Lets try some systems!

[Lilcamper]

It'd be worth peeking at the GenCon Online list this year. (Registration is free.) They have a number of games in other languages, although obviously fewer than in English.

Nice to know! I never actually took a look at the gaming tables! Maybe I find something for me this time!

EABA

Now, on to EABA. First, EABA is an acronym for "End All, Be All" a pompous name for a RPG that, for me, seems just like "GURPS, but better" - it is simulationist, but not at the level of details of GURPS, it has metacurrency, its dice system is interesting, where you roll Xd6, and select only the three better results, so, after a while, having a high level on an ability/skill gets you diminishing returns. Also, everything is mensured in levels, and scales almost the same way, using a neat universal table. In general, when you increase something by 3 levels, it is two times as effective. For example, if you have Strenght 7 (the common level for a normal human), and you try to throw a weight 2 stone, you can throw it 7-2 = 5 levels on the distance column of the table. (ok, writing it here it don't seem that intuitive...).
Unfortunatelly, the system is not well known, and, nowadays, even though it don't reach GURPS or Shadowrun levels of details, it can get a little complicated. Also, it don't have any well know setting, which is a bummer, because we could use some standard fantasy, cyberpunk or modern action books, which takes us to the next problem: the writing is very technical, specially when you reach the chapter on Powers - you have to build EVERYTHING, and, while the power system is very flexible, it is also very arcane, and has so many options, turns and levers that it scares you.

Having said all of that, I do like it quite a lot, and, even though I never actually played it more than a single session, I love it, and time over time, I try to endure the power system. This was the first ruleset that I tried to translate the scenes into. Lets see about the characters:

PC

As said before, Attributes in EABA varies, for a normal human adult, from about 4 to 12, 7 being the norm. It also translates directly into a dice roll, as noted in parentheses.

For attributes, she has
Strength 8(9) (3d+0) Agility 10(11) (3d+2) Awareness 8 (2d+2) Will 7 (2d+1) Health 8 (2d+2) Fate 3 (1d), with a Weakness in "Power", for +2A.

Derivate Attributes (that can matter in the scenes):
Dodge 6(7) Walk 4 (1,4m) Run 6 (3m) Sprint 8 (6m) Initiative 11(12) (considering Agility).
Stamina 8 Hits 16 Hits Brackets 4

For skills, we have the following:
Brawling +1d (4d+2), Firearms: Longarms +2d (Shotgun Specialization +1d)(5d+2/6d+2), Firearms: Pistols +1d (4d+2), Throwning +0d (3d+2), Security Systems +2d (4d+2), Stealth +2d (5d+2), Trade: Acrobat +1d (4d+2), Medicine +0d (2d+1)
Culturally she has Driving: Ground Vehicles at +0d (3d+2).

Seems about right, even though I missed having some kind of "Athletics" skill. Needing to have Climbing, Swimming and Running as skill while having so few skill points seems like punishing.

For traits she has "Animal Defender"

I had to built her cyberware using the Power System, which took me quite some time:

• Cyber-eye with Night Vision, Thermographic Vision and Smartlink (Level 7(2d+1) night and heat vision, +1 to Firearms and +1 Acc with firearms;
• Muscular Implant (+1 to Agility and to Strength);
• Wired Reflexes (+1 to Dodge and to Initiative).

For equipment, she has:

• Heavy pistol (extrapolated from the 9mm pistol base stats) - ACC 1 Damage 2d+2, 15 clip;
• Tactical Shotgun - ACC 3 Damage 3d+2g, 10 clip;
• 2 Flashbang grenades;
• Urban Explorer Jumpsuit - 3d+2 flexible armor over chest, with 3d (only 1d vs firearms) flexible armor on limbs.

All of these gear were extrapolated from existing gear in the book, so they may contain some errors.

The soldiers that she will fight have:

Attributes
Strength 8 (2d+2) Agility 8 (2d+2) Awareness 7 (2d+1) Will 7 (2d+1) Health 8 (2d+2) Fate 3 (1d)
Derivate Attributes (that can matter in the scenes):
Dodge 4 Walk 4 (1,4m) Run 6 (3m) Sprint 8 (6m) Initiative 8 (considering Agility).
Stamina 8 Hits 16 Hits Brackets 4

Skills
Brawling 3d+2, Firearms 4d+2, Driving 3d+2
Equipment will be dependent on each soldier's role.

Well, I think that that's it! Now, on we go to the scenes!

