XXVc Notebook- Martian Combat Gennie

This rank-and-file grunt is based on the "RAM MAR CG" from Countdown to Doomsday, with some help from the Mars in the 25th Century sourcebook.

Martian Combat Gennie

CONCEIVED PURPOSE: Combat gennie

CLIMATE/TERRAIN: Mars, primarily desert and mountain

FREQUENCY: Common

ORGANIZATION: Combat Unit

ACTIVITY CYCLE: Any

DIET: Omnivore

INTELLIGENCE: Low to Average

NO. APPEARING: 1d10

ARMOR CLASS: 7

MOVEMENT: 600, 300 swim

HIT DICE: 4d8

THAC0: 20

NO. OF ATTACKS: 2 or by weapon

DAMAGE/ATTACK: 1d4+1/1d4+1 (claw or bite) or weapon

SPECIAL ATTACKS: Nil

SPECIAL DEFENSES: Nil

Genotype

MCG’s are the standard issue grunts of the Martian military. Intended to be cheaply produced, they combine the standard Martian with elements of chimpanzees and desert-dwelling Earth reptiles. They can survive on very small amounts of water and can withstand prolonged exposure to cold (but not frigid or arctic)

Physical Features

    Physical Size: 6 feet

    External Covering: Fine scales that mimic the color of Martian desert terrain

    Eyes: Yes

    Ears: not really

    Mouth: wide and fangy

    Nose: two nearly invisible slits in the face

Cultural: None. They just hang around or train until needed.

Advantages/Disadvantages

Claws, camouflage. Heat makes them angry. MCGs will blindly follow orders from anyone they perceive as a Martian military officer.

Combat

They’re trained to attack with standard Martian military weapons, but will use fangs and claws if pressed.

Habitat/Terrain

Typical Mars military bases. In the desert, they will instinctively seek out caves or similar shelter.

Ecology

MCGs are pretty stupid and were created to be cheaply replaced. They don’t have any desire to do much of anything more than fight so they aren’t inclined to want to go AWOL.

Attribute Modifiers

Strength: +1    Dexterity: +1    Constitution: --

Intelligence: --    Wisdom: --    Charisma: -2

Tech: --

Saving Throw Modifiers

Explosion/Plasma: +1    Electric Shock: --

Paralysis/Stun/Fall: +1    Toxic Atmosphere/Gas/Poison: --

Suffocation: --        Radiation: +1

Extreme Heat: -1    Extreme Cold: +3

Reference

Buck Rogers: Countdown to Doomsday

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XXVc Post-Game Report

I don't know what this is, really. Consider it a newsreel or something.

To say life has returned to normal in Montreal would be...a lie? Not true, in any case. While word of discontent among the masses has been filtering in for some months now, until recently things have been the usual numb grind it seems to have always been.

But things started to stir when word got out that history was not what we were told it was. History - real history - has reared its head and sunk its teeth deeply into the haunches of RAM.

Montreal University has initiated the defenestration of Martian rascals from its ivy-covered halls. Agents of RAM have been exposed as part of a vast plot to control the world’s information. They have targeted Montreal’s publishing trade, using it to secretly disseminate disinformation, not only to the people of Earth, but to the inner worlds as well. For years malignant lies and twisted truths have unwittingly come out of the great publishing houses of Montreal, including the hallowed halls of the great Montreal University press, in an effort to further break the will of Earth’s already demoralized population.

The key character in this drama has been identified as a Dr. Olvir Lulz who claimed he represented a group of MU professors called The Society of Curators. It was revealed that this hoax was an attempt by RAM to uncover ancient sources of knowledge and abscond with or destroy them.

With this discovery, all hell broke loose in MU and a lockdown soon commenced. In a matter of days more that 30 known agents and as many as 70 undercover agents of RAM were incarcerated. Even isolationist Ottawa lent a hand, dismantling RAM institutions and purging scores of RAM personnel, delivering them into the sprawls where brutal justice was meted out.

Montreal’s already strained relationship with RAM was snapped. NEO stepped in to shore up any weak points in the arcology’s defense and, as of February 17, 2457, RAM has vacated the entire Quebec-Montreal-Ottawa region and it has since been designated a “protectorate zone,” which includes areas south of the Canadian Federation.

