Warglory, 2119ad - Black Marines

[Shirocco]

Purpose
Dear Reader, these rules are here to be USED! Read ém, oogle the pretty pictures, nut out the mechanics (they're dead simple - if something confuses just ask) and magpie what you may. All i ask is acknowledgement to myself and the mottley crew who helped put it together. If you want to build something else off it go right ahead, i'm keen to help you do it, again with acknowledgements.

At the end of the day it's all fun & games. I hope you enjoy this one!

Foreward

Warglory is a game of soldiers, of fighting, of choosing either to follow the rules & survive or break them and earn a name, a reputation with life longer than yours.
Walkers is in a future. Maybe our future. Man spreads upon the stars and takes war with him, bloody and brutal and full of danger. Air denial is king, nothing flys the future's skys for fear of the guns below. Denied helicopter support, air strikes and with artillery struggling to deliver it's ordinance upon defended targets the powered suit found new purpose; strong enough to fight with jetpack fitted and carry deadly armament, the jump troops (called walkers) became the new light cavalry. Airmobile, able to duck under air denial when targetted and advance on it by foot, fly low & safe, hop streets and offer fleeting targets to the AD guns they've been an important weapon in all wars since the mid 21st century - into, through & beyond WW3.

They hunt infantry. They fight the enemy's own walkers. They find and track heavy armour, picking at it when necesary and avoiding it when not. And they are the commando, the hit & run force of every army worth naming. In the future's system-spanning Human realms they are the first in for a planet-drop, the first on site for a <classified> engagement, and the natural predator of anything on two legs that can't fly away. This game - Walkers - is about those troops. This is their fight.

Walkers don't dominate the battle. But they sure as heck get the most action!


MAIN ARTICLE (http://www.myth-weavers.com/showthread.php?t=103180)


Credits

While I'm the author of Warglory I sure as heck wouldn't have got it this good on my own! No, i had help. My players are some of the most entertaining, annoying, imaginative and occasionally sadistic folks i've run across online in years and their contributions have been astoundingly useful. Whenever not, they double as good targets.

Na, seriously, they're the stars of the show. The chief troublemakers behind Warglory: Walkers 2119 are as follows.

Shirocco = Long suffering & apparently bulliable GM/author of Warglory, would have been happy with trenches, bayonets & jam tin bombs
Pingcode20 = Ongoing source of Wierd Science (inc), has something against windmills
Greyen = Steady source of game mechanic ideas & military clarifications
Demented (AKA Random Lunatic) = Regular source of explosions, also a helpful ally against my old foe the Big Scarey Numbers
Savant = Frequent target for enemies in game & a sporadic contributer, Sav was the first to actually make his own material out of the rules.

[Shirocco]

Black Marines is a full on, high intensity version of older Warglory games. There is no magic. There is lots of tech for a GM to keep track of. Players have a ton of gear to play with, the enemy has even more of it than they do and life is anything but boring at full speed ahead.

Post your thoughts, ideas, contemplations and weather updates as suit you. I'd like to hear ém!

[imp_fireball]

Is this your latest working? I'll bump it for you.

[Shirocco]

Cheers mate

Yeah it's the sci-fi version of Warglory; i mentioned it in the Marines (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=159997) thread a while back. Quite a few mechanic differences: like the electronic warfare system, absence of magic, larger and techy gear list and a weighting more toward armour saves.

Broadly, armour is much more effective in Walkers than in the WW2-era Marines game. Players have great survivability in the first couple turns of an ambush; if they get good cover in time it will recharge before the next contact, or even during it with some armour (Liquid Reactive Armour for instance is a quick charger). Injuries are less debilitating here since the gear is modular (easily fixed) and medical tech is very advanced. All in all, Walkers are exceedingly suited to hit & run and that's basically how it can (and should) be played. Hit 'em and move, slip away & hit 'em again.

I have a new one in the works. Always do! Will post that up when it's ready.

Big Pic

http://i364.photobucket.com/albums/oo81/Shirocco2/tfmi.gif


http://i364.photobucket.com/albums/oo81/Shirocco2/startrooparmor.jpg

http://i364.photobucket.com/albums/oo81/Shirocco2/ape2.jpg

- Mr. Heinlen was a good inspiration (albiet not the only one!). Very happy with how the game works now & it's fun to write. :cool:

[imp_fireball]

Hey, could you peach my conversion? It's in my extended sig.

