Modern Legend

[AnaliseLameth]

Has anyone any thoughts as to how you might incorporate modern weapons and armour into Legend?

There are probably rules for this in BRP already, via CoC and the Basic Roleplaying book, but I'm curious if any of you have considered a specific approach for Legend taking into account the nuances that make Legend different to BRP. (Not to mention, that BRP is not open).

 

[Old timer]

Interestingly, i have started to work on a 'modern legend' idea, and so far the issues with such an idea is which CMs to use, as only a few seem appropriate. So far most weapons (guns) can cause impale, chose location and bypass armour, and i am thinking sunder might be an option as well.

Actual damage is x dice, just need to make it balanced.
The rest can more or less stand as it is, even though evade versus bullets is unrealistic, but with out that it would be to easy to hit and get a CM, though one could modify the CM rules so that most can be only achieved by critical rolls.
Of course if you want keep it more realistic, then no evades v fire arms, and make more use of cover.

Armour provides x protection, but if a bullet fails to penetrate, target still takes a point of damage from the impact.

These are just very rough ideas so far, and will need some refining and testing.

 

[AnaliseLameth]

You need to have some equivalent to evade tho, since the combat system needs an opposed roll. Otherwise it would be ridiculously easy to hit targets, and it actually isn't that easy. As previously mentioned in another post, cover is implied in Legend combat, rather than being explicit.

When thinking about the effect of a bullet that doesn't penetrate armour, does anyone know if the target always takes damage? If you are shot by a small calibre bullet and it's stopped by a ballistic vest, are you knocked down/stunned or only if it's a rifle bullet? I know modern armours are graded by class, but does anyone have any references to what actually happens? Legend isn't a game about entertainment physics, so I'm quite prepared to believe, that in actual firearms combat opponents don't suffer the huge knockback we see in the movies. What would happen against targets shot by small arms that are wearing "hard" armour (fighting suit/powered suit)? Would they even notice?

 

[Old timer]

If you dont mind a slightly cinematic approach, then the simplest solution would to be retain evades versus bullets. For non penetration of a bullet into armour, i am told that you would feel the impact (this from some one in the armed services), but for 'hard' armour, i would speculate that you may not feel anything. I would guess this comes down to the calibre of the bullet and the force of impact, which are very hard to represent in a game.
A simple solution would be to assume that if a pistol round hit a 'hard' type of armour (kelvar ?) you would not feel much, but for a rifle round, possibility of being stunned, and taking some form of blunt impact/trauma damage?

 

[Dan True]

Mixster and me have done some work on this, but have been stopped by lack of time.

Evade is necessary, but it is not unrealistic. Evade here simply represents the persons ability to keep his head down behind cover, present a small target, not stay in the open for too long etc, on a minimalistic scale (on a major scale these things are represented by actual actions). So evade is "ability to move without presenting targets", instead of "ability to duck incoming fire".

We found, and begun, to make a complete rewrite of the ranged CMs. One thing we wanted was to give the feel of a real firefight, where fire-and-manouver is key and not static line fights. The CMs were then designed to give advantages in movement, cover etc as well as direct damage. For instance we decided that a person in cover and duck out and shoot, or shoot and duck in on one turn, but not all of them. Hence there is a CM that allows the character to duck back in again - representing fast-paced shots quickly released. On the other hand there are still other CMs that deal more damage (equivalent to impale), so one must effectively choose between manouver or damage .. so it is a balance.

Other CMs/actions like "Suppress" and "Overwatch" was also planned.

Hope we get around to finish it at some point, especially now that it is OGL.. but until February I am completely booked time wise.

- Dan

 

[Old timer]

@Dan true, Well, if you want some help with this, i have plenty of spare time (lucky me) and it is a project that interests me.

 

[AnaliseLameth]

+1

I would very much like to see a modern/ultra modern or science fiction expansion for Legend. I know there is a planned expansion for Open Quest on the cards as well, but I'd like to see a framework for Legend that would let us easily build settings outside the fantasy genre.

 

[Mixster]

Hmm I remember we had a shared dropbox, if we clean it up a bit I guess we could add you guys so you can see what we are doing.

 

[DamonJynx]

You could still use Evade in a standard gunfight (close quarter firearms, pistols and such) but at penalties unless the evading PC makes a successful Perception test (difficult or hard maybe?) to notice when the trigger finger starts squeezing, ala The Avengers.

 

[Mixster]

You could still use Evade in a standard gunfight (close quarter firearms, pistols and such) but at penalties unless the evading PC makes a successful Perception test (difficult or hard maybe?) to notice when the trigger finger starts squeezing, ala The Avengers.

