What Is TROOPER?
TROOPER is a third party poorly conceptualized creation that tries to make infantry scale gameplay in the LANCER setting.
It is not going well.
#TROOPER — The Mech RPG Infantry RPG
fallow laurel
old hound
So i take it this is currently being developed? (I am sometimes dumb)
fallow laurel
So i take it this is currently being developed? (I am sometimes dumb)
yea kinda
Will: Your capability to tough things out, whether injury or stress.
Physique: Physical strength. Sinew and muscle.
Sight: Acuity and sharpness. Never be caught off guard.
Deft: Speed is key. Agility too. Quick to think, faster fingers.
tkaes place of HASE, conceptually
fallow laurel
document that puts together everything into something almost coherent soon
old hound
nods
fallow laurel
ok so now there is stuff in the document
what I want to set up is something akin to a mix of LANCER and Dark Heresy? Kinda?
The idea is that you play as a person inside a hardsuit
The hardsuit is significantly modular, moreso than a mech
oh fuck I really don't have a clue where I'm going
oh god
quasi iris
yo i just wanna say this shit looks rad. I can't exactly force you, but please keep with it. I'd love to see the infantry side of the Lancer universe developed more.
forest iron
Have you looked into the Warhammer TTRPGS, like Only War or Dark Heresy? there is some pretty good stuff conceptually in there and most of the gameplay revovles around characters with 7-10HP. Direct combat wouldnt translate well but things like the dismemberment chart and weapons could be good references.
dim quarry
I'm imagining things like getting attacked by mechs and the best chance you have is something like a machine gun nest or well aimed mortar or something like that
A lot of things in combat are out of your control, and you do your best to adjust to it. Like a tank you're using as a cover might get blown up, and you can still use it for cover but it won't advance with you anymore.
Idk if that's the direction you wanna take it bc I'm not really sure what the direction is atm other than "Lancer but infantry"
But I will say this is a really cool idea and sounds love to see it develop
fallow laurel
Have you looked into the Warhammer TTRPGS, like Only War or Dark Heresy? there i...
yea
localized armor is indeed on the menu
tho i really should broaden my horizons and look at other infantry rpgs
see how they work
i feel like my limited exposure is handcapping ideas
fallow laurel
I'm imagining things like getting attacked by mechs and the best chance you have...
Against mecha your best chance is heavy weapons or other vehicles
as best as I can conceptualize, Mecha have a disturbing tendency to be exceptional good antipersonnel weapons, potentially as a result of them slinging large caliber auto cannon as basic small arms.
hardsuits can just about withstand partial hits from frame-class munitions; infantry...
well, I plan to make the basic hardsuit pistol have a pretty good chance of instantly downing a person in one go.
hard suits sound like a great deal until you remember that you can now be hacked and might have to deal with jammed escape handles when you're staring down an imminent ammo cook-off.
that said
I'm going to make TROOPER kinda modular
you'll be able to adjust what level of grit you want from more heroic bloodshed anime to... I'm gonna go with first person battlegroup.
an attack:
assuming you have a weapon readied, pick a target and roll to hit against Signature or Profile depending on weapon
signature and profile are edefense and evasion at the infantry level.
on a hit you roll for special effects and the hit area, which will usually be covered by armor
After armor mitigation damage hits Integrity (if hardsuit) or Vitality, if integ gone/just a person.
If the target runs out of health or suffers special effects from hardsuit/vehicle damage, they make a check on the Endurance table.
Chance of instant death, chance of mild harm, etc.
dim quarry
Are those supposed to be like tier 1,2,3 of the same talent tree? Or are they completely separate?
fallow laurel
Are those supposed to be like tier 1,2,3 of the same talent tree? Or are they co...
kinda yea
like, you have 2 basic skills, and then can opt to reinvest your spare points to get fieldcrafts and eventually apex, or arrange for training that lets you spec into another tree?
Dunno.
👍
perfect.
dim quarry
kinda yea
like, you have 2 basic skills, and then can opt to reinvest your spare...
Is it kinda like how Fate does skills, in regards to how you need to have some base level skills before you can have higher level ones?
fallow laurel
Is it kinda like how Fate does skills, in regards to how you need to have some b...
yea
altho more like the Bonds system in LANCER in advancement
also im debaiting on splitting stuff into manufactureres vs doing the battlegroup thing and just being generic weapons
dim quarry
Depends on what you want out of infantry story I think
Like if it's not a story about swashbuckling heroes, I don't think it makes much sense for them to get access to all kinds of different weapons
fallow laurel
i meaan its 100% valid to reflavor the weapon and just use the stats
fallow laurel
Like if it's not a story about swashbuckling heroes, I don't think it makes much...
thats fair
and that is a problem to figure out, truly
maybe i shoudl've taken the Only War/Dark heresy approach and set up a unit standardization system
...fuck thats a great idea.
dim quarry
What are you trying to make? Establishing those might help figure out designing the system
Are you playing as individual footsoldier, a squad, or something higher (like in battlegroup)
And what's the vibe that you're going for? What do you envision the end product to look like?
fallow laurel
What are you trying to make? Establishing those might help figure out designing ...