 

[Lilcamper]

Scene 1

PC climbs the wall (I didn't find anything on Climbing in EABA, so lets extrapolate from Shadowrun - needing 3 successes is like a challenging test, so lets test PC Climb skill versus Difficulty, or 9). she don't have the Climbing skill (mostly because when I did the scenes I didn't though it was necessary, so she is suffering the consequences of my metagaming...) so she rolls Agility (3d+2) -1d, or 2d+2.

The results are (3,4)+2 - 9, and she succeeds just so, cuts the wire and quickly, but silently, goes to lean on the nearby wall of the building. From there, she begins working on silently open the window. I ask for a Stealth check, as, unknow for her, there are two soldiers resting on the room she is trying to enter.

She has 5d+2 for sneaking, and rolls (6,5,6,6,3), selects 6,6 and 6, for a total of... 20. As the soldiers are not actively waiting for intruders, I assumed they "took 2" on their Awareness Roll of 2d+1, for a total Difficulty of 5. She easily beats it and starts opening the window. Of course, she could also use the same "take 2" rule, and set her result to 12, but were is the fun in that, right? We are here to use the rules!

Unfortunately, before she can open the window wide enough for her to enter, the decker tells her that the patrolling guard is almost at the corner of the building, and will get to her at any moment.
She don’t like needlessly killing people, but this is a high stakes mission, and she can’t afford to be detected, so she draws her silenced Ares Predator V (heavy pistol) and aims at about head level on the corner of the building. As soon as she levels her gun, the unlucky soldier enters her field of vision, and so she shoots!

The poor soldier has no chance of knowing what was waiting for him, let alone trying to dodge. PC has 4d+2 in Pistols Skill, there is no penalty for darkness, and the soldier appears 4 meters from her (Difficulty 7 on the Universal Chart), she aimed, reducing the Difficulty by 2 (Her pistol Acc of 1, +1 because of the Smartlink) to 5, and she is targeting the head, for +6 difficulty. She needs 11+.

She gets (6,2,5,1)+2 - 15, and is hitting the poor sod in the face. Now, normally you target the "Head" hit location, which is subdivided into face, skull and neck, and the helmet that the soldier is using protects his skull and neck. It is not written anywere on the book that you can't aim at the face (and ignore the helmet armor value) so I went with it.

Her pistol does 2d+2 lethal damage, she rolls (4,2)+2, for 8 points of damage, increase by +3 to 11 points of damage. Since it is higher than his Health, he must roll his Health, modified by -2d (as he crossed two hit points brackets) or be stunned. Since his Health is 8, for a roll of 2d+2, with the modifier he ends up at 0d+2, and thus fails, being stunned. He is also knocked out because he took more than Health points of damage in one attack, which is enough for our character.

Now, even though the pistol is silenced, and the sound is quieter than a normal shot, it still can be heard, so we rolled to see if the other soldiers (inside the room and on guard in the front of the building) heard anything.

The base Difficulty to hear something is based on the distance in the Universal Table. The soldiers inside the house are at about 4 meters, so they start at target number 7, while the soldier in front of the building is 8 meters away, for a starting number of 9. This difficulty is reduced by -2, because of the shot, and I give an extra increase of +2 for the soldiers inside the building to hear because of the interposing wall, so both groups of soldiers are at Difficulty 9.

Each one of them have Awareness 7 (2d+1), and, instead of rolling for both of those inside of the building, we can roll just one time, but with +2 for double the number of people, so they roll 3d+0.
Roll of the soldier in front of the building - (2,5)+1 - 8, Roll for both soldiers inside the building - (4,2,4) - 10. One of the parties would hear the gunshot, even though it was from a silenced firearm! The soldier didn't rolled that well, it is just that EABA, being a little on the simulationist side, don't treat silenced firearms as just a quiet whisper.

Nevertheless, for the scene to not differ that much from the base test, lets say that none of them actually bothered to check the noise, right?

Regardless of it, the same can’t be said about a guard dog that was hidden only 8 meters from PC - with a growl it lurched towards her!

Without thinking, PC drops her pistol, and draws her stun baton, she would never shoot a dog, even when it is intending on biting her hands off!