[Shirocco]

EDIT: prolly should have used Walker examples. My bad. ><

I see it; don't know what Peach means, but here's some quick thoughts:


The turn sequence is handled by-volley. Who's moving, who isn't and Snapshot rolls determine whose first shots that turn go first. Then the slowpokes have a shot, then it's repeated for "middle" shots, and again for last shots. With addendum:
Manual weapons (like Bolt Action RIfles) usually get 1-2 shots. They participate in that first volley, they're busy working bolts in the middle, and might have one in the last.
Machine guns often have 3 or even 4 bursts. When the bolt actions are cycling rounds halfway through the turn, they're still shooting - and if used right very accurately! Machine guns are powerful weapons but costly, so few are issued in Marines.

I do this because nobody can fire with impunity in a firefight, no matter what your reflexes are. It takes time to fire off a turn's munitions and the enemy will reply in kind as you try to kill him.


A fair bit of GM fiat is exercised. Example: Players all elect to go round a corner. I have their order of march, and there's an enemy MG nest waiting for them. Say it opens fire right away, first character rolls reflex. If he passes he can dive flat, that sudden movement making him harder to hit, but the MG spends first turn gunning for him either way.
If he's alive next turn he can do what he likes and the rest of hte players can act, but return fire will be hard for the guy in the open; the character is likely terrified. Does he insist? Ok, Grit check for bravery. Does he scramble backwards? Reflex; pass, safe in half a turn. Fail, takes a full turn (under fire the whole way).

The system is rules light as you can see; that unlucky player on point got a lot more rolls to save himself than the rules suggest. I do that a lot. Players are here to have fun, and unless the grief they find themselves in is their own silly fault i will usually try and let them bail themselves out.
A harsher GM (possibly a sadist :p ) might not permit him any saves, excepting a Grit check to fire back in this situation.

Also note, if instead of an MG nest that was one lone enemy with a bolt-action, i would not require a Grit check. A lone rifle ain't near as scarey as a 'nest.

That example encounter would go on with a smart leader nudging his radioman; he'd try to arrange a mortar strike on the nest. They're in urban so the radio check will be nigh-impossible on a Marines radio; when it fails he'll either wimp out and go for high ground to get better signal, or find a way to advance through the buildings into grenade range of the 'nest.
The enemy sees that comming about a mile off, so he finds more unfriendlies in the buildings. It is down to the players to fight through that and get the nest.



On a more trivial note you have reloading and cycling confused. Reloading is replacing or refilling a magazine; cycling is getting a fresh round from said magazine into battery. EX: Pumping a shotgun is cycling. Feeding fresh ammo into it is reloading.


All in i'm surprised at your efforts to 3.6 it but you're making a valiant effort. I'm most interested in how you decide to do the damage system!

[imp_fireball]

PEACH means to 'please evaluate and critique honestly'.



The turn sequence is handled by-volley. Who's moving, who isn't and Snapshot rolls determine whose first shots that turn go first. Then the slowpokes have a shot, then it's repeated for "middle" shots, and again for last shots. With addendum:
Manual weapons (like Bolt Action RIfles) usually get 1-2 shots. They participate in that first volley, they're busy working bolts in the middle, and might have one in the last.
Machine guns often have 3 or even 4 bursts. When the bolt actions are cycling rounds halfway through the turn, they're still shooting - and if used right very accurately! Machine guns are powerful weapons but costly, so few are issued in Marines.

Just putting this here so that you can PEACH it before I put it on my thread

Volley is translated into 'ranged attacks' for D&D. Characters that melee, as D&D says, need only to move up to their base speed in a move action and then make an attack action to melee. Ranged attackers provoke 'attacks of opportunity' from melee attackers, and take a -4 penalty to attack meleeing creatures unless they have 'precise shot' feat, so range isn't really feasible in melee under D&D rules either (rules already cover it, as you can see).

Okay, so semis require no cycling, but they get +1 attacks per turn? I guess I could say that cyclers should too, but cycling might require a swift action (maybe free if they want to make a dex + BAB check; players will go for this every turn unless there's a penalty - perhaps reloading becomes a move action on failure?) - I don't want to overcomplicate the rules though.

Machine guns having 3 - 4 attacks per round is a little extreme for D&D (maybe not for your system). Instead, I'd rule that they can full attack (double their attacks), perform a standard attack (basically fire X bullets at an area).

If a level 1 character handling a machine gun that affects a 10x10ft. area full attacks, they can affect two 10x10ft. areas, but they must be connected. All creature's occupying those spaces are affected - so a machine gun is still proper deadly at mowing down infantry.

