Gears of War d20

[JT Jag]

I think that the Gears of War series has a very interesting story, and has a lot of potential to yield a good tabletop style game. It would obviously be low to no-magic, and it would focus on weapons, combat both at range and up close, and using strategy to tip a pitched battle in your favor.

You and your party could be another group of COGs, silently protecting the human race from the Locust scourge while those Delta Squad nancies get all the glory.

The problem with this: I've never GMed a game, much less homebrewed a setting. So I'm calling on you guys. If you think this idea is as awesome as I do, let's whip something up.

[Chokuto]

I've never played the actual game, but I know about the setting and have read several reviews, its doable, but technically everything is.

My suggestion? Don't let the plot constrain you too much. The PC's could be just as famous if not more so than Delta, they just haven't had their time in the sun yet. No one likes being Grunt # 567, you know what I mean? I'm onboard to help, so what do you have in mind?

The biggest problem with No-magic is healing. Natural healing takes forever and PC's might not want to spend weeks recovering. We need an alternative or a homebrew ruling about natural healing.

[DracoDei]

Something like 4E's "Healing by encouragement" concepts might work given what I remember of the co-operative game-play.

[quick_comment]

Its gears of war. Just let everyone auto-heal after 3 rounds of not being shot.

[SurlySeraph]

You can give everyone regeneration or fast healing. Justify it as either nanomachines or automated medical equipment built into their armor.

d20 Modern/Future (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=d20/article/msrd) would work fine for this.

[Shevarash's_Son]

You could give damage resistance to most strikes but if hit in the head (critical) do regular damage for healing Morphine Shots You would need to get a good cover system because in gears without cover you die how would the chainsaw work

[JT Jag]

One of the issues I forsee is how to incorporate the close-range combat.

Let's take the standard issue chainsaw bayonet. Any successful attack with it that is not saved will result in instant death, and any attack that IS saved but still hits would be a crit.

This would be partially countered by making revving up the chainsaw a full-round action.

I just think that the potential is there to make a fun game where each of the weapons are useful in an entirely different way, and the various kinds of Locust pose totally different threats.

[ErrantX]

I would totally use d20 Modern for a game like this, and if possible, I'd use a vitality / wound points system (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/adventuring/vitalityAndWoundPoints.htm) as well as a lot of things from the variant systems on d20srd (http://www.d20srd.org/), such as defense bonus (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/adventuring/defenseBonus.htm), armor as DR (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/adventuring/armorAsDamageReduction.htm) and others. Vitality comes back relatively quickly, and wound damage is pretty much you're going to die if you take it. Pepper in elements from both d20 Future and d20 Apocalypse, toss in some d20 Modern: Urban Arcana for flavor, and I think you've got a very viable game that would be quite fun.

Barring the above, White Wolf (http://white-wolf.com/) has some excellent mechanics for people wanting to play more modernized games. Get the World of Darkness core book and just sort of engineer things from there.

-X

[JT Jag]

I would totally use d20 Modern for a game like this, and if possible, I'd use a vitality / wound points system (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/adventuring/vitalityAndWoundPoints.htm) as well as a lot of things from the variant systems on d20srd (http://www.d20srd.org/), such as defense bonus (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/adventuring/defenseBonus.htm), armor as DR (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/adventuring/armorAsDamageReduction.htm) and others. Vitality comes back relatively quickly, and wound damage is pretty much you're going to die if you take it. Pepper in elements from both d20 Future and d20 Apocalypse, toss in some d20 Modern: Urban Arcana for flavor, and I think you've got a very viable game that would be quite fun.

Barring the above, White Wolf (http://white-wolf.com/) has some excellent mechanics for people wanting to play more modernized games. Get the World of Darkness core book and just sort of engineer things from there.

-XThanks for the suggestions. My goal is to get a couple people together to help crystalize the ruleset, and then maybe do a playtest here.

[Shevarash's_Son]

One of the issues I forsee is how to incorporate the close-range combat.

Let's take the standard issue chainsaw bayonet. Any successful attack with it that is not saved will result in instant death, and any attack that IS saved but still hits would be a crit.

This would be partially countered by making revving up the chainsaw a full-round action.

I just think that the potential is there to make a fun game where each of the weapons are useful in an entirely different way, and the various kinds of Locust pose totally different threats.

If your talking about gears 2 you may want to sometimes have a chainsaw duel 1d20+str vs 1d20+str takes two rounds
When you have the chainsaw revved you cannot fire and move slower

it might be cool to be a evil locust special op. group being able to summon tickers with summon monster healing from afar

Dive rolling and other combat manuvers would be very important because thats what makes it a cool game