Judge Dredd - Crowd Control

[Arabin]

Last night my game was very interesting. Most of you will know that it's almost impossible to hurt Judges with knives and clubs, which most of the cannon fodder type perps seem to have (in Full Eagle Day). If a perp has a strength of 10, he can only hurt a Judge with a knife if he gets a critical hit because the Judge armor defense is 6, the knife does 1d6 and does not pierce the armor.

So, last night, I was very happy with the results of equiping a bunch of perps with handguns. The range is 100ft but they do 3d6 damage (-6 for armor defense). My players were really worried when the combat began as they took some serious damage in the first round before their initiative kicked in. However, they surprised me by really getting to grips with the possibilities that a Judge has open to him. With a combination of arrest checks, and two stumm grenades, they managed to take out 6 of my 9 perps before the second round and there was gas everywhere so my perps could hardly move while you Judges had great cover.

I just wanted to share the experience with you guys.

Arabin

 

[hassanisabbah]

Excellent, well played and well gm'd

 

[Arabin]

Thanks Hass

Arabin

 

[Daithi O'an tSionnaigh]

Yeah sounds like how my players run it is they of course do the whole intimidation factor and try to put the fear of god in them and if that doesn't work they do just that toss some stumm gernades and that pretty much does it. :lol:

 

[Arabin]

It's hard to capture the feel of the comics. You want them to do things like ride up the stairs of a neighbouring building and then jump, on their lawmasters, across the building, crashign through the skylight and blasting the perps as you land. Trouble is, how do you decide whether they make it or not... it's hard to come up with good measures for skill checks somtimes.

Arabin

 

[hassanisabbah]

Thats kind of why I went for a Perp based game to preserve the mystique of the the Judges. My players are very Roleplay orientated, so they didn't fit the judge type too well. So I had them roll up judges and then told them they'd be playing Citizens, and took the judges to use as their personal nemesis...

Judges are exceptionally hard compared to citizens. Typically the citizen has the first shot advantage.... but thats it.

 

[Arabin]

That's an interesting tactic Hass. How did your players respond to that? Have they run into themselves yet? There must be some great stories waiting to happen there...

I didn't want to play a perp campaign as to me, Judge Dredd has always been about the judges. I think the idea (as suggested by Dreddtime and BigSteve) of not being so focused on the rules could really work with Dredd. If the players suggest something that just sounds cool and furthers the story in the right direction... make them roll anyway, and as long as they don't roll a 1, let it happen. It might even work to do the roll yourself, hidden behind the GM screen.

I'll be trying this sort of approach next gaming session... though that will unfortunately not be for a couple of weeks. Work is taking too much time these days.

Arabin