Fast forward cyberpunk action game

[hal]

I don't know if you'll find this useful or not, but it was created using David Pulver's armor rules from the various Pyramid articles and was inspired by CP2020's universe.

If you want to have fun with the coat, you might put in a IFF beacon in it to light up only when hit with the proper code sequence. This helps the owner FIND his coat in the event it is stolen. It can also be used by internal security forces to know where the principle they're supposed to be protecting is located.



ARASAKA Limited SPYDER COAT:
Designed from a more utilitarian styled light “Duster” style coat, the Arasaka Spyder coat was designed with an eye towards a more fashionable “overcoat” than anything else. Made of the finest synthetic Arachnoweave, this coat will cover up to half of the throat if the collar is pulled up, otherwise none of the collar if pulled down. In addition, it covers the entirety of the users arms and torso, right down to the user’s knees. Available in many colors and as of this time, 14 different patterns, the Spyder Coat released Fall of 2047, will be a good addition to any executive’s clothing wardrobe. This clothing is for discriminating buyers whose wealth demands both style and functionality. Anyone who recognizes this as an Arasaka Limited, will usually be suitably impressed – as the coat itself is almost as expensive as a small car.

Cost: $39,000
Weight: 8.2 lbs

Game specifics: This armor can be targeted using the chinks in armor rules. Its DR is 24/6 – 24 against bullets, and 6 against other forms of attacks. Time to don is 3 seconds for full DR, or 2 seconds but with a gap in armor with a DR 0 (the front being unbuttoned/unzipped) that is visible from the front. Most people who wear the coat tend to leave the top unbuttoned or unzipped (it can come in either format) thereby exposing a small portion of the upper chest just below the throat.

Note: the standard Overcoat used by Arasaka employees or Guards costs as little as $9,750 for essentially the same stats. These come in plain Black. The reason these are priced at nearly 25% the cost for the Spyder Overcoat, is due to the fact that the Spyder Overcoat is a luxury item and has more intricate patterns and colors. A more utilitarian coat without the frills costs considerably less.

In Arasaka Corp, the guards wear the dark grey overcoats, with officers being permitted to wear pure black overcoats. It is perhaps ironic that in Japan, black denotes "non-being" and can be used to denote mystery or the night. It has the ironic meaning of also meaning an evil hearted individual. For an officer to wear it in public usually instills a form of dread.

[The Benj]

Originally Posted by OldSam

PS: One additional question just came up: What would be a good way to model a melee attack move/option, that gets your character behind his opponent to use him as cover/armor against an imminent gun shot from the opposition? (I'm rather referring to some kind of grappling or so than just stepping to the back hex, as in the latter case the other guy could just step sideways and attack normally).

Any ideas?

Now I'm picturing something like the opposite of a Sacrificial Dodge. :D

[acrosome]

Litigation? Take the modern highly litigious US society to an extreme that has all of the corporations arming their security with "less lethal" weaponry. We're sort of headed that way in reality.

Tenex and Daigoro are on the right track.

[ericthered]

When I'm discouraging guns, I:


1) don't allow predictive shot
2) allow a bare minimum success to dodge all shots, not one for each margin of success
3) drop the cost of ST to 5 (others are advocating more extreme versions of this)
4) halve the damage of guns and give them a (2) armor divisor.

[Purple Snit]

To me, the obvious answer to "how do I stop guns ruining my game" is not to use guns IN the game unless it's a particularly deadly gang or dangerous encounter. Honestly, they aren't prevalent everywhere, and the GM can determine who has them and who uses them.

[OldSam]

Ok, thanks for all the ideas so far, seems I'll need to further think about that, as there are so many different approaches.

I see the point of not liking to artifically limit guns, I don't really like that either, indeed my preference would be something in the way of enhancing the chances of the melee guy to avoid being shot easily ;)

[OldSam]

Originally Posted by The Benj

Now I'm picturing something like the opposite of a Sacrificial Dodge. :D

hehe ;)

...Originally Posted by OldSam...
PS: One additional question just came up: What would be a good way to model a melee attack move/option, that gets your character behind his opponent to use him as cover/armor against an imminent gun shot from the opposition? (I'm rather referring to some kind of grappling or so than just stepping to the back hex, as in the latter case the other guy could just step sideways and attack normally).
...

