[Reign of Steel: Will to live] SAS template Duty justified?

[Wicked Lurker]

Hey, just reading through the update of my beloved Reign of Steel and started pondering when reading the SAS template there.

Under "Disadvantages" the template lists:
Duty (SAS; 15 or less; Extremely Hazardous) [-20].

Given that RoS is a fairly gritty scenario and that whoever ventures out into the various killer-robot infested zones is likely performing an extremely hazardous task, I wondered if the point gain here can really be justified taking actual gameplay into account (ie the "real" disadvantage this Duty gives is actually negligible and will likely more act as a Contact that comes up with missions).

While compared to a non-adventurer sheltered away somewhere the SAS soldier surely lives a MUCH more hazardous life, the RoS setting itself is pretty hazardous for most and in a group of adventurers the SAS soldier won't actually be exposed to more risk than the others in practical terms.

The SAS is also unlikely, in practical/game terms, to call upon our soldier (as in Duty) to do something while the other characters twiddle their thumbs and wait in safety.

So: can the point cost be justified?

[Boomerang]

By my reading of the Reign of Steel source book zone London is relatively safe for humans. So for games based in and around the UK the disadvantage makes sense.

[Johnny1A.2]

Originally Posted by Wicked Lurker

Hey, just reading through the update of my beloved Reign of Steel and started pondering when reading the SAS template there.

Under "Disadvantages" the template lists:
Duty (SAS; 15 or less; Extremely Hazardous) [-20].

Given that RoS is a fairly gritty scenario and that whoever ventures out into the various killer-robot infested zones is likely performing an extremely hazardous task, I wondered if the point gain here can really be justified taking actual gameplay into account (ie the "real" disadvantage this Duty gives is actually negligible and will likely more act as a Contact that comes up with missions).

While compared to a non-adventurer sheltered away somewhere the SAS soldier surely lives a MUCH more hazardous life, the RoS setting itself is pretty hazardous for most and in a group of adventurers the SAS soldier won't actually be exposed to more risk than the others in practical terms.

The SAS is also unlikely, in practical/game terms, to call upon our soldier (as in Duty) to do something while the other characters twiddle their thumbs and wait in safety.

So: can the point cost be justified?

Yes, because Zone London is more or less a safe zone. The London Zonemind is very 'nice' to its human subjects, complete to letting them maintain a functioning government and military force. A Briton, Irishman, or Icelander can live in their villages and small towns fairly safely and peacefully, as long as they leave the robots alone. They have a functional economy and light manufacturing base, police, fire and medical services, long-distance land line communications, etc.

In fact, by world standards, Zone London is paradisiacal.

(I posited a theory about why that might be a few years ago, here: http://forums.sjgames.com/showpost.p...8&postcount=13 )

But the SAS sometimes operates outside the British Isles, and does actively dangerous work, so yeah, the Duty applies.

[RogerBW]

(puts on author's hat)

The most important thing is: it's your game, you do what you like with it. If you don't want to include the Duty or don't think it's Extremely Hazardous, then leave it out!

Looked at from a metagame perspective, what matters is the difference between the SAS soldier and other characters. If your campaign is about SAS soldiers, then that's easy: just roll the required disadvantage into the point budget, because every PC has it.

But if the group is mixed… the SAS soldier is the one who's going to get sudden orders from home saying "go to this very dangerous place and poke the robots with a stick, for Reasons". Where the rest of the group can say "eh, we're still hurting after last time", the soldier has given an oath and they've got to keep it. Does that justify the bonus points? I think so.

[Wicked Lurker]

@RogerBW
I've been GMing for 30 years or so, I'm generally very comfortable with changing things around or ignoring rules. Things still should be consistent and balanced in the books though, right?

As you said, if the SAS soldier would have to go on lots of dangerous solo missions while the other characters chill out, this is likely not going to happen. I don't think the GM will roll with that in a real world situation.
Therefore the Duty, at least in my mind, should not be worth 20 points because it isn't a disadvantage compared to players who don't have it.

