From: flashlife@kpc.com
Reply-To: flashlife@kpc.com
Errors-To: flashlife-request@kpc.com
Subject: Flashlife   V3 #6
To: flashlife@kpc.com

From: Carl Rigney (moderator) <flashlife-request@kpc.com>


Flashlife  Sat, 30 May, 1992   Volume 3 : Issue 6

Today's topics:

  Re: Weapon Staging and Healing Effects	(quasar)
  Rigger book -- semi-review			(quasar)
  Decker build times				(Sean Mccauliff)
  Questions re riggers				(Vaughn Ravenscroft)
  Hit Location					(John Martin)

[ Two Issues in the same month! :-) --CDR]

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Date: Tue, 5 May 92 16:32:02 EDT
From: quasar@ctt.bellcore.com
Subject: Re: Weapon Staging and Healing Effects

Weapon Damage Staging:

Well, yes, the shadowrun combat system does have problems. At least the new
rules for automatic fire in the rigger book make the game go faster -- also,
called shots (to avoid that nasty armor) is a good rule, which I had
implemented myself before they came up with the thing in the new book.

I like CDR's idea about staging. I also think a critical hit system might be
a good idea. Let's say hitting with 10 above the needed target is a critical
hit, with additional critical hits making it worse. Perhaps a nice critical
hit table (a la the fun tables in ICE's Rolemaster series) would be good.

Healing:

Of course magical healing, like in most roleplaying games, is rather unlikely.
But then lots of things in shadowrun are implausible. The fact that
"turn-to-goo" is a sustained spell is silly just to begin with....

Anyhow, when my players have sustained a lot of damage a little at a time
(as often happens with the amount of armor they lug around), I let healing
work as described, since they have sustained no specific massive damage
except general body trauma -- massive bruises, etc. Even so, they'll
feel like shit the next day. However, if someone sustains large-scale
damage -- broken limbs, a S or a D class wound from any source, I let
healing work as usual to remove their physical damage slots, but they will
still be functionally messed up until they've had time to recuperate. If
nothing else, when your body is filled with APDS slugs, it just doesn't
work as well.... I have no objection to healing working perfectly against,
say, mana-based attack spells.

-Laurence Brothers
 quasar@bellcore.com



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Date: Tue, 5 May 92 16:49:32 EDT
From: quasar@ctt.bellcore.com
Subject: Rigger book -- semi-review

The rigger black book is fairly good, particularly with all the new
vehicles, customization rules, etc. The new optional combat rules are
also an improvement. There's also some new heavy weapons for troll
street samurai to dream about being able to carry themselves
(realistically, only Shiro could manage a drum-fed autocannon -- never
before has so much firepower been given into the paws of a kitten so young).

There's some funny things about the book, though:

1) CF's don't make any sense. They admit it in the rules that cargo
factors don't directly relate to actual volume or weight-carrying
capacity, but the cf numbers for the different kinds of vehicles in the
book seem to me to be completely arbitrary and senseless.

2) Fuel capacity and operating ranges are silly. There's this ATV
hovercraft thingy, I think called a Red Ranger or something like that,
which is apparently about the size of a small car. It carries more fuel
than the actual volume of the vehicle. There's other examples not quite
as bad. Also, it moves ridiculously fast considering....

3) It's too easy to add body points to a vehicle. Consider the Bison,
one of the nicer cargo/combat vehicles around. It comes with 5/2
body/armor.  The rules allow you to double the body of a vehicle at
only 1% performance degradation per point. This is ridiculous,
especially considering the serious penalty armor gets. I could design a
loaded Bison for around 500,000NY that would give stock panzers serious
trouble.

So anyhow, it seems that they didn't give enough thought to balance in
the vehicle selection. Also, the vehicle styling is very strange.
Everything looks like one of those fiberglass body kits they used to
sell to put on top of VW beetles. Very baroque, useless spoilers, weird
anti-ergonomic styling, etc. Oh well, I guess you can ignore the bad
art. Overall the book is still very worthwhile.

-Laurence



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Date: Wed, 6 May 92 10:55:39 edt
From: Sean Mccauliff <smccauli@libserv1.ic.sunysb.edu>
Subject: Decker build times

One of the main things that I do not like about decking is that for the
decker it takes too long to make the deck that you want to build, where
the other party member have a much faster improvement of the things
that they specialize at doing.  If you're a mage you can just spend
some karma a few weeks and poof!  you have a new spell.  If you're a
street samurai you can alwalys get more cyberware or pick up a heavy
machine gun and increase your kill ratio.

What I propose to decrease the time to write such things as MPCPs is to
have program libaries.  These libaries could have a rating just like
hermetic libaries.  They could add to the computer skill for
programming.  You could subdivide the libaries so the decker would have
different libaries for different kinds of programs.  There could be a
Combat libary, a MPCP libary, a hardening libary, etc.

Also it makes for good "treasure" for deckers instead of the usual cash
or valuable info.