Well, my sentiment that anybody who wasn't prone could use Evade against shooting to go prone. When prone you are a bit harder to hit, but you can't do it again. So the first thing that happens in a fire-fight is every experienced soldier hit the deck or go into cover while everybody else gets shot. Seems pretty realistic.

 

[meerling]

...So far most weapons (guns) can cause impale, chose location and bypass armour, and i am thinking sunder might be an option as well...

...Of course if you want keep it more realistic, then no evades v fire arms, and make more use of cover...

...Armour provides x protection, but if a bullet fails to penetrate, target still takes a point of damage from the impact...

A few tidbits, some opinions, some not. Mind you, I'm not being trying to be derogatory, just informative.

Don't do the 'bypass' armor thing. Otherwise there is no reason to have armor, or weapons that aren't guns.

As to the always does some damage, first, you are adding another layer of things to be taken into account and dealt with.
Second, it won't, armor is both padded, and designed to distribute the blow.
Besides that, the energy calculations on a shot from a .38 is about the same as that from a strong piercing blow from a dagger or the like. There are people that study this stuff. What you have to watch out for is myth, Hollywood, and over-estimation of modern devices and techniques. The sheer damage our modern guns do isn't that much different from ancient weapons. The differences are accuracy, range, weight, and ease of use. And shooting someone with a gun doesn't knock them off their feet, with or without armor. (Mind we aren't talking about artillery.)

Evading bullets. Let's start with the obvious, you can't. I doubt you could evade an arrow, or at bar-room ranges, even a thrown dagger. But this is action genre, so you can. It's the same with bullets. In truth, since you can't really dodge the projectile, or an attack you don't know about, what you are really dodging is the aim of the attacker. (As to evading traps, sometimes you move because of the subtle click, not the poison darts.)
Duck and weave baby, duck - and - weave.

Making it more realistic. Mmmm... Maybe to a certain extent, but then again, you're probably going for some kind of action adventure. Besides, if you wanted it really real, you'd double the all the weapon damages and increase wound penalties. Real combat is rather messy, and one or two decent hits tend to incapacitate or kill most people. You don't get much adventuring done in those conditions unless it's the social/political games with hardly any combat, if at all.

Now there are some very rare people that can take horrible damage and keep functioning with limited impairment for a short time. Usually no more than 5 or 10 minutes tops. Then they succumb and are just as useless as someone that doesn't have that extreme response. I know a person that had multiple fingers on one hand chopped off (through the bones), and the muscles and veins in his leg severed. The scar on is leg is about a foot across. He pulled the object out of his leg, applied pressure to both his hand an leg to reduce bleeding, and walked to a safe area to wait for help to arrive. Most people would have been unconscious within a few seconds. By the time the ambulance arrived, he couldn't sit up. It was 2 months before he could walk across the room with only a cane.

Now are you sure you want the damage more gritty and realistic?

 

[Dan True]

Evading bullets. Let's start with the obvious, you can't. I doubt you could evade an arrow, or at bar-room ranges, even a thrown dagger. But this is action genre, so you can. It's the same with bullets. In truth, since you can't really dodge the projectile, or an attack you don't know about, what you are really dodging is the aim of the attacker. (As to evading traps, sometimes you move because of the subtle click, not the poison darts.)
Duck and weave baby, duck - and - weave.

My point exactly. Evade here represents ability to stay down, throw off aim, move through (small) cover effectively etc. In other words, what the soldiers learn when they are first thrown out in the nearby forest and learn to stay low, crawl, beware of ones silhouette etc. (at least that's what we did) can be boiled down to the evade skill, plus (perhaps) a Lore(Soldiering) to represent the difference between a knowledgeable trooper and an evasive streetfighter (i.e. use of different types of terrain, and formality of training).

- Dan

 

[Deleriad]

On the narrow point of Evade. As written in Legend, Evade like many skills has multiple functions around manoeuvring in combat, dodging out of the way of stuff, throwing yourself out of harm's way and so on. Using it to make yourself a harder target to hit is perfectly in line with the various uses of the skill. So successfully evading means simply that you managed to roll to the side just before the bullets hit, or you manage to run down the middle of two parallel lines of strafing bullets from the biplane flying overhead or you run through a room full of columns and the bullets smack into the columns and so on. Even if you do get hit, providing you make you roll then at least the gun man has to roll location randomly so you may just get a grazing wound to the leg.

Of course, in the right genre it might actually be physically dodging bullets.

