(TFT) TFT, Car Wars, magic

[Jay Carlisle <maou.tsaou@gmail.com>]

Windows 7 64bit Professional

Redesigned and updated for your confusion.

As quick as you pick this up we'll have something to make you out of date.

Still, I get to see some of their product I haven't seen before... I may
not have opened an IE window in well over a year.

SOo0 w3'11 [$33}..., ?

Bloody thing auto-corrects me... how do you turn THAT off?



Anyway... particles, squares, and RW2000...


 So last first; as my players are mostly free of Portland now I've pulled
out my old Road War 2000 to populate the map a little bit more genera
specifically.

I'm basically using the fuel, food, and tire ratios for travel and paying
attention to the number of casualties and combats it takes to conquer a
town/city for setting up gangs.

Most of the special buildings have pretty direct representations in Civ like
a Barracks for a military post and other correlations like putting a bunch
of research WotW in Area 51 at least make a bit of sense in this view.

I'm also jotting down some notes on looting and caches frequencies but I've
switched the focus to a straight escort mission of 1 scientist (Dr. Stephen
K. Hatfull) from Portland to D.C. so the focus is quite a bit different as
combat and conquering aren't required to complete the quest and I dial way
back on the mutants and illness factors as I'm more interested in
playtesting the movement and handling stuff.

I keep the virus bit as it's kinda built in but it's a strain the Black
Hats let loose (on purpose or accidentally let go too soon?) that was
reverse engineered from work done by a research team led by a Dr. Jay
Kielzweil aimed at preventing and/or combating global pandemics.

So if the players REALLY wanna keep going after getting to D.C. I can send
them after Dr K and his team... seven of 'em scattered about the country,
and then get the 8 of 'em to the top secret base and make a serum or
whatever... putting a nail in the thing if they haven't gotten wiped out
that is unless they wanna move into the rebuilding phase as there's PLENTY
to do along those lines, elseif all good time-periods where anarchy reigns
must pass... but another is gonna be cycling on around here soon enough,
don't worry.

It's more of a story than I'd prefer but it's a playtest scenario that has
a little meat on its bones without requiring a ton of work on my part, just
an hour or so playing a couple of older computer games I like anyway so far
beyond the game stuff I'm really looking at.

It's got some good objective info at least and I hopefully wont get fussed
at for having playtest material that we just quit playing, why? about.

I figure that if the players get off mission messing around then things
progress from the start of play in late June early July of 1999 and will run
like this for a couple of years if an NPC group (prob 1d6 attempts) doesn't
finish off the story but by the end of July 2001 mutant activity increases
significantly, overrunning the entire continent within a couple of months
and setting back any rebuild by centuries, if ever.


 Squares...

So the Car Wars type stuff uses spaces in describing vehicles which fits
into the square stuff pretty well.

I always dug the Melee chits for dropped weapons.

So one thing I did with them was use 'em to describe equipment roughly to
scale.

At the scale-hex scale each quarter inch square is about 3.25 across.

This should work pretty good for space descriptions involving mounting
vehicle weapons, armor, and equipment as well as cargo and passengers.

As its been less than a month since large scale effects of the collapse
started, and players were started in full scavenge mode, I'm relatively safe
from most full blown Car Wars stuff weapons tech just now

and as the collapse is still on going surviving populations haven't gotten
to the Mad Max phase of organization yet but are just now forming
rudimentary gangs so right now it's pretty much how many guys can you pile
on the vehicle/s India style with a bunch of handguns hopefully.

Still, there are distinct advantages to mounted (also hidden) weapons but
I've found that players who have a more James Bond/Spy Hunter pov tend to
envision a gun barrel sticking outta most anywhere on the car.

Being able to box out a M60 in scale squares helps to get everybody on the
same page imaginatively speaking and gives the players a certain amount of
choice in configuring their vehicle/s setup.

I'm reasonably sure there's only going to be a handful of configurations
that would still allow for close to optimum vehicle performance but players
like to personalize their equipment and this should help facilitate
customization.


 So those squares don't have to be limited to boxing real-world things (if
it fits it ships to the game-world) for descriptive purposes but also works
for stuff that has no real-world equivalent.

Fireball for example.

It's a fiery blast that can set fire to flammable objects.

I assume the blast is ball-like as the name implies rather than
flamethrower like or cone/fan-like, etc.

How big for 1 fST?

How much bigger for 10 fST?

Does a large enough Unit of martial wizards with apprentices and ST
battery support get to pop off a tactical-nuke Fireball?

If a wizard is adept at 5 IQ > spell IQ what happens at 10 IQ > spell IQ?

I think the wizard gets customized control over the spell.

For some things this is actually pretty obvious already in TFT.

Fire specifically mentions this kind of control and Wizards Wrath implies
the Missile spells are related something like this.

So at IQ 22 a wizard who was an IQ point away from becoming adept at Wizards
Wrath could master Fireball at least in an aspect of the spell like shaping
the volume into different areas... maybe stringing out a fiery rope or
whatnot.

Looking at the TFT spell list I think I see several natural category's
with a few odd balls but I'd be curious to know if anyone else has thought
about a spell list breakdown along those lines.

In this view the Missile spells become the missile spell with effects like
fire or electric added rather than required.

Eric Ackbee's DoD was pretty much just a souped up Magic Fist (1d6+1 per ST
instead of 1d6-2) with a vulgar shaping of the spells volume area ahla
Wizards Wrath.

That's all I need, a wizard casting Slippery Floor on a mega-hex area worth
of bearings as a magic item for the cars...

P.S.

Didn't get this done last night before folks started to show so here's a
progress report...

So my Friday group escaped Portland with very little prodding from the
good Dr. and as feared proceeded west toward a local military Camp.

It's where the weekend warriors come out during the spring and summer and
pop off some rounds to keep up to par training wise.

Wish RW2k could work THAT up real quick for me.

I like what they did getting around the major jams in the main arteries
in/out of the city.

Mountain bikes around to the front and then look for vehicles to use.

Using to Doc to express some of my inner cranky old man I had him pop off to
a player idea about mounting weapons to the current vehicle what do you
think this is a Road Warrior movie? Those were custom vehicles with custom
suspensions and god knows what and we're in a pos FORD ESCORT!

Any sentiment for the groups first car was instantly flushed...

It can be looked at as a missed opp maybe now that I read it.


 Anyway, things had wrapped and were winding down and this Walking Dead
spoof came on The Soup.

Everybody got ampped about the idea of zombies...

Sigh...

I was the guy picking at Deadliest Warrior for the zombie vampire thing...

In my defense I'z more ticked at the tone of the thing but still here I am.

Can a zombie drive a car?

The pickup continues to gain speed, whoever's driving that things got a
lead foot, as it draws closer you can tell the back is full of people, maybe
a dozen, after a minuet or so more it becomes evident that something's VERY
wrong with those people...
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