Machine guns expend a number of bullets per attack relative to their RPM. The RPM is divided by 10 to get maximum bullets expended in one round of combat. The only way to fire faster than this is if the character 'taps the trigger' to fire one bullet, but this is a sleight of hand check, made once per turn that they choose to do so - if they succeed, the machine gun functions like a semi-automatic but does less damage. They can also fire accurate bursts with the machine gun (target one creature instead of an area for extra damage), but this is also an attack action and requires the burst fire feat without a massive penalty.

Machines with higher caliber, higher RPM and higher power have higher damage. Their is no formula for this - it's just eyeballed.

Ammunition - Some ammo has different characteristics. Armor piercing, ie., bypasses a certain amount of hardness. Vehicles and some types of particularly hefty armor have hardness (the armor, mostly just against certain weapons and damage types), which generally reduces damage (just like how material has hardness).

Tracer rounds can slightly light up an area, generally assisting spot checks and telling troops where to shoot (but not necessarily getting rid of concealment).

Flash lights require an immediate action (swift on player's turn) to change the direction of the cone that they light up. They reduce total concealment to partial concealment for anything adjacent to their line of effect. If their line of effect is interrupted, they illuminate whatever interrupts it instead of the target. Anything they illuminate is fully lit up - concealment from darkness is reduced completely.

[Shirocco]

Volley is translated into 'ranged attacks' for D&D. Characters that melee, as D&D says, need only to move up to their base speed in a move action and then make an attack action to melee. Ranged attackers provoke 'attacks of opportunity' from melee attackers, and take a -4 penalty to attack meleeing creatures unless they have 'precise shot' feat, so range isn't really feasible in melee under D&D rules either (rules already cover it, as you can see).

Okay, so semis require no cycling, but they get +1 attacks per turn? I guess I could say that cyclers should too, but cycling might require a swift action (maybe free if they want to make a dex + BAB check; players will go for this every turn unless there's a penalty - perhaps reloading becomes a move action on failure?) - I don't want to overcomplicate the rules though.

Machine guns having 3 - 4 attacks per round is a little extreme for D&D (maybe not for your system). Instead, I'd rule that they can full attack (double their attacks), perform a standard attack (basically fire X bullets at an area).

D&D was written for medieval-era fantasy. Every ranged weapon was manually operated and depended on personal skill for it's rate of fire.
By the Marines (let alone Walkers) era that's much less the case. Number of attacks per turn is largely down to the gun.

I don't believe in area of effect machine guns. That's what bombs and flamethrowers are for. If you're worried about damage racking up that's because D&D is a hitpoint system, which is a big hurdle. In Warglory if you're hit you're either dead or knackered; most injuries stun you and put on big unfriendly penalties.
Armour's great for giving people second chances, if it's up to the task.

Machine guns handle groups by bonus roll. Shooting 2-3 guys who're within a meter of each other? Roll your attacks, then take a bonus attack for each of those hits. Against a big dense group? Roll lots of bonus attacks, could be 3 or more per hit. This is rare but it happens, and players roll that stuff with a malevolent glee. :smallwink:

That differs drastically from bombs & flamethrowers. 10 guys behind barricade, 2m spacing? Machine gun rolls it's usual attacks (maybe 3 or 4, depends on the gun). Get a grenade in there with a 5m blast? That's 5m in any direction from where it lands. If he plonks it smack in the middle of them (D10 roll, 7+ vs this barricade for spot-on) they all get a reflex save. Those who fail it are hit, wounded/dead could be 50/50 (depends on the bomb). The wounded are buggered for a good turn or 3, players rush up and finish with guns, bayonets & entrenching tools.



Semis require no cycling, they do it themselves. So do automatics.


Important (i think you missed this): Automatics in Marines, when at short range or deployed, reroll every burst. In Walkers, they double roll - a burst is a double attack vs one target! Next edition of Marines will do double rolls too with damage rescaled accordingly.


I never bothered with flashlights. I'd make those just give a detect bonus at night vs visual stuff, like men hiding or markings on a wall. It'd also make you ridiculously obvious to the enemy, from far beyond their sight range.


Counting bullets is too much work IMO. Hence the "Turn" phrase. An SMG might have enough ammo for 3 turns of burst fire; that's enough detail for me. That way I can just count their turns spent shooting over the last page or so to guestimate if they're empty yet. Near enough is good enough - soldiers are often told not to 100% fill their magazines anyway, it wears the springs out on a long march.
You can count bullets if you want but you're creating more number crunching.

