Wednesday, May 27, 2015

IMTU Chimera: Guns Shticks

Guns are one place we're digressing from Classic Traveller: being a non-fantasy setting where guns could actually harm opponents (i,e, not D&D or Call of Cthulhu) Classic Traveller was a place for gamers who liked guns. Add in many PC backgrounds being military in nature and guns made sense. That they were not magic 'just knock people out' guns gave room for more 'real' (for various levels of reality) gunfights.

IMTU Chimera is not quite following that. At player request close combat and swordplay is culturally emphasized. This is explained two ways: First, as mentioned earlier starship safety means using guns on a starship is stupid so everyone carries blades. Second, there's a very powerful meme (we'll get into memetics in the campaign later) that Guns Are Weapons Of War. This is just culturally accepted. Therefore pistols are rare, with licenses being a precious mustering out benefit, and rifles are very tightly regulated. Using a gun to wound or kill anyone is prosecuted as a war crime. Everyone accepts this because Guns Are Weapons Of War.

If the players decide to, say, join a military unit or enter an actual war conflict? Guns will come out and bullets will fly because those are Wars. For the merchant trader setting we're in? Not so much.

Guns Shticks have a strange overlap between Memetics and Biomods (we'll get to that too), but for simplicity anything that requires Boimods goes there but anything that is a Guns + Memetics combo goes under Guns. This keeps weird memetics stuff out of player sight (and gives me time to make it up). For example, the Navy Officer's Never Misses shtick requires a Biomod so you'll find it there, but his Command Presence is a pistol backed up by memetics, so it's here.

As with Blade Shticks many of these have multiple levels.

Guns Shticks 
Carnival of Carnage: 1 Shtick reduces the outcome needed to take out a Mook by 1 (normally from 5 to 4). A second shtick reduces it by another point (4 to 3).

Command Presence: with 1 Fortune you can temporarily end any conflict with a barked command and a brandished firearm. Everyone stops what they’re doing and has to talk. If your opponents restart hostilities after talking, you get a pre-initiative Outcome 16 guns check on the target of your choice (which need not be an opponent).

Eagle Eye: As in FS rulebook

Effective Brandishing: You know best how to intimidate people with your gun. Wen you have a gun to brandish add +2 per Shtick to your Intimidate skill, up to 3 shticks.

Fast Draw: As in FS rulebook

Hair Trigger Neck Hairs: As in FS rulebook

Lightning Reload: As in FS rulebook

More shticks and discussion tomorrow.

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