Whats In Your... Toolbox?

[swordtart]

Originally Posted by 43Supporter

That is part of the idea of this thread -- think of it as "Chekhov's Gun" for Repairs: In order for the Player to be able to use an Item in the game, the Writer has to show the item being able to perform the task in the instructions. From there, one can more-firmly define other aspects of the game, and avoid some of the problems depicted in Finer Gaming Comics. :)

Yes. my point is that until you decide the plot needs to have a gun fired you wont know if you need a gun on set (let alone what sort of gun).

As the nature of tools is left vague in CW you need to rely on the description of mechanics activities to infer what you need. As those rules are also vague you don't really have anything to go on.

If you start by defining the tools you need to make sure that you do not exclude any of the mechanic activities that might be needed in order to conform to the rules.

Basically the only things we know are that you can repair component X, Y Z. You could perhaps start with what you know about the components (which is also intentionally vague). If you make arbitrary decisions you start changing what is possible.

Example. An unskilled person can salvage any component other than radio, plant or computer from a wreck with nothing more than a mini-mechanic (OK it needs a 12, but it is possible). As these are all electronic components it implies that the mini-mechanic isn't suitable for removing electronic connections intact. It might be safe to assume therefore that the larger kits have some dedicated electronics tools (multi-meter, soldering iron etc).

This starts to look like a system except that the lack of tools doesn't prevent a really good mechanic from doing anything that they could achieve if they had the tools, it just takes them longer (and not necessarily that much longer).

I don't care how much of a Mech God you are I don't see how you can salvage a truck plant with your bare hands, yet a Mechanic +3 has a better than 50:50 chance of achieving exactly that in half an hour.

The rules talk about improvised tools and I think the pocket knife they are talking about is probably a swiss army knife we discusses up-thread - further reinforcing the idea that the mini-mechanic is a bit more than that. You can argue that the Uber-Mechanic has so much experience he is capable of improvising jacks from rocks and tree trunks, welding using car batteries and coins etc. He is basically MacGuyver (even BA in the A-team generally had a shop available to "improvise" his tank out of a bulldozer). I am not sure that it is possible to make that sort of situation credible and in trying you'll just break other things.

I have been trying to rationalise the mechanic and salvage rules for the best part of 30 years on and off and I have concluded that the only way to make the bits fit together is allowing plenty of wiggle room between them. The more you tie down, the less they work. Unless you are intending to toss them out completely just use the rules as written and gloss over the detail.

Focus on the story and not on the set design.

You might want to do this level of restructuring if you have a campaign where salvage and repair is the story. I did this with my F1000 circuit where all cars and equipment had to come in under $1000. You can only do this if you use damaged and jury-rigged components by default, you need to fix things yourself between fights as the rewards are so low, but at least it isn't as lethal as Am-Night. We also had a close focus on between fight expenses (accommodation etc.). It worked, it was CW, but it also needed to be isolated from the normal CW world as otherwise you would have no incentive to stay there (so we had it geographically, culturally and socially isolated).