Friday
Episode II of Necropolis, wherein we talk ourselves out of the sticky wicket of having knifed the evil merchant in the back in the middle of town, pursue a small but annoying child across the fields, and fight a demon crocodile that refuses to come out and fight us. Hilarity ensues.
Sunday
Series II, Session 1 of “Death of the Party,” the latest episode in my Spycraft game. First game with Stan along, which will more than fill out the table at 5. Slow starting, as usual, and the players continue to struggle with bundles and budgets in kicking off the mission. I think things went a bit more smoothly, though, this time, so I suspect as we proceed, this will cease to be the literal game-stopper that it’s been the past few times. It’s still a good mechanic, it’s just a matter of getting used to it.
Many Greenland jokes. Just you wait …
X-ray glasses are intensely annoying. I see an upsurge in stone construction coming on … or else a boost in the GP rate.
Thought the game went well. It’s another canned module, but I fleshed out some of the details on the ground, and added in some personalized encounters (that blended in with the background surprisingly well). Plus this one has a better map (if annoyingly not on-grid) than the last, and most of the mechanical stuff was there with little problem. Just like I want it.
Though I have to say, I’m beginning to get some good “bits” in mind for some “original” scenarios to run …
(A bit more on the game here.)
Woo Hoo!
Go x-ray specs!
Eh. X-ray specs are easy. The only thing they work on are hardness five or less. The “average wooden door”. (Actually, I’m the sort of bastard that wouldn’t have even let it work on anything but the swinging kitchen door in the whole house and a vague impression of the ‘unknown rooms’, since nothing in a house like that would be considered an ‘average’ wooden door 🙂
– No military or industrial complexes use anything but gauge steel doors. In fact, within a modern building, the anti-fire measures in the walls will interfere with pretty much any of that nonsense.
– I (personally) wouldn’t have let it work on the ‘big old doors’ in the basement, either. Too thick, too hard.
Honestly, it’s a neat toy, but basically just let us (as players) work a bit faster in scouting out the (largely unimportant) ‘unknown’ rooms. Goodness knows how long we’d have taken if we’d had to actually walk into each room.
Gearing up: I’m personally pleased that the budget points actually got divvied up as fast as they did (fifteen minutes). Bundles are good. Sorting bundles by types of mission is also good. Gadget points (since we now have more due to leveling) were what slowed us down this time.
Two things that might help that:
1. (Which I might do) sorting out some lists of gear-by-mission. (This includes working out a fair cost for ‘listen with earbud, talk into cuff of shirt’ Secret Service-style radios — good grief but it should not be that hard.)
2. Enforcing the time limit. Strictly. There’s an informal “Lily Law” in Nobilis that states “When the HG calls for it, you have to actually Decide What You’re Doing instead of Talking About Options.” There are lots of options in Nobilis, there are lots of toys in Spycraft. Similar problem.
The most dangerous thing I heard during gear up last night was “take a look at [this book] and see if there’s anything that might be useful.
Ugh. Everything might be useful — the long, leisurely strolls through the gear and equipment lists should be shaved for between-game leveling when I can can change my personal load-out: leveling up should take days, just for the Gear 🙂
That said, the thing to do is gear up for the Obvious Mission and rely to some extent on intuition, wits, and training if things go awry.
The only reason we had a problem with the time, actually, was the damn question of discreet radios — we had all the points spent inside 30 minutes then went back to that. (Which should be cheap anyway if for no other reason than the opportunity it gave us to roleplay with one another even as we spread out through the party — a favorite part of the Alias series for me 🙂
But yeah, gearing took a bit of time, but it was MUCH better than the first gear-up.
Shaved = saved. Obviously my subconscious thinks I should be off getting ready for work. 😛
One question on the Bundles:
Why can’t there be multiples of each type of bundle?
And yeah, the radio thing is the only part that really hung us up.
I was amused by the level of paranoia that the gearing up phase brings. It was a good thing that Dave was out of the room for most of it.
Having the timer was a good idea to keep us focused, but I think that one of us should have possession of it and not let sit in the middle of the Table (Umm…5 minutes left and counting. Let’s get it all finalized). I think that every time we go through this we’ll get better at “knowing” what we will need to have, and it will get quicker.
