Zoopunk - Session 2 - Lots of Explosions
Yesterday was our second game of Zoopunk - two players joined and some house rules were codified.
Characters
• Jürgen Popper (Jack) - Rat Hacker
• Xiang Shuei (Lu) - Siamese Cat Soldier
• Salman Rushdie (NPC'd and given to Jack as A. was absent) - Rhino Shabiya
• Faust Lachapelle (Sam) - Goat Psychic and Diplomat
• Pabu Bei Fong (N) - Firefox Hacker and Ex-Cop
What Happened?
• Jürgen, Xiang and Salman had just found the corpse of Filou, but decided to leave his place when the local junkie rats started frothing at the mouth. Jürgen got into a short brawl with one of the enraged rodent and shot himself in the feet.
• Lachapelle and Bei Fong were sent as reinforcements by Mr. Johnson and were waiting for the rest of the crew at a bar, and while Jürgen went straight to the bathroom to deal with his wound, the others socialized a bit and exchanged intel on their operation.
• While they were talking, a hit squad pulled off a well-organized assault on the bar to try and capture them, which might have succeeded were it not for the cops' arrival - most people involved either died or were critically injured, and all of the PC ended up in custody, plus two of the wolves they managed to neutralize.
• At the police station, Xiang Shuei used her background in the country's secret services and Pabu his connection with the D.A. to get the police's cooperation and they started interrogating the wolf for more informations, but he didn't give them much before another squad assaulted the police station to get the two prisoners back.
• Knowing the Balalaïka would move soon - with the PC as a third-party, the deal would probably be called off or at least its location and date changed - they decided to steal a car and rush to the docks to board the ship and try to get the shipment. This involved stealing a small boat and some hacking, but eventually the party got aboard.
• Xiang Shuei saw Kochtcheï in the flesh but decided against trying to take on him, and used the police forces that were tipped off about the boat's shipment as a distraction - the wolves fought back hard, and with laser rifles they made short work of Shanghai's finest but it allowed the party to reach the cargo hold, where they found the rifles in a container.
• At this point, a torpedo blew a hole in the hold and the wolves decided to abandon the ship. The party also fled before the army got here, and later used another contact's mini-submarine to recover the container and get the weapon shipment back to their rightful owner - the japanese imperial protectorate, a frienemy of the CPA.
What Went Well
• Despite having a larger party than usual, we managed to finish the mission in four hours and still had some time to debrief and handle two characters' leveling up.
• New characters meant a lot of interesting social interactions between the players.
• Having prepared the hit squad's assault beforehand as a consequence of some laxism in the team's previous infiltration of the docks, I took great joy in sending my well-armed soldiers to kill, maim or capture the PC - one of a rare instance of proactive antagonism, which put a lot of pressure on the PC and forced them to react in a difficult situation and without preparation.
What I Learned - Additional House Rules & Corrections
• About Psychic Powers: I slightly changed the way Psi Powers are acquired, as discussed in the updated House Rules document. It's a minor change but it makes the short list of powers (10) a bit more difficult to complete and gives more variety amongst Psi Users. Hey, Psi-User is a cool name!
• I tried Individual Initiative for a bit during the bar fight, and I am definitely sticking to group initiative as before in next games: I found that it mainly slowed the action down and didn't really help the players coordinate their actions. Group Initiative it is.
• Kinetic Shields are easy to forget, yet they are supposed to be quite a big deal in the setting. As a response, I am considering new ways to codify them in the rules. For now, I'm thinking that they'll simply give AC 2 against firearms, although it may change in the future.
• We did not use my simple ammo rules, so I'll probably just ignore ammo in the future, as I did in most of my Cyberpunk games. Or I'll use Luck Rolls instead of strict book-keeping.
• HD are rolled at the beginning of a fight, but keeping track of each HD is tedious so my simple rule is: sometimes, HP loss comes with specific injuries when it makes sense in fiction - we had a dislocated shoulder during a CQC fight between Bei Fong and a Wolf, for exemple. I immediately discarded my "Withstand Adversity rule to survive at 0hp" to use my traditional "death at 0hp" rule for simplicity's sake and to encourage caution in fights, although Withstand Adversity checks can still be used when low on HP or after taking a particularly nasty blow.
• Using the Attack Matrix is fine, mostly because I heavily dislike giving modifiers to the players' rolls as it tends to put their minds away from the fiction and into rules-thinking, but it could be smoother. Considering that most engagements are in Close range, I will probably make an alternative attack matrix to handle firearms better in that regard, as all ranged weapons have bonus at Close and Medium range in OD&D (+4 and +2 respectively). This way, instead of applying the bonus while I look up the chart, I could just have a common "Close Range & Melee Hit Chart", then another for Medium & Long Range engagements, which are the more "unusual" case in my games.
Characters
• Jürgen Popper (Jack) - Rat Hacker
• Xiang Shuei (Lu) - Siamese Cat Soldier
• Salman Rushdie (NPC'd and given to Jack as A. was absent) - Rhino Shabiya
• Faust Lachapelle (Sam) - Goat Psychic and Diplomat
• Pabu Bei Fong (N) - Firefox Hacker and Ex-Cop
What Happened?
• Jürgen, Xiang and Salman had just found the corpse of Filou, but decided to leave his place when the local junkie rats started frothing at the mouth. Jürgen got into a short brawl with one of the enraged rodent and shot himself in the feet.
