Scum of the Earth?  Is that the Sharpe variant?

Quote from: BalbinusScum of the Earth?  Is that the Sharpe variant?

Yessir! Napoleonic Land battles.

-clash

I intend to playtest the setting as my next campaign, if my players at the time will let me foist it upon them.

"Can I buy you drink, good man?"
"Why yes, sergeant major, I'll have an ale."
"Excellent - now you've taken the King's shilling, you're signed up for twenty years. Now come with us, and we'll kit you out."
"But lieutenant sir, I -"
"That's leftenant, soldier - we are not bloody Frenchmen!"
"What's wrong with the French? They've got nice postcards and everything."
"Soon you'll learn to hate the French like poison, lad."

Quote from: Kyle AaronI intend to playtest the setting as my next campaign, if my players at the time will let me foist it upon them.

"Can I buy you drink, good man?"
"Why yes, sergeant major, I'll have an ale."
"Excellent - now you've taken the King's shilling, you're signed up for twenty years. Now come with us, and we'll kit you out."
"But lieutenant sir, I -"
"That's leftenant, soldier - we are not bloody Frenchmen!"
"What's wrong with the French? They've got nice postcards and everything."
"Soon you'll learn to hate the French like poison, lad."

I'd play that in a shot.

But then I'd play In Harm's Way in a shot too, are there any actual plays for it about?

Quote from: BalbinusI'd play that in a shot.

But then I'd play In Harm's Way in a shot too, are there any actual plays for it about?

There's my own over on tBP - lord is that site s   l   o   w! - here. Kyle is in it for a while as Midshipman James Robert. I never finished the AP, but the game went on quite a while after that. Right now it's holding, but will be resumed in 1797.

-clash

Quote from: flyingmiceThere's my own over on tBP - lord is that site s   l   o   w! - here. Kyle is in it for a while as Midshipman James Robert. I never finished the AP, but the game went on quite a while after that. Right now it's holding, but will be resumed in 1797.

-clash

Cool, thanks

Quote from: BalbinusCool, thanks

That is a Middie game, and as such it's much less action-packed than a Lieutenant level game, let alone a Captain level game. I've run long campaigns on all three levels, and they each have their own flavor.

-clash

In Harm's Way: Wild Blue is almost done. Michael Scott and I have done a heap of work over the last couple of weeks, adding in whole new chunks of stuff to emulate modern warfare. Let me tell you, I yearn for the simple, straightforward days of WWII. With Beyond Visual Range combat, Air to ground and ground to air missiles, smart bombs, super-maneuverable planes and pervasive computing, it's a very different world.

Luckily, mercenary companies aren't going to be fielding F-22s and Eurofighters, and neither are their opponents. What they will  have is a mixture of Vietnam-era to eighties equipment, retrofitted to the best munitions they can afford, and nursed along by the best mechanics available.

The fact that you can create and run the mercenary Company you want, with a budget, competing department heads, and responsibility to shareholders, is alone a big complication. Add in the use of ground vehicles, Infantry, Special Forces, and Brown Water naval units, and I'm surprised at how compact the game is. Right now it's about 230 pages.

The process of setting up a company and creating the contracts lets you as GM know what the players are interested in doing. I let my players give a Staff briefing where they had to answer the questions of the assembled mercs - in other words me as GM - and all they had towork with was this contract: "Ethnic Separatists asked their aid in a Civil War against a Dictatorial Regime in the Indian Ocean. They offered a Poor profit and Local Servants, Bounties, and Sweet R&R." What's the name of the country? What languages do they speak? How many forces are we facing? What are the ethnic differences and why do they want to separate? And lots more. The Staff Officers had to think on their feet, and give answers off the top of their heads. Here's what they came up with - that is I prepared it from their notes.

Another playtester generated the whole scenario himself and presented it to his players, exactly the opposite of what I did. Either way is fine! They both work. His scenario is more consistent and tight, but he doesn't know the extent of the players' buy-in. It's a trade off.