Now we will start a proper combat. Before describing it, there is some perks that I think that need to be told. In EABA you select both your Dodge and Initiative values at the start of the round, and, while they serve their function (Dodge makes you harder to hit, and Initiative makes you go first), they also function as a penalty for the character, so you have to compromise between being able to go first, being harder to hit, and being able to actually do something in combat!
Also, each turn of combat has an increased duration, with the first round being only 1 second long, the second being 2 seconds, and each turn after being two times as long as the first. After the first round, you have a bonus named "turn mod" which you can apply to your actions, indicating your focus in your turn. This was a very quick and simplified explanation, but I think it will be enough for the scenes.

The dog is 8 meters from her, and none of the sides are surprised. The dog will call 0 for initiative, while PC calls 1, raised to 2 because of her implant. She is first, and declares that she is holding a major action to attack the dog as soon as it is in her reach.

The dog then charges at her (a full out attack, so without the possibility of dodging), flaring its teeth, just as it is about to bite her, she acts, striking it with her stun baton. She attacks with her Melee skill of... none, because I forgot to give it to her... lets call that she have it at Agility, right? So she will be rolling 3d+2, -1 because of her Initiative, for a total of 3d+1
The base difficult to hit the dog is only 3, because it isn't defending itself, nor dodging, so an auto-success.

Still, she rolls (6,2,3)+1 - 12. For hit location, she rolls 3d6 and gets (5,2,3) - 10, a hit on the chest. There is no stun baton on the base game, but there is one in one of the settings books, and it does 3d+2 non-lethal damage, lets use that.
She then rolls damage (6,3,3)+2 - 14, a good result. With Will 7, the dog has Toughness 2, reducing this damage to 12. It has a total of 11 hit points, so it is knocked out unconscious. Ok, maybe it is realistic, but it was a bit of a bummer that a template called "vicious dog" ended up being really weak.

Just for testing sake, if the dog had bite her hand, it would deal 1d+2 half-lethal damage. As PC has 3d armor on her arms, it would ended up dealing no direct damage, with 2 points of stun damage being transmited to PC (2 points per full die of damage stopped by the armor), further reduced by toughness to 0, she would be unharmed, but maybe her armor would be a little damaged.

As soon as she knocks the dog down, she can hear the other soldiers noticing that something is wrong; even worse - there is sound coming from inside the building, through the window – there are more soldiers inside!

End of scene 1

We already are dealing with a lot less dice rolling than Shadowrun...

 

[Lilcamper]

Continuing...

Scene 2

Without wasting time, PC draws a flashbang grenade, and, reading her shotgun from her back, throws the grenade through the window, waits half a second for it to explode, and tries to swiftly enter through the same window.

Now, since she is close to the window, and she just want to throw the grenade inside, she don’t need to actually roll to be successful, she simply does it. As we are still not in “combat mode”, there is no need for initiative, yet.


As soon as she hears the grenade going off, she jumps through the window. Normally I would not ask for a test, but the windows was only half open, remember? The player can either use a major Action to open it and move, or roll... Trade: Acrobatics? to “slide through” the gap. He chooses the last one, and rolls PC's Trade: Acrobatics of 4d+2 at Average Difficulty (7). She gets (4,5,1,4)+2 - 15, and easily succeeds. Again, she could simply "take 2's"...


Anyway, she moves inside the room, where she is face to face with two soldiers, both about 3 meters from her, 2 meters from one another, and with longarms in hand! They are still reeling from the flashbang, and, while one of them is using a standard security armor, the other is using a heavy combat vest!


Firstly - we need to acknowledge that there is no Flashbang or anything like that in the system, but there are rules for stunning, so lets improvise - we decide that everyone affected by it must roll a Hard (11) Will test or be stunned. Those using some kind of hearing or vision protection must roll a Challenging (9) Will test, and those with both protection must roll a Normal (7) Will test. It didn't matter in Shadowrun, but the soldier in heavy armor has vision protection built-in in his helmet, while the other has none, so both will roll their Will of 7 (2d+1), with the common soldier needing to hit 11, while the other has to hit 9.

Normal soldier rolled - (2,4)+1 - 7, Heavy armor soldier rolled - (3,4)+1 - 8. The first is stunned, the other's not. Time for initiative!

Combat is starting, and it is time for everyone to call Initiative and Dodge. PC declares Initiative +1 (+2 with cyber) and Dodge 3, the stunned guard cant declare anything, so he is at Initiative and Dodge 0, and HAS (heavy armor soldier) declares Initiative 1 and dodge 0 (he is sure he can't be hurt by PC's actions). PC goes first.

