About to start an anything goes WOIN game. Any tips getting started?

JediMasterGunner · Jul 6, 2017

We are about to start a WOIN game inspired by the Hellboy and BPRD comics, so anything goes for character generation, but if it is supernatural the PC is the only example of the type. So, there can be only one fish-man, pyrokineticist, man-sized homunculus construct, etc... Each PC is making two characters like the old Dark Sun character trees with one Army Ranger and one...whatever else. We spent a session making characters and a couple of us have spent a lot of time going over the rules.

Any tips from people playing so far? I'm a little worried about PCs hitting things with high defenses for being a higher grade than the party. And I'm likewise worried about lower-grade enemies hitting the party members.

The first adventures will be conversions of Game Mechanics and 12 to Midnight d20 Modern adventures like Come for the Reaping and the Brindisi Protocol so there is a mix of action with full military kit or nothing but scrounged gear.

They aren't sure if they should be worried about the low Health as long as they are wearing Kevlar Vests (Soak 5), but the idea seems to be to avoid getting hit. I've stressed positioning is important and will be needed to hit things if they are trading dice for extra damage since the bad guys also will have Soak from armor or supernatural means.

Morrus · Jul 6, 2017

Re. DEFENSE - you'll be surprised how often people roll in the 30s with combinations of tactics, position, buffs, LUC, etc. There's so many ways to get that attack pool up.

They'll always have lowish HEALTH, as it doesn't increase very much. Make sure they use cover, or they might get dead.

Action Careers is coming out imminently (today or tomorrow, I hope) -- I don't know if it's worth waiting for that, but it will have a lot of modern day careers in there. And there's tons of modern weapons on the website.

Be sure to get the latest FAQ and errata documents.

Any questions, feel free to ask here!

Lord Mhoram · Jul 6, 2017

Morrus said:
Action Careers is coming out imminently (today or tomorrow, I hope) --!

Good to hear. I've got a character, and campaign, waiting to start for that release. Thanks for the info.

GLazelle · Jul 9, 2017

If you have players using the magic rules, they need to focus on those during character generation or they will struggle to do much (esp. Chi/magic and skills). Fighters can get by with mediocre stats/skills, but power-users need decent scores or they are very limited,

Also watch to ensure their secret/skill combos work - they won't all match up.

I've been finding the balance between attack rolls and defence tricky too, but remember (my initial encounters where with small foes and 2/3 of my players have small characters - at grade 6 they have defence in the mid-twenties needing 7-8 dice for regular hits!) the situational modifiers - especially pinned down and flanking/crossfire.

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JediMasterGunner · Jul 11, 2017

Thanks for the advice. We ran the first session tonight, with an earlier one for character generation.

An unfortunate experience with a vehicle trapped by a higher-grade enemy hit half the party for 15 damage. That was an early wake up about Health and Soak that may make them more cautious that they would have been if starting vs. pistols.

The party has been careful with positioning and setting up areas of fire. They have been using Overwatch from the beginning if there are no targets available.

There were a lot of questions about Magic for the alternate characters. I'll sort them out and look for answers before seeking clarification.

PolloParrington · Jul 11, 2017

I went easy on my players for their first encounter, just to get a feel for the systems. From there, scaled up, mixing and matching to make combats interesting. Fighting one Big Bad hasn't been a hit. Fighting a Big Bad with a half-dozen other minions floating around definitely was (the system lends itself very well to those small to mid range skirmishes.) Plenty of players have gotten dropped, some even in one shot, but the slow Death countdown mechanic hasn't killed anyone yet.

Mages started off feeling relatively underpowered, especially when you stack them up against psychics. But once they got a few grades under their belts and came up with some killer spells, they became table favourites and the crew doesn't do missions without them.

My players had trouble with frustratingly high-Defence enemies until I reminded them that rushing it and just swinging at things toe-to-toe is rarely the best option. Once they get a hang of the mechanics for flanking, crossfires and higher ground, along with remembering to use all their exploits, even a high dice pool baddie can be brought down.

Morrus · Jul 11, 2017

Yeah, it’s so important to seek out those extra dice. Players who don’t do that are going to be at a massive disadvantage - the game is designed around them. It’s be like playing Chess but only using your pawns.

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JediMasterGunner · Jul 18, 2017

We had our second game session tonight.

The Overwatch, Suppressive Fire, and Crossfire rules came into play. It took a bit to get used to adding/removing dice rather than flat modifiers but by the end of the night everyone got it.

The last enemies in the adventure were a pack of six zombies against five US Army Rangers. The 10 Soak for the zombies absorbed all of the damage from a grenade and a claymore. The party was trading all of the crossfire dice for extra damage to be effective and overcome the melee penalty. It was a good exercise for focusing fire like a miniatures game and learning the dice trading mechanic.

With Overwatch, I let them cover a doorway or area rather than limiting the attacks to someone without cover, as suggested in the FAQ. This was mostly for the party sniper who was across the street trying to cover the party moving through a building. Otherwise he wouldn't have been able to use that ability.

I have some questions I'll post in another thread.