@Johnny1A.2 and Boomerang
I agree that if the game took place in a speicial environment this disadvantage may make sense - but the SAS template doesn't have a mitigator that the character can only be in Zone London.

My understanding is that a disadvantage is only worth it's points if it is actually a disadvantage. Ie. Bad Sight isn't worth as much if you have corrective glasses and next to nothing if you get corrective surgery.

[Daigoro]

Disads that require PCs to go off on solo mission don't work very well, be they Duty, Loner, Bipolar or whatever, though they may be realistic to have.

Duty could be used to give conflicting motives for the party though. Perhaps the team are happy to just destroy any robots they come across, but the SAS guy has orders to capture one alive.

[Boomerang]

In my experience if one PC has extremely hazardous duty as a disadvantage then all the PCs tend to suffer the consequences. So I say one in all in. The other PCs should have the disadvantage extremely hazardous duty (goes on missions with SAS soldiers).

[Boomerang]

@ Wicked Lurker,

Fair enough. I tend to be fairly lenient with disadvantages like duties, secrets and enemies even though often the point benefit isn’t really justified. I prefer heroic PCs who aren’t burdened with crippling personality disorders.

[Kromm]

It has already been explained why this Duty makes sense in Zone London.

As to whether it's fair for one character to have a Duty while others do not:

The sorts of organizations that demand a Duty of those who work for them don't normally send their personnel off on operations with random people who do not work for them. Thus, SAS personnel who go off on SAS assignments mostly make sense only in all-SAS campaigns . . . you don't see random civilians attached to SAS troops in the real world, and I doubt the SAS would change that policy in a world that's many times more dangerous.

You might see "task forces" made up of SAS personnel plus people from other organizations that have an equal level of training and demand an equal level of Duty. In that case, those people should get the same number of points from Duty. That would be a campaign-level decision . . . the GM would have to rule that there's, say, an emergency medical response unit whose members use the bush doctor template with the SAS soldier disadvantages.

But what makes no sense in this discussion isn't actually "SAS soldiers have Duty, everybody else doesn't, so everybody else pays for that one PC's Duty," but rather "people who aren't SAS soldiers or their equals are sent off on missions with SAS soldiers." We're talking about a 15 or less Duty here, so there aren't going to be many moments, if any, in the life of an SAS soldier PC which aren't SAS missions, during which it would make sense for other character types to hang around with them.

The closest you might get to that would be a civilian expert in something the SAS has no experts in, temporarily attached to an SAS troop for one specific assignment. In that case, it's absolutely fair for the SAS soldiers to get points for their Duty while others do not, because protecting that civilian with their lives is part of that Duty. Yes, the civilian might feel the effects of a -20-point Duty that isn't theirs, but that'll be more than balanced by the fact that they effectively have Allies (Four-man SAS patrol; 100% of PC's power; 15 or less) [60]. While PCs don't normally count as Allies, remember that these ones aren't free to act like PCs normally do . . . they'll face martial law if they don't lay down their lives for the civilian.

[Wicked Lurker]

Thanks all for your input guys.

@Kromm:

But what makes no sense in this discussion isn't actually "SAS soldiers have Duty, everybody else doesn't, so everybody else pays for that one PC's Duty," but rather "people who aren't SAS soldiers or their equals are sent off on missions with SAS soldiers." We're talking about a 15 or less Duty here, so there aren't going to be many moments, if any, in the life of an SAS soldier PC which aren't SAS missions, during which it would make sense for other character types to hang around with them.

Given we are talking about a fictional world a better way to put this would probably be to say "what makes no sense to me"..

In any case, maybe your definition of SAS here is more based on current times than mine which I base more on the situation in RoS - as I understand it at least.

I think of Terminator and similar SciFi movies where mixed groups of SF soldiers with whoever else (typically a hacker, a rescued hostage, an important asset, ..) is a common occurence and if anything, RoS suggests that SAS may be operating outside of London to test their anti-bot warfare techniques.