-- 
Sean McCauliff
smccauli@libserv1.ic.sunysb.edu



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Date: Sun, 24 May 92 11:16:51 SAST
From: vaughn@frcs.alt.za (Vaughn Ravenscroft)
Subject: Questions re riggers

A few questions for those other Shadowrun GMs out there:

1) What is the situation regarding sensors and targeting.  Is it
possible to use sensors from a vehicle to target beings and the like as
opposed to just vehicles with a signature.

2) Who has access to the vehicles sensors - just the rigger or a
passenger who is firing a vehicle mounted weapon?

3) Is it possible to get a smartgun link on weapons larger than an LMG?

I am busy working (somewhat erratically) on a Southern African 2050
setting which assumes that the negotiation process ended in a counrty
which returned to a tribal situation with the right wing white South
Africans becoming a small self governing, walled, state who have links
to Humanis and other such organisations.  If anyone is interested I can
send them a rough outline of work done on it thus far.  Its far from
perfect or complete but I intend to put some more work in on it between
work and my studies.

Regards

Vaughn
vaughn@frcs.alt.za



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Date: Tue, 26 May 92 10:43:38 PDT
From: john@gibbons.com (John Martin)
Subject: Hit Location

	[ I disagree with adding hit location to Shadowrun
	  but other members of the list may find this of interest. --CDR]

With all the different posts about how people run their shadowrun combat
systems.  I thought I would send in a description of the way I run
the shadowrun Combat system..  And see if you like/hate it :)

In an attempt to make shadowrun combat a bit more realistic we have
come up with the following system: please send any comments to me
at john@gibbons.com.

In the games I run, the players are always striving to come up with
the most "realistic" combat system they can.  This has led us to the 
following combat system.  We have hashed out a "hit location" type of
system with separate damage charts per location.

Hit Locations:  Instead of the 10 box status system for shadowrun the
group I play with has developed a 10 box system for EACH body part.
Body Parts: Head, Chest, Abdomen, R. Leg, L. Leg, R. Arm, L.Arm

Keep a separate tally for each location.

We have also developed a "degree" system.  We feel that Head wounds
are much more serious then wounds to the arm's or legs.  Thus we have
a "wound multiplier" system.  
	Head:	x2
	Chest:	x1
	Abdomen:	x1
	Legs:	x.5
	Arms:	x.5

This means that if you take a "light" wound to the head.  then the number
of boxes you would x out total:2.  If you took a serious wound to your
right leg, then you would x out 3 boxes.  Notice wounds to the Chest and
abdomen are on a 1:1 ratio.  

Note: You keep the shadowrun characters original "10-box hit list"  You
use this list to keep a "total" of all your wounds.  So if you have:
head: light wound (2 boxes)
AND
r. leg: serious wound (3 boxes) 

Your TOTAL wounds would be: 5 (just under a serious wound).  Keep track
of fractions also...on all lists....

Armor:
Since the "hit location"  method of combat is used... it seems logical 
that Armor would only cover certain areas of the body.  In the original
shadowrun rules..wearing an Armored jacket gives you 5/3 over your
entire body....not so with our rules.  here are the areas covered by armor:

Jacket: Arms, Chest, Abdomen
Lined Coat: Arms, Chest, Abdomen, Legs (everything but your head)
Vest: Chest, abdomen
Form Fitting lvl 1: Chest Ambdomen
Form Fitting lvl 2: Chest, Abdomen, arms
form fitting lvl 3: Everywhere but head.

It is pretty straight forward.......  

Thus you can "layer armor"  For example...You could wear an Armored Jacket
underneath your Long Coat.  This would give you armor for the following 
areas:
Head: 0
Chest: 5/3 (from Jacket)
Abdomen: 5/3 (from Jacket)
Arms: 5/3 (from jacket)
Legs: 4/2 (From long coat)

I.e you take the GREATEST armor value.

Example 2: Real leather under Armored clothes:
head: 0
Chest/Abdomen: 3/2  (3 bal for clothes, 2 for real leathers)
arms: 3/2
legs: 3/2

Hit locations are determined with a D20.  (I know shadowrun doesnt use them
being an all D6 system.... but we are rebels...what can we say? :) )

Melee Chart:			 Projectile Chart:
Head	19,20 			Head		20
Chest	16-18 			Chest		13-19
Abdomen	13-15 			Abdomen		9-12
R.Leg	10-12 			R.Leg		7-8
L.Leg	7-9 			L.Leg		5-6
L.Arm	4-6 			L.Arm		3-4
R.Arm	1-3 			R.Arm		1-2

Notice how the chest range for melee is alot more narrow then that of
projectile combat.  WE think that in melee combat, more wounds will be
delt to the arms and legs then to the chest region.  Also in melee
combat, the head would be a much easier target (boxing, martial arts etc)

For projectile combat (guns, bows, thrown weapons) we felt that the
chest, being the largest part of the body, would be the most often
hit.  Thus, the extended range.

WE have also come up with a "point alotment" system for initiative.
With this system you can use actions, where each action has a different
point value.  Thus if you just wanted to take an action to drop prone.
that would take up say 5 points, this allows a bit more action in
shadowrun combat, and a bit more variance.  If you people want me to
hash up a table of point values, ask and I will see what I can come up with.

-- 
John Martin
john@gibbons.com



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End of Flashlife
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