This is all implicit in the skill's uses as written in the book, but because the word count has been kept low, there's not much room to spell it out.

 

[Mixster]

Keeping Evade as is? I like it.

Ranged combat already gets a lot more from increased range and the "no need to reload in combat" abilities of modern weapons. So also making them impossible to evade would probably be fair.

Here are some more ideas to bounce off of you guys:
Bullets give a varying degree of bleed or impale, most give impale, but some give bleed effects. Armour piercing rounds can add sunder without the expenditure of a CM.

New CM:
"Get Down!" - Offensive and Defensive - When you use this CM you can instantly go into any cover within 30cm of yourself. Or simply hit the floor.

 

[Prime_Evil]

"Get Down!" - Offensive and Defensive - When you use this CM you can instantly go into any cover within 30cm of yourself. Or simply hit the floor.

How about changing the name to Dive for Cover?

Also, how about a CM that let's you make pop-up attacks from behind cover without losing the protection of the cover?

Or a Suppressive Fire CM that forces opponents to make a Persistence check or waste their next combat action being pinned behind the nearest cover?

 

[Dan True]

Also, how about a CM that let's you make pop-up attacks from behind cover without losing the protection of the cover?

In the stuff me and Mixster has been working on, this is covered by the fact that you can on one shooting action either shot and pop down OR pop up and shoot. A CM then allows you to pop down again - but you then spend your CM on that instead of the damage giving or manouver impairing CMs (i.e. you are shooting quickly and dodging back again, without the effort of aiming properly).

Or a Suppressive Fire CM that forces opponents to make a Persistence check or waste their next combat action being pinned behind the nearest cover?

We had plans for something like this as well - only possible with high RoF weapons.

- Dan

 

[Mixster]

How about changing the name to Dive for Cover?

Sure.

Also, how about a CM that let's you make pop-up attacks from behind cover without losing the protection of the cover?

Hmm, I'd think this one did exactly that. You pop out of cover with some movement, fire, and pop back in with this CM. If not, then making a new CM that does that is a sound idea.

Or a Suppressive Fire CM that forces opponents to make a Persistence check or waste their next combat action being pinned behind the nearest cover?

Suppressive fire has to be in. However, having it as a CM doesn't float my boat. That way, you can't put down suppressive fire pre-emptively. What I want is an option more like:

"Jim, Bob and Kate are running down a hall with a few tumbled tables in it. Jim is carrying the AK47 they nicked from the terrorist a few scenes back. As they get to the end, more terrorists pop up from the way they came and start firing at them. There are 2 rounds to the elevator gets here giving the group an escape, and with no other means of escape it looks dire for our heroes that could be gunned down by the remaining terrorists. Jim picks up his AK47, and starts filling the hallway behind them with so many bullets (lays down suppressive fire), one of the terrorists down the hall tries to run out of cover but is incapacitated by a leg shot and the others choose to stay in cover. As the elevator arrives, Bob overrides the command so it takes them directly to the car basement, and our heroes live to see another day (or at least another encounter, who knows whether there are bad guys, or worse, FBI Agents, in the basement)."
My idea of mimicking this is that we make some weapons capable of "Auto-Fire", these weapons have specific tactical options for them, such as firing bursts, and a "long burst" can be used to lay down suppressive fire.
Laying Down Suppressive fire:
With a weapon capable of firing Long Bursts, you can lay down suppressive fire, instead of rolling directly to hit a target you instead specify an area about 2 meters wide where your shots are concentrated. Until your next CA, any targets who enter this zone, must make an evade roll. On a failure they are hit, on a success their success is opposed by your combat style roll. If your combat style roll is a success and it beats their Evade roll, they are still hit. If their evade succeeds in both circumstances they can cling to any cover or the ground to avoid getting shot.
Any target attempting to enter a suppressive fire zone willingly must pass a persistence test. A failure indicates that he simply wont do it.
A suppressive fire uses a full burst worth of shots per CA.
---
This way suppressive fire doesn't need a target and can simply be losed upon people coming down a hallway, ducking up from a specific cover, or anything like it.
What do you think?

 

[DamonJynx]

This way suppressive fire doesn't need a target and can simply be losed upon people coming down a hallway, ducking up from a specific cover, or anything like it.
What do you think?

I like it. Perhaps needs a little work on the wording, but the idea is sound.

 

[Prime_Evil]

I've got to admit that I like this approach too.

 

[Mixster]

Perhaps needs a little work on the wording.

I agree, English isn't my first language though, so clearing up wording takes a bit of time.