Tabletop X-COM system for gunfights?

[Strung Nether]

One thing that I noticed when playing the X-COM "Long War" mod is that the gameplay of X-COM seems close to the actual end result of some tabletop games. Shadowrun 4 is a easy example. X-COMhas simplified mechanics, and does some funky things with the action economy rules that would be a pain to manage on a tabletop environment(overwatch, shoot shoot instead of move shoot, etc) but it stood out to me as a simple and ultimately fun system.

For those "not in the know", xcom basically gives you a "move, then action" system where the action can be shoot, reload, overwatch(shoot them if they move on their turn), throw grenade, and some miscellaneous special abilities. Higher level soldiers get more goodies, such as shooting in place of your first move, but in general it stays simple. The complexity of the game comes in managing the tactical position of your six soldiers. Soldiers stats are aim, movement, will, and HP, and are usually randomized slightly.

Is there merit to a system that has the streamlined action system that X-COM has? It seems to me that it would make actual play faster and reduce decision paralysis, but would require a lot more in terms of character customization to keep players interested.

[OgreBattle]

Check out Warp Cult: http://www.tgdmb.com/viewtopic.php?p=72842

It was written on TGDMB as a tabletop gunfighting game. It has enough rules written out to have 28mm guys tactically pew pew at one another.

Warp Cult


What You Need Characters in Warp Cult are fairly complex compared to units in Warhammer, having skills and varied attributes and equipment lists that are somewhat more in-depth than the merely “armor and gun” lists that appear on troop rosters. So it is highly advised that you have paper and pencils available. Warp Cult uses only d6s, so dice of other sizes are not particularly needed or used. During combat, you may be called upon to generate a random direction. The Warhammer Direction die is great for this (though Warp Cult makes no special use of the “hit” sides), but you can also use a spinner or even generate directions crudely with a d6 by generate a “clock” direction by doubling the result of the die (that is to say that a “5” would point towards “10 O'Clock”).

WYSINWYG: An important note for veteran Warhammer players is that there is no compelling reason for every model to physically show all of the stuff that the character is carrying around. Partly this is because a character is carrying around wildly different and unpredictable things within the scope of a single adventure. It is simply impractical to make a separate model for every item your character could be packing around. But mostly this is because Warp Cult is a role playing game. That is, since each each player is playing just a single character much of the time, the entire purpose of the WYSIWYG concept (to keep players from making mistakes by forgetting that one unit or another on a battlefield is not what it appears to be) is lost. Since the game is largely noncompetitive experience you can even “go back” if for some reason you do make a mistake because of the confusion generated by substitutions.

So go ahead and use whatever models you have to represent individuals in the game world. It is certainly pleasant to have models that are a good representation of the player characters and the enemies they are fighting, it is not strictly necessary. What is important is base size. A standard human or humanoid alien in Warp Cult uses a 25mm circular base. You're welcome to place smaller miniatures or even numbered markers on bases that size to represent characters, but you should have some kind of markers to do the battles. Of course, for sessions where you aren't doing any battles, you can quite plausible play with nothing but character sheets and a pile of six sided dice.

---

Basic Mechanics

When you perform an action, you roll a pile of d6s called a dicepool. Dice which come up as a 5 or 6 are hits. Those that show a number 1 are botches. A task will normally require a number of hits to succeed equal to the Difficulty Threshold, and throughout the game this will often just be abbreviated as “Threshold.” Any hits gained in addition to the difficulty threshold are Net Hits. If you get 4 or more net hits, you get a Critical Success. This basic terminology will be most familiar to those who have played Shadowrun, but it is really not much different from the Storytelling System (save that it uses d6s rather than d10s, and critical success is measured by how much you exceed the threshold rather than by getting an arbitrary number of hits and exceeding the threshold). Tasks also have an Error Threshold. If the total number of dice that come up as anything that isn't a botch match the Error Threshold, nothing happens. If they fall short of that, an error occurs whether the task succeeded or not.

Dicepools: Your dicepool is generally speaking Attribute + Skill + Equipment. The main characters are humans even if they are mutants, but remember that many of their opponents are super human. Daemons and Space Marines both have substantially larger attributes than do humans.

Setting Difficulties: In general, most tasks can be ascribed a difficulty – a number of hits required for them to succeed. Many tasks are predefined in difficulty, but some are must be defined in the middle of the game, which is generally the responsibility of the CO. If you need to ascribe difficulty to something in a very quick fashion, grab some difficulty from the following table:

1. Difficulty Table
2. - Easy
3. - Average
4. - Hard
5. - Extreme

Note that increasing difficulties have higher thresholds. Very often tasks will be best with complications that increase the thresholds, making them harder. It is important to note that +1 to the required threshold of a task is an increase to the difficulty of that task, rather than a bonus to the action.

Defaulting: If an action requires a skill and you don't have it, you can generally attempt to perform the action anyway and use -1 in place of your skill. So for example: an untrained man can still fire a bolt gun,he simply rolls Dexterity-1 instead of Dexterity+Firearms. Some skills cannot be defaulted on.

Extended Actions: An extended action has an extra piece of nomenclature on it: a time frame. This is because the action is expected to take some long amount of time. An extended test takes a variable amount of time. If the character meets the threshold for the action, the base time is divided by the total number of hits to determine how long it actually took to finish. If a character does not receive sufficient hits, then the action fails, and the character will know that it has failed after having spent half the base time on the project. And yes, this means that for very difficult extended tasks, it can take longer to not succeed than it does to succeed.

