My Life As A Gamer: Running Through The Rifts (Pt. 6)

(Following from yesterday's post.)

Adjudicating This

The Referee leaned a lot on the implications of Uncle Kevin's manuscript, supplemented by the Dungeon Master's Guide for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 1st Edition, liberal use of Google Maps/Translate/etc., and too much coffee.

Because Alex isn't using automobiles of any sort, but instead riding a summoned horse, the Referee is able to use the Overland charts in the DMG compared against the satellite map for the real El Paso and surrounding area (adjusted for RIFTS weirdness). Thus he spent a few hours riding out and a few more riding back. Random encounters are down to 1 in 20 due to Halloway's mercenaries being present all over that zone drawn out from El Paso about 80 miles in all directions (as this fits the definition of a Patrolled area as per the DMG). That explains the lack thereof.

The lack of a Reaction Roll procedure forced the Referee to rely hard on Alex's MA and PB scores to compensate. (You could just use it straight from the DMG and then use MA and PB abilities if the scores merit it.) The D-Bees encountered at the hospital were randonly rolled from a hand-compiled list of slave stock available at Atlantis in the markets.

The attempted ambush was a literal pair of opposed skill checks. The Vagabond was a 1st level character who managed to fail his Eyeball a Feller check; had that succeeded, Alex would have had a far worse time. But in dealing with said opponent Alex revealed (a) his superhuman speed and (b) his ability to use magic (the horse ride back to town) and failed to notice (opposed checks again) that he was being watched by someone that did know how to hide.

The end result is that Alex's first sortie was a short and (all things considered) breezy one, but given the player's stated intention to try to keep Alex's capabilities masked for as long as possible that's fine.

The Referee drops a DM to the guy running the Coalition Intelligence officer running local operations on there being a guy with superhuman speed and the ability to summon a magic horse investigating his attempt to screw over King Halloway's plans to form an alliance by marriage with one of the Colorado Barons. The Referee also tells this Patron that this is a man calling himself "Rah Deen" (written "Ron Deen") and asks what the Patron intends to do about it. The Patron says he's out of town and will get back to him this weekend.

In the meantime, Alex has made a positive contact with the militia and by proxy to Halloway; it's not enough to get an in with either faction yet, but it's a start.

Downtime

Alex has no mandatory downtime of significance; the battery pack for his rifle recharges overnight. He is available for action immediately; he's spending time reviewing Wild Cat activity as of late, and if there's been any serious moves by the game before their attack on the foreign prince and tracking other bounty hunter activity.

Accounting

Alex is still a 1st level Demigod, but now has just under 2000 experience points to go before leveling up.

Time Mapped To Calendar: Two days.

Faction Status: El Paso Militia (Neutral, but increasing), Halloway (Neutral), Coalition Intelligence (Unfriendly).

Commentary

While Palladium's rules have issues that need fixing, Uncle Kevin manages to have a decide good idea at the core on a consistent basis; he just sucks at fulfilling the potential.

Firefights are that in action. Having to spend your attack to Dodge makes (a) winning Initiative and (b) having more Attacks/Round than the other guy(s) matter.

Being able to force the other guy to forfeit his attacks to Dodge, and eventually to run him out of attacks (and thus actions), is a big deal because all those unanswered shots are just free damage if you hit.

Were this either an all-SDC game (ala Ninjas & Superspies or Heroes Unlimited) or an all-MDC environment (e.g. a Coalition Army base) then rushing from cover to cover (instead of just shooting through it) would be far more viable. MD weapons in a SDC environment, on the other hand, makes cover moot unless it's very big or very dense.

The other thing to note is that real firearms have entire categories of rifles that routinely range out to 1000 yards (i.e. a kilometer or more); you can watch people do that on YouTube. Uncle Kevin's refusal to (a) update his knowledge of technology and (b) ignorance of how the real stuff he basis his rules upon works is glaring here; a Barret can reach out to a full mile (1.6 km) easily and did in Afghanistan. MD counterparts have no excuse for not having equal or better range, especially railguns.

The last thing to note is that combat reflects Kevin's Silver Age Comics sensibilities, when source material across the generations points this as--at best--Save Or Suck levels of danger if struck. (Oh, and thanks to recent animation and physics knowledge, we get stuff like SODAZ showing how lasers would work if they could be weaponized as imagined; yes this fits, the Coalition is the proto-Imperium.)

Meanwhile, we have filmmakers that either have first-hand training/experience or listen to those that did making stuff like this. Palladium handles this poorly.

I would note that the energy weapon equivalent of a suppressor is tuning the laser to be outside visible light; there's just a crack and someone gets popped. I imagine it would be like watching very old Dr. Who serials.

Palladium combat is built around comic book slugfests--literal "Brawl at Tony's" stuff--and it's only with some later additions that firefights are anything reasonable. Modern military vehicles? Nope; Palladium fails at Beyond Visual Range out of the box as Comics Don't Do That.

So we'll do that soon. And some other stuff that's commonplace in a RIFTS campaign.

Tomorrow will be about another topic; we'll come back to this next week sometime.