st edition), also used a similar system where as you leveled up in your weapon skills, you got to roll "to hit" for more bullets fired... At level 1 you got to roll to hit for 1 shot out of 6, by level 12 you got to roll to hit for each shot fired (roughly - I don't have that edition of the rules anymore).

[Dyson Logos]

PS: This project will NOT die. It will get published. Even if it's only a 32 page 6"x9" book, I will put it together and put it up on Lulu. I'm hoping to get it up to something serious, but we'll see where things go through the discussions here. Everyone involved here will get credit and a link to a cheaper print version than the one I'll be posting to the public.

[greyarea]

Twilight: 2000 handled this in an interesting manner - outside of seriously heavy weapons, a "shot" from a weapon was typically firing three rounds of ammo. So a colt 1911A1 only has 2 shots (7 rounds of ammo), and an M16 with a NATO STANAG magazine would have 10 shots (30 rounds). This immediately made it so there was a lot of lead flying through the air that wasn't doing anything except ... flying through the air.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1st edition), also used a similar system where as you leveled up in your weapon skills, you got to roll "to hit" for more bullets fired... At level 1 you got to roll to hit for 1 shot out of 6, by level 12 you got to roll to hit for each shot fired (roughly - I don't have that edition of the rules anymore).

I'm not sure I'm following this. So a three shot burst with a level one skill would roll a single d20 (for instance) while at level three you'd roll 3d20, increasing your hits that much? Sounds similar to RISK with lots of dice rolled per move. Not a bad thing, if I'm reading that right.

Another way to do it is to change the percentages by changing dice. d100 at low levels. d20 at medium levels. d10 at higher levels. and so on. I've not seen that mechanic before but it could work.

I've heard that the mechanic in the old 007 game was pretty good for guns but I never got to play so I don't remember how it worked.