Buying Hits: When you are not particularly stressed, you may buy hits. Rather than rolling dice for a task, you may simply assume that you got one hit for every four full dice in your pool. This is less than you would expect to get on average by actually rolling, but sometimes consistency is its own magnitude.

Assisted Rolls: If two or more characters are helping to complete a single task, you may make a Teamwork Test. The assisting character makes a normal test, and their hits are added to the dicepool of the primary character. The primary character can at best double their dicepool like this. As such, the rule normally only applies for groups of 4-6 at the outside. For much larger groups you can figure that these teams are themselves individuals helping each other to create a ludicrously large dicepool. For the purposes of Warp Cult this will usually not come up, and indeed most tasks are not amenable to such maneuvers.

Opposed Rolls: Sometimes it is necessary for an action to overcome active interference. In these cases, the opposing character or factor is also allowed a test, with hits canceling out hits in the primary test. Actions which assume interference such as swinging a chainsword at a dude do not entitle the victim to roll anything to oppose unless something spectacular is going on. The inherent difficulty of trying to cut a guy's face off when they presumably don't want you to is already figured into the difficulty threshold. Also note that characters with larger Dexterity and Martial Arts ratings are harder to hit – the standard opposition is formalized in order to speed up play.

• Many Psychic powers specifically allow characters to oppose them, because the warp genuinely works differently when stronger minds are involved and opposition is always anything but standard.

Errors: Not everything goes according to plan, and things often go awry – especially in the Imperium of Man. Whenever a character makes a test, count the number of dice rolled that came up any number that wasn't a “1.” Every task will have an error threshold, and if not enough dice come up 2-6, then an error has occurred. In most cases, the error threshold is just twice the success threshold. Note therefore that it is entirely possible for a character to both succeed and have an error. This in no way negates the success, it just means that something untoward happened during the attempt. What happens because of the error is highly situational and is left to the CO to describe. Remember that a success is still a success and a failure is still a failure. So if the attempt is to jump across a gap, the fact that the character made an error while successfully jumping the gap may mean that they fall prone on the far side, but they won't fall down the gap because of that. Similarly, the fact that a character made no error while failing to clear the distance should be of little comfort if the way down is terribly far – though failing to make it across and making an error may involve an even more painful descent or a simple insult to injury as items fall out of pockets as the character falls themselves. The error threshold may go up or down depending upon the risk of the action, and the severity of an error depends upon the dangers present when an action is taking place. It is better to have an error when juggling kittens than it is to have an error while juggling chainswords.

• Ammunition: Firing weapons is a special case. Characters are expected to fire weapons many times during battle, and the difficulty threshold varies wildly. But the difficulty threshold doesn't usually go up because the character is pushing themselves to the brink or anything, it just means that one shot or another is less likely to land on target. Therefore weapon tests have an Error threshold that is set by the weapon itself, not by the difficulty threshold of the shot being attempted. Most weapons that have such an error simply stop functioning for the rest of the battle, and it is for this reason that the Error Threshold for a weapon is called its “Ammunition” number in its stats. Some weapons (notably plasma guns) do something special when they have errors, and this is noted in their text descriptions.

[GâtFromKI]

As a matter of fact, I think the iterative attacks of D&D3 would be better if it was replaced by "at BAB +X, you can attack as move action ; the attack is made at full BAB and can be made in the same turn as a standard action attack. At BAB +Y, you can attack as a swift action also." This is the same as some classes getting "shot, shot" instead of "move, shot" in X-Com.

Maybe there are some problems I don't see with that idea.

[deaddmwalking]

There are some problems, but they're not appreciably worse than the existing problems with 3.x - but they're also not appreciably better.

In 3.x, outside of specialized builds, you can't make a full attack unless you're standing right next to your opponent. If you allow a second attack 'as a move action', you still can't move and attack twice (which works basically the same as 3.x).

For most martial characters, the swift action won't really cost them anything - they don't have any abilities that require it. But for a gish character, it's a bad deal. Spells that require a swift action are a really good deal for any martial character that uses spells because you can combine them with a full attack.

Ultimately, you're trading your swift action for the same attack bonus on all your attacks. Is that worthwhile? For some builds, probably - but you're still playing the lowest tier power character.

[GâtFromKI]

The goal is to reproduce the full-attack mechanic at low tier (move and attack or attack twice), only better and with less calculation (you have two attacks at full BAB ; you can use your standard action to do something else if you have to, and still attack). And at higher tier, the goal is to be able to move and attack without weird mechanic like pounce.

If you think it is not enough attacks at higher tiers, you may make characters gain a move action instead of increasing their movement. I don't think you can cast spells with a move action. Actually it could be a better mechanic for monk : instead of having flurry of blow and bonus to movement, they can attack with a move action and gain additional move actions.

Higher-tier Gishs have to sacrifice an attack to cast a spell. I have no problem with that. I have more problem with them casting two spell (swift and standard), and still attacking.


I mean: I guess it may become a clusterfuck, but I don't see where it is conceptually worse than D&D3.

[Mistborn]

Honestly I'd like to know why anyone here thinks that derping around with the action economy on the level of individual abilities is a good idea? If history has taught us anything it's taught us that's a sure road to tears and failure.