[imp_fireball]

I don't believe in area of effect machine guns. That's what bombs and flamethrowers are for. If you're worried about damage racking up that's because D&D is a hitpoint system, which is a big hurdle. In Warglory if you're hit you're either dead or knackered; most injuries stun you and put on big unfriendly penalties.
Armour's great for giving people second chances, if it's up to the task.

The problem in D&D is that many rolls are seen as 'bogging the game down'. That might not be the case for warglory since many rolls means more of a chance of getting kills.

I don't really know where the psychology stemmed from for D&D, but I guess it mainly goes from having to track hp for every creature involved in combat.

Nonetheless, machine guns being an area of effect attack simplifies it a bit. Some machine guns have wider areas of effect than others too, just like bombs. The difference though is that machine guns require line of effect - bombs might not - say, a grenade really only needs to target the right space. Sure, a machine gun does too - but I'm thinking maybe that creatures with concealment get something like a +4 circumstantial bonus to reflex saves instead of miss chance versus the automatic weaponry.

Bombs also target radius instead of 'X by Xft.' spaces. There's three different kinds, burst, instant and down pour. Burst usually starts from the bomb's location, and then extends outwards to the maximum radius (centering on the bomb; cover helps protect from this - if you have total cover, you ignore it completely or have an additional bonus to reflex saves if you don't beat the explosion's elevation); down pour falls onto the radius from above (like a mortar; so the enemy can protect themselves from this with a ceiling - maybe it should have multiple radiuses?) and instant (probably the deadliest and nigh physically impossible for anything short of magic) suddenly appears everywhere within the radius.

Also flame throwers get rid of darkness concealment on the attack (not before or after, unless they set somebody/something on fire). So they ignore miss chance from concealment due to darkness, but the person still has to guess where the enemy is before that. They can also acquire line of sight briefly every time they light up an area with the flamethrower.

A person can scan everything in what would be their line of sight if their were no darkness with a flash light as a move action. So, expend a move action, and they can see out to 60ft. range in darkness as if it were fully lit up. A poor flash light might provide low light out to this range, and then full light adjacent to the creature, ie.
-----

Important (i think you missed this): Automatics in Marines, when at short range or deployed, reroll every burst. In Walkers, they double roll - a burst is a double attack vs one target! Next edition of Marines will do double rolls too with damage rescaled accordingly.

Easily assumed without any rules if in walkers, they are wielding two guns instead of one. :smallwink:

But re-rolling attacks? Sounds fair I guess. Machine guns are deadly - still can provoke AoOs though.

Except maybe I'll include a penalty for aiming at separate creatures. Walkers are otherwise ambidexterous when wielding both weapons (no attack penalties). They also count as vehicles under my converted rules.

I'm working on marines first - then I'll move over to walkers.


Near enough is good enough - soldiers are often told not to 100% fill their magazines anyway, it wears the springs out on a long march.
You can count bullets if you want but you're creating more number crunching.


Bah! Archer PCs already count their arrows.

Maybe I'll include rules for 'overstocking' magazines - which is where the 'wear out springs' might come into play.


This is rare but it happens, and players roll that stuff with a malevolent glee. :smallwink:

It happens all the time in D&D. I guess new players will be forced to adjust. :smallamused:

Although spells like fireball does discourage monsters from clustering - unless they use the new mob rules in this homebrew forum. Also, flanking in melee encourages clustering.

[Shirocco]

You can do what you like, but i recommend against AOE machine guns. Honestly, in a setting with lots of automatics troops spread out. D&D monsters don't have to face machine guns, they face swords & claws, which are best faced close together.

As such Warglory enemies don't regularly fall victim to enfilade from machine gun fire; it only happens occasionally, thus rendering the AOE mathmatics a waste (it looks wrong to me anyway). Maths wise the player just rolls a few D10s and they're done, no worries.

Your usual AOE target is guys holed up in a building, who take a grenade through the window. Machine gun AOE makes no sense for this; if he's tossing the bullets in a wide area he won't hit anything, that's just suppression. He's only scaring them (lucky hits are merely possible).


Easily assumed without any rules if in walkers, they are wielding two guns instead of one.

Except maybe I'll include a penalty for aiming at separate creatures. Walkers are otherwise ambidexterous when wielding both weapons (no attack penalties). They also count as vehicles under my converted rules.

Heh.