For that question I'm still searching for some ideas by the way...

I'm currently thinking about something like a kind of easier disarm grappling attack, because one of the main factors of that move should be to block the opponent's gun (though not actually disarming), usually IRL one would block a shoulder from behind, grab a part of the arm or something like that... Also it is a kind of "binding"...

[Maz]

Originally Posted by OldSam

hehe ;)

...Originally Posted by OldSam...
PS: One additional question just came up: What would be a good way to model a melee attack move/option, that gets your character behind his opponent to use him as cover/armor against an imminent gun shot from the opposition? (I'm rather referring to some kind of grappling or so than just stepping to the back hex, as in the latter case the other guy could just step sideways and attack normally).
...

Once again, look at the Extra Effort in combat rules. There is a Heroic Charge that allow a full move and an attack without penalty. With that you could move around and attempt a grab from behind. Ofcourse the target still gets a defense as this is a Rundaround Attack... but suffers a -2 penalty.

[hal]

Regards to grappling someone and using them as a human shield against someone else's aim with a gun...

When you grapple with someone, you are technically in the same hex. If anyone shoots at you and misses, they have to roll to avoid hitting the other person in the line of fire.

So, technically, someone firing past two people, at a person grappling a third, and has two more people directly behind, would follow a sequence like this.

Roll to hit main target. Because he's covered by someone in front of him, there is a penalty to hit the main target (based on coverage area). If the shot was missed - then you start with the FIRST person that was in the line of fire closest to the shooter. Roll vs a 9 or less to hit that target unexpectedly. Then roll against the second person. Then roll against the third person being used as a shield. Then roll against the fourth person behind the initial target, and finally, roll against the last and final target.

In my gaming crew, we had it an unwritten rule, to NEVER allow the one player's character to be armed with a gun, crossbow, or bow in any campaign, without him being in FRONT of the rest of the gaming crew's characters. The number of times that player would engage in so called friendly fire (which ain't!!!) became legendary.

Now, that example above with six people in the line of fire is an extreme one. But remember too, that handgun use in a small apartment/room is often crazy to begin with. In one cyberpunk campaign, one of the player characters went under the knife for a cybernetic enhancement, and a personal enemy got in on the action by sending an assassin with a silenced pistol to put paid to him while he was hooked up to the IV and hospital sensors monitoring his health etc. The grappling with the assassin by another team mate while trying to avoid the bed-ridden character became almost comical. Eventually, the Assassin fled down the flight of stairs and ditched his pistol out the window while up on the floor (about 10 floors up). The player characters involved in that campaign became EXCEEDINGLY worried about hospital security after that run in.

Sadly, the one player involved in that campaign that was a major fun player, died unexpectedly. But it was he who had the smarts to approach me (as GM) during a session saying "Hey Hal, could you under-report our earnings by half from now on in any thing I broker?" His plan? He'd get paid 100,000 in cash for a job, report that he was offered 50,000. Splitting that equally meant that the other player got 25,000. He'd pocket 25,000 openly, and hide the remaining $50,000 in another account as an emergency slush fund. Why? Because that other player (the one whose character was in the hospital scenario? Was the one who always took shots regardless of potentially hitting the wrong person in the line of fire).

In all, had a lot of fun with those two players. Also? When one player says "Two can play that game" - be prepared for some misguided machismo that may end up going awry. When an NPC idiot slaps a stick of dynamite (sweating dynamite I might add) against a wall to force the player to behave, you sort of don't expect the player to grab another sweating stick of dynamite and slap it as well. Once the player character uttered those infamous words, and got a roll indicating the sweating stick went off in his hand (in the same room and near vicintity with more of the old dynamite sticks no less) I had to say "Fade to black, shift to new vantage point. Scene, outside the shop you were in, a more or less calm but busy street with crowded shops together on a barely two car wide old city street, erupts into chaos as the plate glass window expands outwardly with a sudden energy. The resulting billowing of a large mushrooming cloud of dirt obscured instantly everything from the center of that shop out to 30 feet either way. Then the screaming began as people outside begin to feel the pain of the broken glass shards and debris. Of the American in the shop and the shop owner, little was there to be found..."

