Re: (TFT) Iron & magic

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

Okay I'm going to approach this a little strangely in an attempt to make
this easy to use.

These aren't your TFT Zombies and have nothing to do with the Spell but is
rather something of a mismash of lots of various hollywood visualizations
and some related ideas.

As it's meant as a kind of holiday thing I've tried to set it up to be a bit
'spooky' for players w/o being actually deadly.

32 point Figures who keep their cool and don't get foolish should be able to
survive such an encounter with little problem.

A few 64 point Figures who get cocky could have some problems.


 Mechanics first then I'll talk theory.


 J-ombies.

ST 10

DX 10

IQ -1

MA 5


 The idea is a Figure that moves forward at a walking pace, but relentlessly
so, and Actions much slower than player Figures.

Taken a few at a time their about as dangerous as a slug but throw a square
mile or two of them at a few players and things become a bit more
interesting.


 To keep the bookkeeping down for the GM these are all Joe Average J-ombies
without any variation in the population statistically.

I drop J-ombie IQ but not J-ombie DX choosing rather to restrict their MA
pace to a walk.

So the visual here is of a pack of 'fresh' (uninjured) J-ombies moving
forward at a steady walking pace.

The only real clue that these are J-ombies at all besides their green
colour, which is hard to notice from afar, is their distinctly not human
gait.

I pantomime it by relaxing arms and neck while stepping forward as though
having to lift each leg and move it with my arms.

Think marionettes.

The -1 IQ may not be the best symbol for what I'm thinking of here (maybe i1
IQ?) but I'm unwilling to bandy about the 0 IQ bit in all of this so I'll
just say that this has to do with how I 'count' Stats.

Without getting all of THAT into this I'll just say that the idea here is
that these guys don't 'see' things very quickly.

It works out to about 8 times slower than Joe Average.

Once they do perceive something they react with a normal DX if uninjured
which allows them normal chances on Action checks when they actually do get
to Action.

This isn't to say that I envision J-ombies performing dexterous Actions,
they're actually very limited there too, I just want to make clear that when
a J-ombie actually lunges or what have you at a player the motion is
actually as quick as Joe Average could manage in similar circumstances.

As this setup is as much about surprise (if not horror) as it is about
anything else the visualizations are important as players haven't
encountered J-ombies before and have no reference to predict what their
capabilities actually are.

To match all this to TFT mechanics I use the above ideas to make a few
'judgements' about J-ombies at this point.

As J-ombies are so much slower at 'perception' than player Figures this is
going to have significant effects on a number of things so I've tried to
limit J-ombie Actions to the point that the main concern for players in this
setup should be Engagement.

To keep things simple I'm giving the J-ombies a bit of a break and allowing
them their 'free attack' when a player disengages on a 1 on 1d6 check.

I reduce down to 1d6 on the check because of the mob effect I'll describe in
a bit.

I also restrict J-ombies to a kind of linked Action to try and infect a
player Figure.

A J-ombie must first grapple a player Figure and then hang on long enough to
attempt a Action to bite or otherwise 'hit' a player Figure.

All they need is a scratch, but this as well as J-ombie nature in other ways
means that this 'scenario' is gonna make use of the 'Aimed Shots' and
'Crippling Hits' stuff (TFT AM, pg 20 & 21), not to mention knockdown.

Before that though there's the actual MA.

As I implied above I intend to use lots and lots of J-ombies to make this
work.

The idea is for players to last out the passing of a big herd of J-ombies
much like a slow-moving stampede.

But, of course, players don't always want to cooperate with a GM's best laid
plans.

As I'm trying to be general here I'm going to describe the movement of the
horde in more conceptual terms and suggest possible scenarios without
dictating.

So, when moving en mass J-ombies tend to maintain a separation of 1 Figure
per hex.

On the 'conceptual' side of things, where I'm worried about game-tools and
how they fit a GM's 'wizard chest' or on a 'dinning-room' table, I use 8''
by 10'' pages to describe a 'unit' of hexes that can be adapted to a GM's
needs and resources.

I need some kind of 'unit' for this to describe how much bigger the J-ombie
herd is compared to the size of the game-tools I can lay out on the table.

If the players decide to hunker down and defend through the herd the
physical size of the mob is largely academic and tells a GM how many turns
the players have to deal with on coming J-ombies but if they try moving
relative to the herd this can be important from a fairness point of view.

As I've mentioned before I think, there are 1.5 million TFT-hexes in a
square mile more or less depending on how you draw them.

That's a pretty hard population to get to even in modern situations.

Still, it's a good idea for a visual of what I'm talking about and I'll
offer options to pair this population down once I've got the general ideas
across.

The idea is lots of J-ombies that pile up around players.

So squared up that's pretty much 1228 hexes per side of the square mile.

That's 123 pages n/s (10 1 inch hexes) by 154 pages e/w (8 1 inch hexes).

If each hex represents a page it's still well over 10 feet by 10 feet of
game-tool 8'' by 10'' pages to lay out a square mile at such a scale.

What this concept can help with is a group of players who try to run away.

As even the fast 'trot' of MA 12 is over a page to a page and a half of MA
per turn and in the worst scenario it can only be about 75 pages to get out
of the mob if a player can move unopposed this lets a GM count player
attempts to run rather than make a stand.

On the 'adventure' side of thing when considering how this 'fits' into a
game-world I have it setup where I envision a large rolling plain deep on a
misty night, the players woken from their sleep when the watch calls the
alarm.

The night and the mist lets the J-ombies get fairly close and then the
players must wake and decide on a course of Action with very little time
until they become overrun.

If they wish to flee they must abandon much equipment likely.

No time to don armour for example.

J-ombies like to keep a separation of 1 J-ombie per hex in a situation like
this and always move into a front-hex.

When all front hexes are open I roll 1d3 to pick left to right and 1d2
(coin) when 2 front hexes are open elseif take the open hex.

Up to 3 zombies can pack into 1 hex in jam situations.

When zombies backup follow the same procedure for open hex movement when
packing the hexes, first to 2 deep then 3 per hex.

2 J-ombies in a hex each check against 4d6 and 3 check against 5d6 for
grapples or bites.

Player get 8 Actions to a single J-ombie Action but a player must attempt to
shed a J-ombie grapple before attempting any other Action and J-ombies still
get a 1 in 6 shot at a free-attack if a player Figure engages and disengages
with those Actions in the same turn.

As players move roughly twice as fast they may also shift Figures 2 hexes
(while remaining engaged) in an Action as opposed to a J-ombies 1 hex shift,
letting them circle around to a J-ombies rear-hex in a turn or two if
unopposed.


 Uhhh, had a few isp issues here just now...

Sending this part just in case...
=====
Post to the entire list by writing to tft@brainiac.com.
Unsubscribe by mailing to majordomo@brainiac.com with the message body
"unsubscribe tft"