So... that part of my life? Absolutely happy about. K said "Star Wars" for the first time, and I was extremely proud. Z and I hit two Game Overs and a Half Price on our trip out to the park with Trenton last weekend, and had a great time. I'm really digging the Daddy gig more and more.
As followers of the exploits of the Royal Dragoons gaming club are no doubt aware, we've decided to leave A Time of War behind and use Savage Worlds as our RPG system of choice for our Battletech campaign. One of the things in the increasingly tardy Interstellar Operations book that our group was looking forward to when we were using AToW was faction rules. Since our previous campaign had noble houses as a feature of the campaign, we had hoped to have the advertised faction rules to play with. Such was not to be. What we ended up doing was kitbashing a system from MechWarrior 1st Edition, A Song of Ice and Fire, and Traveller Book 12 : Dynasty.
Now that we're using Savage Worlds, I've been looking at doing a Savage version of faction rules. One of the things in SW that I loved was the treatment of cyber hacking in the old Savage Worlds Sci-Fi Toolkit. It basically treated a Cyberdeck more or less like a character. Programs and defenses we treated like attributes and skills. Not only was this intuitive, it was SIMPLE. Simple is something Shadowrun and Cyberpunk could never really say about their hacking rules.
What I'm looking at now is establishing a factions ssytem for Savage Worlds Battletech that we can use for our campaign. Here's some of my ideas:
Houses will have attributes representing military strength, wealth, tech level, etc. They will have skills like Diplomacy, etc. representing the agents of that faction. I'll probably crib heavily from the Traveller : Dynasty rules for this.
Houses will have advancements and rank like characters. Rank will correspond to the tier of the faction. Non-peerage noble houses would be Novice. Seasoned would be peers on a planetary scale. Veteran would be rulers of planets. Heroic factions would hold a march, Periphery state, etc. and Legendary would be the House Lords themselves.
Edges for Houses would include things to beef up their performance socially, technologically, economically, etc.
I had an idea that a 'scale' would be attacked to each rank. F'Rex, here's some numbers I came up with off the top of my head.
RANK Military Force
Novice Single 'Mech
Seasoned Lance
Veteran Company
Heroic Battalion
Legendary Regiment
Legendary Regiment
So say you had to roll "Military" to see what kind of forces you could muster for an operation. If you were a Novice House (like a MechWarrior holding or a Knight Bachelor) with a D8 in Military and roll a success, you'd have a single 'Mech to throw at the problem. On a raise, you could muster a Lance. On two raises, you could gather a Company (perhaps of allies or kinsmen.) If you were a House Lord, and another House Lord attacked your nation, you'd roll Military. On a success, you could throw a BattleMech Regiment into the fray. On a raise, you'd have an RCT, and on two raises a Brigade.
The same thing could be done for money and other resources. Bonuses and penalties could be worked in the way they work in Savage Worlds. For instance, a Trick or Feint against the Intelligence of an enemy House might place a negative modifier on their Military roll as available troops are moved to counter a fake assault...
There's a lot of potential here, I think. Edges, Hindrances, skills... handling Houses like characters.
What say you guys?
No comments:
Post a Comment