The thing to remember about any cyberpunk campaign? Characters can bite the bullet quickly. The other thing to remember in a GURPS CYBERPUNK campaign? REO MEATWAGON (from CP2020) or other means of emergency medical services can be on hand to where a dying character can be stabilized. If they can be stabilized, the wounded can be rushed to surgery. If at first, the patient dies on the table, they can be brought back (if lucky).

Had one character in a Fight club like scene under the city "bay bridge" (Gibson Memorial Highway if that helps any!) go up against a ripper armed brawler whose skill was a 9 in brawling. Telegraphed blows to the head because he was a "Crowd pleaser" going up against a skill 14 martial artist should have been a no brainer win for the player. Instead - he had his eye orb socket ruined, his nasal cavity ruined by the slicers, got picked up by a flying evac unit, rushed to the hospital, died, brought back and finally saved (all by die rolls and rules as written).

I miss those runs. ;)

[Tenex]

Originally Posted by OldSam

I see the point of not liking to artifically limit guns, I don't really like that either, indeed my preference would be something in the way of enhancing the chances of the melee guy to avoid being shot easily ;)

So here's the inescapable reality: guns are the most effective personally portable weapon in the real world for the last 200 years or so. They do a lot of damage and they are relatively easy to use.

So how to give melee guys a chance?

Stay in the real world.

Police get a decent amount of training, but they turn in a poor performance in real world gunfights:

"The average hit rate for NYPD Officers involved in a gunfight between 1998 and 2006 was 18 percent. For every five shots, four bullets missed the intended target and went somewhere else. And that hit rate is consistent with the "normal" hit rate in armed encounters which hasn't changed much for years and years. The average hit rate for Officers who shot at subjects who did not return fire, was 30 percent. Officers hit their targets 37 percent of the time at distances of seven yards or less. And hit rates fell off sharply to 23 percent at longer ranges." SOURCE: http://pointshooting.com/1arand.htm

You can surf around and do your own research, but the above is fairly typical of police. Now, are criminals likely to have more or less training than the police? I would argue less. Especially if public gun ranges in your campaign require positive ID and a clean criminal background to use them. In the US today, private shooting and tactics instructors require proof of a clean criminal record in order to enroll in their classes.

Police typically don't spend more than 10% of their time in the academy on firearms training. Collateral training on weapon retention, building clearing tactics, etc. might be given, but pure range time spent on accurate shooting would be less than 10% even in a very aggressive combat oriented academy. So in a 6 month academy you get 40 hrs per week X 26 weeks X 10% = 104 hours of gun training. Per B292-293 rules on improvement through study, it requires 200 hours to gain a point in a skill. Intensive training (which I would argue the police academy is NOT) gives the best return on time invested at 2:1 hours of learning for hour of time expended. So arguably, the police in the longest, most aggressive academy in the US are getting at best 208 hours of effective learning in guns. So one point to burn on a easy skill gives you Attribute +0.

At least in this regard GURPS is modeling a skill level that comports to real life law enforcement shooting performance.

The military spends even less time training non-combat and non-infantry troops in firearms.

So if a character, NPC or PC, is going to have a high guns skill, make them have a spec ops, or SWAT background. If a private citizen wants high gun skill they would need to buy a sufficient level of wealth that they could afford the training. Just say that regardless of how many character points are available, the character can't expend more than one in guns without an exotic background.

Now PCs can make whatever background they want, but at least this will keep the guns skill level down for the NPCs.

I've seen rough statistics that 10% of cops that get shot are shot with their own guns. Presumably all those attackers weren't highly skilled martial artists with disarming skill. The nature of real life is that if you want to do something other than just kill someone, i.e. rob, rape, kidnap, etc. then you need to get within arms distance of them.

It seems PCs with a decent level of disarming skill combined with some acting, fasttalk, streetwise, charisma or whatever to get them close enough to their target would give a melee guy a decent chance. You can also use the rules on crippling hits. Attacking a limb is only -2 and if you do more than 1/2HP damage then you cripple the limb. You could very reasonably institute a house rule saying if you took more than 1/4 or 1/5 HP to an arm you drop whatever you are holding in that hand. I don't suspect modern gunfighters, even if they are wearing body armor, are wearing heavy armor on their gun arm.

Definitely enforce the rules on readying a weapon. Without Fast Draw a gun armed person should not be able to engage someone closer than 21 feet before they can close and engage: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tueller_Drill