Dual wielding cheaply doubles your number of attacks, that's a bit different. It is clumsier though, and you can only target 3 guys per turn anyway. (*Edit: pretty sure it's 4 with 2 guns)
Players use that with stuff that has only a couple shots, like sawnoffs, or in Walkers to widen their options: a Walkers revolver spins to the desired ammo on neural actuator command, they can have 12 different rounds to choose from by dual wielding.

I'm rather fond of pistol + knife, but the players go more towards sawnoff & a mattock (high grit characters are hilarious)


I'm working on marines first - then I'll move over to walkers.

I'd recommend that. Marines ought to be easier to adapt; it's simpler.


Bah! Archer PCs already count their arrows.

Maybe I'll include rules for 'overstocking' magazines - which is where the 'wear out springs' might come into play.

lol

Archers had ~20 arrows IRL, tops. Archery's a hobby of mine.
A typical infantryman carries ~200 rounds for his rifle. An automatic can eat the lot at an alarming rate, hence why it took half a century for full-automatics to become widespread as rifleman weapons; the ordinance department lived in fear of troops swallowing the whole lot every 2 minutes!
He may well have half that again in ammo for the gunner on him too, and other stuff besides. No wonder they're fit. :smallbiggrin:

Before you quib that a D&D archer has hundreds of arrows remember that scales up, sparky! Equivellant to 20 arrows is ~200 bullets for space & combat load. You really wanna work out how many they blew each turn?

[imp_fireball]

Before you quib that a D&D archer has hundreds of arrows remember that scales up, sparky! Equivellant to 20 arrows is ~200 bullets for space & combat load. You really wanna work out how many they blew each turn?

Meh, might as well work that out right now. :smallbiggrin:

Also, yeah arrows do encumber in D&D (half a pound per arrow I think? Most people like to retain light load) - bullets probably encumber a lot less. I'd just rule that magazines contain X bullets and weigh X but can be overstocked up to Y (at no greater weight since that's too much book keeping, maybe).


I'm rather fond of pistol + knife, but the players go more towards sawnoff & a mattock (high grit characters are hilarious)

Pistol + knife would be great for a rogue type character. :smallsmile:

The latter probably a barbarian or... I dunno.


thus rendering the AOE mathmatics a waste

There's no extra numbers - just 'this attack effects this area and this attack effects this area, is their cover? etc.'.


if he's tossing the bullets in a wide area he won't hit anything, that's just suppression.

Suppression could be an attack option. Waste an attack to impose morale penalty on enemy, perhaps?

[Shirocco]

Meh, might as well work that out right now.

Also, yeah arrows do encumber in D&D (half a pound per arrow I think? Most people like to retain light load) - bullets probably encumber a lot less. I'd just rule that magazines contain X bullets and weigh X but can be overstocked up to Y (at no greater weight since that's too much book keeping, maybe).

IF you want to go ahead, but i'll go to my grave saying you're a sillier person for doing it. :p


Pistol + knife would be great for a rogue type character.

The latter probably a barbarian or... I dunno.

A lunatic. Don't worry, that's 100% lunatic. :smallbiggrin:
Barbarians in WW2 ha ha ha! Closest you'd get is some colonies of Lesser Worlders. For instance, in WW1 the french had Senegal, Africa as a colony; the troops they drew from there were reputedly ferocious, and greatly feared. Skin black as pitch & waving machetes, they must have been a terrible sight! These being the days of old school racial fear it worked a treat.

Of course, Senegal is a rapidly developing country today. It's moved forward a lot since the French left. But back then? Hooo boy.


Suppression could be an attack option. Waste an attack to impose morale penalty on enemy, perhaps?

Always has been, very simple. If your gunner can't see the blighters but knows the general area he can still fire wildly in their direction. I count that & it causes suppression, just the same as aimed fire; it makes their shooting worse. Get enough of it to bear and they're pinned.
In Marines, ~10 riflemen can produce enough weight of fire for the same effect if they shoot as quick as they can (called a Mad Minute).
In Walkers, just about everyone has automatics. If it sounds big enough you just need to throw more of it than they do for a possible suppression result.

That's resisted via Grit save. Grit is mental toughness as much as physical, don't forget. I make 3 rolls for an NPC group and take an average, players roll seperately. Heck, NPCs i often freeform stuff like that. A squad under fire from 3 LMGs? Yep. Suppressed. They fire sporadically, and miss.

This is GM fiat, like a lot of things. War buffs make good GMs (or at least good advisors) in Warglory.