Turn 1 is only 1 second long, so PC can't do that much - he fires her shotgun at the stunned guard, aiming at his torso. The target is 3m away, for a base Difficulty of 6. She has Shotguns at 6d+2, so she easily hits him (2,2,1,4,4,5)+2 - 15. Since using shotshell she is considered to be doing 3 separated attacks, she hits with 1 attack, +1 per each 2 points by which she succeeded above the difficulty, so she got three hits.

The shotgun does 3d+2, but it is actually treated as 3 1d+2 attacks. Because of the distance, all pellets hit the torso, where the 3d+2 flexible armor completely stops any penetration, and the 6 points of non-lethal trauma damage (2 per "attack") transfered to the soldier are reduced to 4 by his Toughness of 2. It hurts him, but he is not even wounded...

Seeing that she is using a weapon that surely isn't the most adequate for the situation, she decides to do another major action, at -3 because it is the second action, and shoot him again, this time aiming at the head, increasing the Difficulty by 6 to 12. She has Shotguns at 6d+2, decreased to 5d+2, and rolls (1,3,1,6,3)+2 - 14, another hit! This soldier is hit in the head, and is in a bad situation!

Each shot is doing 1d+2 lethal, increase by +3 to 2d+2 each, for a total of... 6d+2. The total damage end up being (3,1,2,5,4,3)+2 - 20 points of damage, this is higher than his total hit points, so he is dead on the spot!

Now it is the HAS turn, and he levels his assault rifle at her and fires a burst. She is 3 meters from him, for base difficulty of 6, she is dodging, for an additional of +2, he needs to roll 8+ to hit. This is not good, so PC spends 1 point of Luck to reduce the soldier ability by -3 (-1d). He will then roll his Firearms skill of 4d+2, reduced to 3d+2, and needs to roll 8+. He rolls (3,2,2)+2 - 9, and hits PC.. He fired three rounds, but, because he succeeded by only 1 above the difficulty, only 1 shot is hitting her. He gets (3,4,1) - 8, or lower arm.

The rifle does 4d+1 damage, and the armor that PC is using is rated at 1d for firearms, so the damage is lowered to 3d+1. This is further lowered by 1d, because it is a limb hit, so the final damage is 2d+1, lowered yet again to 2d+0, the maximum damage that a limb can take in one hit. Now it seems like a good time to spend yet another point of Luck to lower this damage. Since it is the second time she is using luck, she needs to roll her Luck Attribute (1d+0) against Difficulty 3. She rolls exactly (3), and uses it, reducing the damage to a final 1d+0.

The soldier rolls and does (2) points of damage, a flesh wound! End of turn.

Next turn is 2 seconds long, and has a turn modifier of +2. PC sees that she is outgunned by the remaining soldier, so she opts for a "tactical retreat", and calls for 2(3) Initiative, and 6(7!) dodge. The soldier dont declare any Initiative or Dodge, he just wants to shoot at the intruder (PC).
Obviously, PC is first, and decides to sprint! Now, she can use her turn mod of +2 to cover more distance, but that bonus is nullified by the -2 to moving distances because she is dodging, so she can only move her normal sprinting distance of 6m, which she does, going past the remaining soldier and further inside the building. End of PC turn.

After her is the soldier turn again, and he decides to fire another burst at her, and, after it, go look for the downed soldier. Since PC went past him, she is now 5 meters away, for a base Difficulty of 8, increased to 15 because of PC's dodge value. He rolls his skills of 4d+2, getting (6,3,5,5)+2, or 18... he is hitting PC two times... the first hit her in the (4,3,3)- 10, chest, doing 4d+1 damage against her chest armor of 3d+2 flexible.
This reduces the damage to 2 points of lethal damage, and 6 points of non-lethal damage, further reduced to 4 non lethal. The second bullet his her in (1,6,4)- 11, the abdomen, doing the same base damage again, but this time the lethal damage is reduced by -1d, because of her wounds, to a minimum of 1. She has 7 points of lethal damage and 8 points of non-lethal damage, very battered. He spends his remaining turn mod trying to help the fellow soldier.

End of Scene 2

Ok, using guns in CQB situations is SCARY! Also, PC is much more tough than I gave credits for, she is at -1d in all actions, but she was shot 3 times with an assault rifle!

And, uh... guys, do you think that these scenes are too much "combat centered"? I did some tests some time ago, where characters tried influencing, long jumps, lockpicking and climbing, would these tests be more fun to read if I included those type of tests too?