• Lachapelle and Bei Fong were sent as reinforcements by Mr. Johnson and were waiting for the rest of the crew at a bar, and while Jürgen went straight to the bathroom to deal with his wound, the others socialized a bit and exchanged intel on their operation.
• While they were talking, a hit squad pulled off a well-organized assault on the bar to try and capture them, which might have succeeded were it not for the cops' arrival - most people involved either died or were critically injured, and all of the PC ended up in custody, plus two of the wolves they managed to neutralize.
• At the police station, Xiang Shuei used her background in the country's secret services and Pabu his connection with the D.A. to get the police's cooperation and they started interrogating the wolf for more informations, but he didn't give them much before another squad assaulted the police station to get the two prisoners back.
• Knowing the Balalaïka would move soon - with the PC as a third-party, the deal would probably be called off or at least its location and date changed - they decided to steal a car and rush to the docks to board the ship and try to get the shipment. This involved stealing a small boat and some hacking, but eventually the party got aboard.
• Xiang Shuei saw Kochtcheï in the flesh but decided against trying to take on him, and used the police forces that were tipped off about the boat's shipment as a distraction - the wolves fought back hard, and with laser rifles they made short work of Shanghai's finest but it allowed the party to reach the cargo hold, where they found the rifles in a container.
• At this point, a torpedo blew a hole in the hold and the wolves decided to abandon the ship. The party also fled before the army got here, and later used another contact's mini-submarine to recover the container and get the weapon shipment back to their rightful owner - the japanese imperial protectorate, a frienemy of the CPA.
What Went Well
• Despite having a larger party than usual, we managed to finish the mission in four hours and still had some time to debrief and handle two characters' leveling up.
• New characters meant a lot of interesting social interactions between the players.
• Having prepared the hit squad's assault beforehand as a consequence of some laxism in the team's previous infiltration of the docks, I took great joy in sending my well-armed soldiers to kill, maim or capture the PC - one of a rare instance of proactive antagonism, which put a lot of pressure on the PC and forced them to react in a difficult situation and without preparation.
What I Learned - Additional House Rules & Corrections
• About Psychic Powers: I slightly changed the way Psi Powers are acquired, as discussed in the updated House Rules document. It's a minor change but it makes the short list of powers (10) a bit more difficult to complete and gives more variety amongst Psi Users. Hey, Psi-User is a cool name!
• I tried Individual Initiative for a bit during the bar fight, and I am definitely sticking to group initiative as before in next games: I found that it mainly slowed the action down and didn't really help the players coordinate their actions. Group Initiative it is.
• Kinetic Shields are easy to forget, yet they are supposed to be quite a big deal in the setting. As a response, I am considering new ways to codify them in the rules. For now, I'm thinking that they'll simply give AC 2 against firearms, although it may change in the future.
• We did not use my simple ammo rules, so I'll probably just ignore ammo in the future, as I did in most of my Cyberpunk games. Or I'll use Luck Rolls instead of strict book-keeping.
• HD are rolled at the beginning of a fight, but keeping track of each HD is tedious so my simple rule is: sometimes, HP loss comes with specific injuries when it makes sense in fiction - we had a dislocated shoulder during a CQC fight between Bei Fong and a Wolf, for exemple. I immediately discarded my "Withstand Adversity rule to survive at 0hp" to use my traditional "death at 0hp" rule for simplicity's sake and to encourage caution in fights, although Withstand Adversity checks can still be used when low on HP or after taking a particularly nasty blow.
• Using the Attack Matrix is fine, mostly because I heavily dislike giving modifiers to the players' rolls as it tends to put their minds away from the fiction and into rules-thinking, but it could be smoother. Considering that most engagements are in Close range, I will probably make an alternative attack matrix to handle firearms better in that regard, as all ranged weapons have bonus at Close and Medium range in OD&D (+4 and +2 respectively). This way, instead of applying the bonus while I look up the chart, I could just have a common "Close Range & Melee Hit Chart", then another for Medium & Long Range engagements, which are the more "unusual" case in my games.
One of the benefits of individual initiative is the way it prevents full coordination. Just like one of the benefits of monsters is that they prevent easy resource management and getting treasure easily. Individual initiative encourages certain kinds of problem solving and feels less mechanically gamified, imo. That said, I have no real problem with party initiative either, ESPECIALLY in a game with a lot of players. =)
ReplyDeleteYou're really playing a very different sort of OD&D game and that's very neat.
That's exactly what prompted me to try it, but what happened instead was that not only did action slow down, but players started speaking out of turn to tell others what to do instead of vaguely coordinate. Usually in Group Initiative, there's a lot of everyone doing what they feel like and it goes faster, so I don't feel like it's a safety net for the PC, coordination-wise.
ReplyDeleteAnother style of initiative I like - I don't always stick to one sort, as the play report shows, is "no initiative": everyone tries to do their thing and we resolve things as it comes. In Zaibatsu which is one of my inspirations for this, the only initiative is Melee goes before Ranged.
Actually, I'll try that next time! All melee attacks happen at the same time, then all ranged attacks happen at the same time.
I've always liked that idea but have never tried it. If all melee attacks happen at once, what happens when a player's attack kills a monster (or the reverse?) Does the dead character's damage still apply?
DeleteYes. Everyone involved in the melee gets to resolve their attack even if they will die once the damage on them has been applied. Not only is it fast to resolve but it makes combat even more visceral - one of you could win, or everyone could lose.
DeleteThat's how I'd want to do it!
Delete