As too “average wood door” Anything wooden, 2″ thick and less would be average. Two sheets of 3/4″ dry wall (one on either side of the wall) or a Plaster and Lathe wall for wall stuff (since studs and joists show up as solid). I am not sure what gauge of steel thickness would constitute as too thick.
1. Note that I gave fairly vauge and general descriptions of the rooms involved. There may very well be small or non-hard objects in the adjoining rooms that were missed. That stack of papers in the desk drawer, for example, translating the instructions for building more CDMAS units …
A big, solid, metallic piece of equipment will show up pretty well — within the range and parameters described. Softer items will be less discernable.
Indeed, while the specs mention 60′, that’s 60′ clear. Each thing that the specs sees through is going to fuzz the picture beyond. Consider dental X-rays, with the various soft parts of the mouth creating a gauze-like effect. Now imagine walls, paintings, furniture, etc., and the effective range looking through a house is going to be limited to about one room in depth.
And it gets, arguably, better (or worse). Take a look at the X-ray screen at an airport security checkpoint some time. Recognize anything in it? Security techs are trained to identify a certain clear subset of possible objects (guns, ammo, knives, timing devices) from all the other hasserai that fills our brief cases, bags, and purses. And they still end up squinting and stairing and running things back and forth and finally sending them over for a hand inspection.
And further bear in mind that the X-rays used by those specs have to be significantly weaker than that — otherwise you’d be walking around giving people (and your comrades) cancer-inducing doses of radiation. (This gets a bit finessed by Super-Secret Tech, which is why it’s a Gadget, but something to consider at least).
So … I don’t have a problem with being able to see through a simple door, or drywall, or even lathe-and-plaster into most of the adjoining room, assuming it’s relatively empty. I’m inclined to agree on the thicker doors. And in that room you should be able to see the outlines of most normal stuff, and certaily see if there’s some metallic objects, which you might or might not recognize. Certainly you could probably see someone standing inside the door with a gun. You might see a gun in the desk against the near wall, or maybe the far wall. But smaller objects, objects up against more solid objects, objects that are vague in their purpose (what does that wire connect to?), are going to be more difficult to discern, especially if you’re not going to stand there for a few minutes, staring at the wall.
And, of course, when you penetrate the Eastern Fire Super-Spy Base, the walls will all be lead-lined …
2. I agree that it went better with the gear-up. And I’m glad I brought down the timer, and, yes, pretty much everything was more or less decided within the 30 minutes. I think we overthought what seems like a gap in the equipment list for discreet radios. We’re not the only ones to go over this, but I’m not seeing any easy answers other than what Margie came up with (Go, Margie!).
It sounds (without the book in front of me, obviously, but looking at the AEG forum) like there might be some comm equipment in the Faceman/Snoop guide that would be of use, or at least worth looking at in this context.
But I agree — superoptimizing gear lists without knowing all the details of the mission is probably fruitless. I think 30 minutes will top things out from now on, unless something really bizarre comes up.
Gear
For cross-referencing’s sake, some interesting discussion on X-Ray Specs and Discreet Radios can be found in the comments over here….
A wooden door 2″ thick? Yeesh, what sort of house do you live in, Stan?
For the most part, except for modernized areas, or older areas, I would expect someplace like the Stratovich mansion to be pretty convention in construction.
Modern construction with steel beams rather than wooden 2x4s, though, would probably cause at least some problems. Or maybe it would just make the structure clearer.
Okay, but what if one of your characters was rocketed to Earth from Krypton as an infant?
Not a House (hollow core, or 6/8 panel) door. I was thinking more along the lines of a 45 Minute wooden fire door (1.5″, and sort of a “everything under “X” is “Y”), and that you might be able to see some distance through the “2 inch” part of a 2 x 4 and not the “4 inch” part of a 2 x 4″.
It’s nice (?!?) to see that other people have had the same communication problem that we had yesterday. I liked Margie’s ability to cut through it all and come up with a solution that allowed all of us to stay in “party” mode.
Go Margie!
As part of the post gear up phase:
Now that we have several people that have the Procure ability and a ton o’ money, Couldn’t we save some of our gear up points till we figured out what it was we needed and “Procure” the rest of it at the site?