XXVc Notebook: (Not So) Great Space Battles

I've been test running space combat during downtime between games, just to get the hang of it. It's pretty straightforward, but there are a couple of odd bits to it. One was the amorphous combat round wherein everyone rolls initiative then moves and/or attacks until their Speed points have been used up. Having done that everyone's Speed points reset, unless reduced by damage to the engine and hull. Repeat until dead. Maybe I'm just not used to it, but it seemed kind of mushy to me. This after just one playtest, though.

Another other odd thing was damage to weapons. Every section of a rocketship has a number of points damage it can sustain before becoming useless except for weapons. According to the rules, any hit on a weapon will destroy it. Maybe I missed something, but that's the way I read it. Here's the line from page 78 of the C&C book-

"Weapon hit: One of the ship's weapons, determined randomly, is destroyed."

There it is. Randomly roll an '8' on the hit location table and you can blast even the biggest of weapons right off the hull of the enemy's ship. That can really suck in a Krait vs Starfire dogfight where each only has one weapon. In fact, that's exactly what happened- I rolled an 8 and effectively ended the combat with one shot.

What my player suggested was to use the damage score of each respective weapon as their hit points. This would mean the mighty k-cannon could take 100 points of damage before being destroyed. I might go one further and say that the damage the weapon can do and the hits it can take are the same thing- so a Missile Mount that took 10 points of damage could only deal 30 points. We'll see how that goes.

In any case, kudos to Ettin of Hexen (who logs webs at Duster Bones, see link to the right) for coming up with such a simple, nifty solution.

Then there are the weapons. You don't roll for damage as you normally would. Each has a set amount of damage that it does. I guess the idea is to keep the action moving. Those that want a more random element to it could convert the damage numbers to die rolls easily enough. All ship's weapons do damage in multiples of 10. We may have to try it that way at some point.

Anyway, showtime is quickly approaching. Time to prepare for the game.
 

Here's a thing you can watch

XXVc Notebook- A Hard Lesson Learned

Last night was the fourth installment of my ongoing drama "The Secret of the Curators" and it really showed me where I need to pay attention to my adventure design. I had long stretches where essentially nothing happened except discovering another more-or-less empty room.

Where I blew it there was that nothing in the rooms served any purpose, so they were just finding things and having to sit through descriptions of things that had no bearing on the adventure and- yikes! I just realized they didn't even come across any good loot. That "yikes" was not sarcasm, it was me just now realizing another way that I bunged my game up.

Perhaps I'm straying too far from the D&D model of "kill the monster, take its treasure" which is not necessarily a bad thing. However, I am also realizing it's kinda hard to just drop a "monster" into the game when things start slogging. This is something I will definitely have to prepare for in the future. XXVc is pretty explicit about not creating gennie monsters, which I'm down with as I really like the non-pulp sci-fi aspect of the game, but it also... I need to realign.

I'm going to go meditate on this and get back to you later. I'm leading myself down a dumb path and need to get off it, quick. Wish me luck.

XXVc- Earth Views

So, I'm watching Elysium and the opening sequence smacked me in the face and said "XXVc Earth!" So I made some screen caps to share because I didn't have anything better to do at the time. I also included a couple of shots from the awful Buck Rogers tv series because hey, why waste a perfectly good image. The third wasteland shot is from Elysium. If you look close, you can see that those little dark squares are actually structures (that could be anything) and, in the upper right quarter, houses.

In a couple of shots, you can see what are probably supposed to be arcologies. The best one, I think, is the shot of Chicago from the tv show below. As always, click on the images to see them in IMAX.

XXVc Miniatures!

I was browsing the goods on Shapeways.com and ran across some minis that look suspiciously exactly like some of the ships in the Buck Rogers XXVc rpg.

For example, here's the F-66 Starfire

...here's Admiral Duck Sauce's F-44 Buck

I'm pretty sure this is the actual product...

...and here's his F-69 Starfang

...but this is just a CG model

There are a number of other familiar designs available, in addition to ones that appear to be based, I believe, on Space Cruiser Yamato and they're for sale at Admiral Duck Sauce's shop, so go check 'em out. He also has some sci-fi rpg minis available in different scales, but none that are based on XXVc designs (none that I can tell, anyway.)

There are a bunch of other shops that are of interest to the Ol' Eyeball, but I'll get to them another time.