-clash

Work is also progressing on the Cold Space/FTL Now supplement Commonwealth Space. Commonwealth Space covers the Commonwealth of Nations/CCA colonies in the Oikumene. It will contain Commonwealth style education tables and chargen, Commonwealth and CCA projects and their fallout, in-depth descriptions of the colonies, commonwealth-specific equipment and descriptions of post-Comet Commonwealth nations on Earth.

-clash

Clash, I was wondering how you price the books. Do you have a page-count-to-$ ratio, is it down to costs or is a feeling thing?

Quote from: Rob LangClash, I was wondering how you price the books. Do you have a page-count-to-$ ratio, is it down to costs or is a feeling thing?

Generally it's a feeling thing, but costs come into it as the baseline. Generally, the bigger the book, the bigger the bargain it's going to be for the customer, because I don't like pricing the books over $30. I'd rather take a hit on profit. I don't generally buy paperbacks over $30 myself, and I'd rather not ask the customer to do something I wouldn't.

-clash

Star20

Star20 is a roll over task resolution system designed to be used with the StarCluster and Powered by StarCluster games.

Dice used:

4d6-4 AKA JAGS dice, giving a bell-curve range from 0-20.

Attribute Bonuses are +1 per 2 points over 7 - i.e. +1 at 9, +2 at 11, +3 at 13, and +4 at 15

Chance of Success:

Chance = Die Roll + Attribute bonus + Skill Rank
If the result is greater than 13, the action is successful.
If the resut is less than six, the action is a critical failure.
If the Result is greater than 19, the action is a critical success.

Initiative:

Roll dice, adding higher of either AGY or COOR modifier. Highest goes first, and count down.

Quality of success:

Add weapon modifier to Chance dice roll for success.

Add double weapon modifier to Chance die roll for critical success.

Failure:

Simple failures just don't succeed.
Critical failures involve bad things happening. This is adjudicated by the GM depending on the circumstance.

Comments?

Deleted and reposted! This bizarre quirk happened again, truncating a post I tried to edit!

VariableStar

StarCluster Task Resolution Sub-System

Basic idea:
Roll under 3+skill rank+stat bonus, Max 17, on a variety of different dice. Quality is far less variable, and depends mostly on skill. This gives a system a low skill-high stat character will get lots of low-quality successes, and a high skill-low stat character will have fewer but better successes.

Stat Bonuses are +1 per point over 7 - i.e. 1 at 8, 4 at 11, 6 at 13, and 8 at 15

TNs

Typical TNs range from 4 to 17.

Dice

Any of the following dice systems are acceptable, and each will have it's own flavor:

Dice Systems
Dice    Range    Average    Remarks
3d6    range 3-18    average 7-8    strong bell curve - lower numbers, more successes
4d6-4    range 0-20    average 10    strong bell curve - higher numbers, grittier
1d20    range 1-20    average 10    linear distribution - equal probablilities
2d10    range 2-20    average 10    weak bell curve, fairly flat distribution
2d8+d4    range 3-20    average ??    ??distribution??


Initiative

Initiative is rolled using whatever dice system is in use, highest going first and counting down.

Chance

Chance TN is the character's skill rank + attribute bonus + 3, plus any points moved from Initiative or Quality. PCs may move points from Chance to Initiative or Quality which are then subtracted from the Chance.

Example: Joe has a skill of 1 with Blade, and a STR attribute bonus of 4. He normally has a TN of 3+1+4=8, but he added one from Initiative for a total of 9.

Quality

Quality is the measure of how good a success is. Quality is equal to the skill rank +1, plus any points moved from Initiative or Chance. This number is multiplied by ten and added to any modifiers to give a result.

Example: Jane succeeds in striking Joe using a machete in combat. Her blade skill rank is +2 and she added one from Chance, totalling 4. This number is multiplied by 10 to give 40 points, which added to the +20 bonus for the machete is 60 points.


Comments?

Clash. I received the Wild Blue proto-type. I love the concept, I dig the execution (for the most part), and the information is thorough. I'll post my concerns on the BMT forum later today.