Oh…
And you forgot the best moment of the game.
Dylan (Agent Poet), while sneaking around upstairs and trying to get to the third floor grunts into the bug…
“Damn, I forgot to call my wife back!” 24 Hours after he promised to call her back…
“Hey, anybody know the number of a good florist in Boston?”
“Damn…I’m not getting any sort of cell phone signal!”
“Cal, Gozi, and Lou…whatever you three are doing down there, make sure you pick out a good bottle of wine for my wife.”
I will note (for free) that while the servants have so far not given you a second look as you wandered through the kitchen, down the hall, etc., carrying a wine bottle inside of your suit coat (or less, for those who are wearing less) would probably draw at least some attention.
Good thing Dylan’s carrying a wad of cash on him …
Procurement in the field is always an option, of course. A bit more difficult in the current circumstances (though clearly not impossible, esp. if done through the Agency — isn’t that covered as a Favor Check?).
I thought it was dinner first, then the tour…
Though, a tour ending in dinner would be better.
The general specified a tour, followed by dinner.
My personal opinion is that, in the long run, the x-ray specs will be useful for two things:
1. Spotting armed guys.
2. Finding wall safes and possibly (if they’re made of metal) doors concealed behind wooden panels.
Using them to actually search anything would be, as you point out, very difficult.
—
I’d really like to write up the whole session as either a script or a story.
—
And to answer Stan’s question: the only reason we could only have one of any bundle was because I only had one copy printed 🙂
(Also, granted, there was the theory that more bundles covers more bases.)
This is good stuff too, and provides nice diagrams.
Using the “$20 = 1 BP” and “20 BP = 1 GP” theory, and Motorola’s equipment price list, you get this:
:: Wireless Ear Receiver used with Flat Pack Inductor (Squelched Version) ($254.50) & Throat Microphone with Acoustic Tube & 80 MM PTT — $450.00 = $700, or 35 BPs ea., or ~2 GPs (Spot DC 25 or 30)
For something a bit more conventional:
The basic “Man in Black” earphones from the Matrix, with ‘talk into your wrist’ functionality: Palm Microphone Kit ($102.31) & Wired Earphone Kit ($40.92) = $150, ~8 BP, (Spot DC ~20, depending).
Turning on the GM-gene for a second, those costs seem about right.
Yeah, there’s no reason why you guys couldn’t carry 3 Demolitions bundles, or whatever.
On the other hand, the bundles are often written with a team in mind. So it will be one block of C4, one timer, five tac headsets, etc.
The general rule of thumb I see up on the Spycraft forum is that the bundles max at 38 BP for 25. So if you want to design a bundle, you can g’head and do so, using that as an upper guideline. The Agency doesn’t mind giving you a break, as long as it’s a standard break and they can have it already set up and ready to ship.
Yeah, the costs you mention sound about right, Doyce.
I really don’t want to get too burdened down in the details of this (any more than, ahem, debating load weights and barrel rifling floats my boat on the gun side of things). I think either we already have or we simply can ID some commo gear that is discreet (high Spot DC) and effective, at least at short ranges, from just a cinematic standpoint. Just like we can “define” explosive timers without going overboard.
Found it last night (toward the begining of the gear section).
We do not need to spend all/any of our gear points during the gear up phase. We can spend them during the game. Cost is the same (As long as you have Procure, and we have three people that have Procure), but there is a time modifier.
So we could go check out a place, and then call in for stuff as we figure out what we need.
Nothing was mentioned about gadget points, so those may need to be figured out only during the gear up phase.
I suspect so. I suppose you could get the Agency to deliver a Gadget, but there would be a Favor check (Action Die) involved, as well as time. (Just recall the times Q shows up in the middle of Japan or Hong Kong Bay with the next set of Bond gadgets.)
As opposed to Procuring, which is just an abstract “I go out and find it, or find someone who will get it for us” thing, as I recall.
The Agency will deliver gear, too, but, again, it’s a Favor check, likely at a lower number. I’ll look it up.
Actually, there is a formula for gadet points too. One gadget point in 20 minutes with agency contact, or one point per hour when working without ageny contact.
Huh. Cool.