The player will be able to play as a soldier. The game is intended to be a reasonable approximation of squad-platoon level combat.
the game is meant to be usable both to replicate your favorite action movie, or to play as a soldier in first person battlegroup.
The game is meant to be reasonably modular, with optional items that increase or decrease the seriousness of play.
dim quarry
How impactful do you want the individual soldiers to be? I'm getting "very little" vibes from what you said about scale
fallow laurel
How impactful do you want the individual soldiers to be? I'm getting "very littl...
At the squad to platoon level, individual actors are fairly effectual. A single soldier doing well can suddenly overcome a stonewalling opposition.
At the same time, you can be subject to external factors. an unseen barrage, the grazing edge of a mech's several kilometer railgun shot, the glancing blow of a short spool barrage against the battleship you serve upon.
From a stand-up fight in an open field, to zero gee urban warfare, to the corridors of a line ship, to mechanized assaults, the game is intended to allow you to operate in all these conditions.
You yourself can overcome the enemy squad with good luck and tacics, but there's damn all you can do about an artillery strike or airborne bomb except take cover, basically.
Oddly enough this might turn out like Dark Heresy lite
forest iron
FFGs warhammer rpgs were a pretty good system so it makes sense to use it as reference, I feel like the 10x damage from vehicles and mechs is a little too much though, maybe like 4x or 5x and ignore armor might be better. Gives them a small chance to survive a weapon that rolls a d3 while probably making them down and out or severely rethinking their life's choices after just a single hit; Although a small arms for a mech is probably like a 50cal so its probably fair to have a character get turned into pink mist.
dim quarry
Grit represents some mix of endurance and luck for dodging heavy weapons, I think you could use the same type of HP abstraction
You can't survive being directly hit by a mech sized weapon even once, but you can survive being caught in the area of effect if you get lucky enough to dodge multiple times in a row
fallow laurel
FFGs warhammer rpgs were a pretty good system so it makes sense to use it as ref...
my headcanon is that the standard assault rifle for a mech fires large caliber autocannon rounds and the AMR is just a breechloading tank gun ala some biggums IWS 2k
tho
i should maybe make that a tag of some kind?
denote tank gun from uh
coax
forest iron
Im not saying it wouldnt make sense. Just a small chance of survival might be a more intresting narrative thing.
fallow laurel
i will note that by default, player characters are going to be slightly more durable than others
two or three endurance instead of 1
so they might be able to take a burst of normal bullets and suffer like, significant damage without vaporizing
but if your table wants to you can tune this up or down, including for enemies
if you want more injuries before death you can also like, halve base health and double endurance
which can be neat
im going off the assumption that being shot is probably a bad time and they might graze you a couple times (or hit you, flavor text is as flavor text does) before something serious happens
without armor the battlefield is very dangerous
a bulletproof vest is probably the bare minimum
a tactical vest and helmet helps
a hardsuit is a strong way to enter pitched battles and have a decent chance of coming back out
and then there's the potential of vehicles, but I think that playing multicrew tank should be left until I get a working v 0.1 TROOPER out.
fallow laurel
Im not saying it wouldnt make sense. Just a small chance of survival might be a ...
again this is one of those customization things
trooper is half framework half game
im hoping for that, anyways
but, uh
this is a very ambitious concept and koishi has been defeated by hills they looked up at before and nodded to themselves thinking "yeah I could take this"
trooper is going to aim vaguely below "muh realisms" and for "gently cinematic tuned", i think?
maybe
like, if you PB a generic sod whos wearing no armor with a HHS Cannibal shotgun they will uh
probably not be writing any postaction memoirs
but you dont die at call of duty speeds either, probably
forest iron
You could proabably mess around with grit to control that
make grit an inherent armor you could gain to stack on your actual armor
like a toughness bonus from DH
fallow laurel
like, my earliest concepts are 8 base health, plus Will, which basically replaces Hull
meanwhile the generic pistol is like 1d3 damage and you can make a couple shots with it?
i need to figure out this whole mess
maybe check DH rules for auto/semi/burst again
trooper HASE being
Will: Your capability to tough things out, whether injury or stress.
Physique: Physical strength. Sinew and muscle.
Sight: Acuity and sharpness. Never be caught off guard.
Deft: Speed is key, in the mind and in the hand.
the problem is that inherently some stuff is folded together, and it really sucks to try and abstract while preserving "muh realisms" or whatever we're looking at
forest iron
Yea I get it.
fallow laurel
it feels scuffed to put together all this nonsense about bodyhit rolls and locationalized armor
I actually just had a thought, maybe scrap the bodyhit roll system and have it assumed you hit them sometimes better sometimes worse for the damage's randomization as well, plus just fold armor into like
This armor varies by up to this dice amount
so you have a generic armor value, but then add an armor variance roll on top of it
so like, sometimes you get hit on the edge of a plate and sometimes it slaps into the crown of your chestplate
a modern armored vest has like, 1 base armor value, enough to turn most handgun shots, but say, 1d6 armor variance
extra armor bits like pauldrons and helmets raise the floor of the armor variance
so you have much better chances of withstanding a rifle burst with just zero damage
forest iron
you could have crits ignore armor, simulating a lucky hit and just assume every other hit is somewhere protected.
A bullet can still hit you point-blank in the chest and be stopped while simultaneously breaking your ribs and causing some damage.
fallow laurel
I don't want to try and work with edge cases
the problem with reality is that reality is random and if you try to be truly random you end up becoming Phoenix Commans
forest iron
localized armor is hard to do unless you are also simulating a hit chart which is hard to do with a d6 or d20
fallow laurel
one of my guiding principles is to avoid Phoenix Command Syndrome
forest iron
and might slowdown gameplay too much aswell
fallow laurel
localized armor is hard to do unless you are also simulating a hit chart which i...
my current working concept is a hit chart yes
head upper lowe body left right arms/legs
the d20 is workable enough
...though with multiple hits this does induce a problem. Damn.
Yeah I'll look at only war again
forest iron
only war does a d100 and reverses the result
which is nice because your attack roll is combines with the hit
fallow laurel
A d20 is a d100 divided by 5 anyways
we're probably fine.
:p
I will continue to think tomorrow, when I am not dying the death
forest iron
its could be but the reverse of the number on a d100 works well to randomize the hit so that you dont just score a head shot on a high roll or a low roll get you a body shot.
fallow laurel
its could be but the reverse of the number on a d100 works well to randomize the...
...ah.
y'know on second thought It'd probably have been good to assign the head to 20 instead of 1.
forest iron
if you are going to roll a seperate d20 to decide hit placement then I could still work I suppose
fallow laurel
then again body hit is entirely independent of aiming bonuses
aiming bonuses just improve your chances of beating target signature slash profile.
(edef and evas)
forest iron
you could make some system for called shots that add some sort of bonus, but make it a difficult check to hit so its not worth doing unless you are set up to do so.
frank bane
is it all right if i DM you? @fallow laurel
gritty haven
Would it be practical to use troopers rule set for more complex on the ground combat in a lancer campaign? For example when players are forced to leave behind their mechs
fallow laurel
is it all right if i DM you? <@295689746141675520>
Sure
fallow laurel
Would it be practical to use troopers rule set for more complex on the ground co...
Potentially? Depending on tone you could adjust TROOPER to be more cinematic, at least that's the hope
gritty haven
ok
fallow laurel
right, reading begins
fallow laurel
Heeeeeeeeeeelp
dim quarry
What ails you
fallow laurel
extremely little progress made
quasi iris
merci mon ami, we appreciate what ur doing here.
fallow laurel
i love doing things on impulse
i love creating projects and falling over five meters from the starting line
AUGHAHG
dim quarry
mood
fallow laurel
hmm yes how do i define cover
temptation:
Concealment is simplified for ease of action. Either you have or do not have.
Concealment inflicts -3 to hit against concealed character.
Cover has its own Armor and may provide concealment.
Covers should have a height value, which lets you figure out how much of a generic Size 1 person (we're assuming children are halfsizes, adults are size 1ish, and something like a mech is size 10 at this scale or something) the cover protects
eg a halfsize cover would protect up to the waist, or you could crouch behind it and cover yourself up to the shoulders, prone behind it and be completely covered, etc
weapons penetrate cover objects and act as usual, but have their penetration and then damage value reduced by however much as they penetrate the cover.
eg, i am standing behind a cover with an armor value of 6, an attack hits that cover with penetration 2 damage 5, and exits the cover with damage 1.
this also simplifies a little for convenience, any worries about figuring out if something hits someone after it passes through the cover, as it is assumed you're going to be hit, but first we check if the cover stops it short
fallow laurel
tldr;
Concealment simplified (game runner can granularize if pain is enjoyed)
Cover essentially acts as an extra layer of armor and if you aren't hit the calculation for penetration doesn't start.
sacred sage
I’m here to say that I love this concept and your doing well, don’t force this pressure on yourself, grand projects take time
fallow laurel
things in doing:
Cut the stance concepts. Attacking someone will make cover only cover the lower body and legs, it's assumed you're completely hunkered otherwise.
fallow laurel
soon
fallow laurel
it might be pertinent to cut the organization section and try to allow a little bit more leeway
take the role of a special mission unit such as DOJ/HR
more customizable weapons variety I guess