Mil-Sim LARP

[cole45]

safe zone: no regular guns, just standard off the shelf un modified nerf guns.

[dier_cire]

Vehicles...

I still think vehicles as anything other than travel will be nigh impossible to physrep to any degree not requiring explanation ahead of time and won't add much, if anything to the game.

Other Ideas
4. Not allowed to take another person gun phys rep. People pay to much money for other to take them. If you can place a stolen tag on the weapon and escape with out being noticed, you have that person’s weapon. You get to take all of the weapon upgrades from the weapon then. Or not allow for people to steal weapons
5. Weapon up grades can only be transferred to other guns in the same category. Pistol to pistol, etc…

Both of these I would be against.

The first is a waste of tags, time and honestly, is stealing shit really that important to the game? Keep it simple, no stealing anything except tags (which would not include weapons).

The second just makes you keep track of more tags. If the upgrades are only on a single weapon, it has two advantages. First, it means less tags (since once used, they can be discarded as they are now part of the weapon). Second, it means more money leaving game, which gives something for people to spend money on.

Now, tracking weapons with upgrades is still up in the air. Since you'll most likely forget to upgrade a new weapon if you get one, it might be worthwhile to remember what the old one had. I don't see the need for a tag that could be stolen though.

[Dallid]

I don’t think in-game theft will be supported. It can be assumed cameras are everywhere at Base Camp, storage lockers – even weapons – have biometric lock-outs, and privacy, in general, is non-existent.

Serenity has shown that carrying loaded weapons in safe zones is problem-free. Merely enforcing safeties on has been good enough. Anyone handling a weapon improperly gets instantly pounced upon by all other players present. Though I think that’s only happened once, as we’re all responsible adults. I don’t think we’d need to employ more complex safety measures. Also, the sight of a bunch of mercenaries walking around unarmed is a blow to immersion.

Full facial protection may indeed have to be required. I’d like to avoid that, as a bunch of civilian rebels running around with full facial armor just doesn’t look right. Serenity has done fine with everyone just wearing goggles. However, higher allowed fps may require better protection.

Some great ideas concerning vehicles there. I’d like to start with some play-tests with actual vehicles deeply integrated into the game, find where there are issues, and then go with virtual representation rules to address those issues.

Good thought on riot shields, though I’m rather concerned they would result in a near invulnerability to pellet attacks. Some play-testing should quickly reveal if they’re practical in a shooter larp.

Play-testing will also show how a 450 fps sniper rifle does in a game setting. Would it really have a respectable range? Would it hurt too much? Should it have a minimum range restriction? It’d certainly be nice to deal away with sniper rifle calls.

Equipment upgrades is a neat idea. Will have to think on that.

Player’s shouldn’t have to try to count their shots. If they’ve got a high-capacity magazine, then they can assume they’ve emptied one clip by the end of each combat instance in which they fired off at least a dozen rounds. Of course, actual emptied clips are emptied clips. NPCs might still be told to approximate ammo expenditure and handle clips that way.

Tags have always been an issue. We can try to minimize them as much as possible. Maybe a chip bag to track clip expenditures – empty a chip out of the bag when you expend a clip, put a chip in when you find or buy one. Equipment probably still needs to be tagged as normal to keep track of player stores and to properly account for field plunder. Of course, need an appropriate phys-rep to actually use an equipment tag. Weapon upgrades can just be written onto the weapon tag.

Cool ideas on area attack and defense. Attacker calls in an air-strike, defender counters with a SAM battery. Must consider this. Was all ready planning to have lots of missions to destroy such defenses so opposing factions could make such attacks – may be worthwhile to work out mechanics on this.

Coup-de-grace may not prove usable, though I like the idea of giving players the tools to employ stealth. But stealth may just not prove workable in this type of game.

Damage calls have worked extremely well in Serenity, and this is more than just Air-Soft. We need a way to make a SAW more impressive than an assault rifle – even if both phys-reps have the same range and rate of fire.

Radioactive fallout and genetic experiments will have melee monsters in-game. Mind those rad zombies!

Yeah, we can probably get rid of safe-zone combat all together. Should base camp come under attack, everyone runs to its perimeter (out of the safe zone) to defend it. If one player decides to cap another, they can do it melee, or take it out to live fire. But all in all, I doubt a reason for combat at a safe zone is likely to pop up.

[General Maximus]

I can tell you riot shields are ok when doing air soft. tried it many a time and got my butt kicked.

As for 450 FPS. It hurts. Ask Vine and Eric about it.

I agree about having the saw be cooler, but haven't figured that out yet. The only thing I can think of is they get a massive clip! Fires a lot of lead for a while.

What is the reasoning to keep track of ammo? letting people have as much as they want, but limiting the clip sizes based on skills and equipment should balance it out. There is nothing worse than having to switch out clips in the middle of a fire fight. And not to mention, extra clips are cheap.

As for face protection. Eric and I was thinking the minium was wrap around safety glasses and cloth over the mouth to prevent pellets down the throught. Higher FPS means greater risk. But it also means great distance and challenge.

I love the idea of just killing stealing. Makes it simple.

What are folks ideas on doing different damages based on weapons. I want to keep away from called shots. It just removes the fire fight element from the game.
So far I have
All pellets do 1 damage
packet = gernade
Foam rocket is RPG (Go Nerf guns!)
I was thinking of paint ball gun also, but that requires a full face mask and people willing to get paint on them. Not such a good idea.

[dier_cire]

ammo:
This is quite simple. Use ranges. This allows for those with actual clips to be mid ground (I can't measure exactly 45 but I can get within 10 either way). This also allows the people with large clips to just fill a portion (going slightly over mid since the large clips have trouble with the last few rounds). Want to use the large clips, buy the skill up.

Shields:
They are fine, as long as head shots count. Ask Soco when he had a tv box bigger than he was and I still took him out in a few shots. As long as you can't see through them, and have to look around them to fire, they'll be fine.

Snipers and high fps:
Range is based on the quality of the gun, not the speed. That being said, a good high fps gun can shoot a long ways (this is why you must test them for more than fps). And yes, 450 can cause some real damage. It hurts like hell, and can break skin at semi close range. I'd recommend starting around 400 first. You'll have to test out the weaponry and how much damage is inflicited at what distance to find minimum distance and teach accordingly. Any sniper rifle entering game should have to pass both a consistancy/accuracy and fps test.

Face protection:
Reason I would like to avoid full facemask is personal preference. I personally hate them due to the fogging issues, fitment, and vision reduction. Honestly, getting hit in the mouth or eyes is a real risk, but ears and forehead and such are not something I would consider necessary. If you don't want to take the risk then wear one, but leave it to the individual. They know the risk ahead of time.

Ammo:
Make it free. Having to track clips would be a pain. The sheer fact of having to reload makes combats end quickly.

Heavy Weapons:
Saws and the like would have one major bonus. They would be cheap to buy a skill for. Aaron presented the idea of them being a one shot whereas a rifle you'd have to pay two to three times as much character points for the same result. However, the rifle is out of game far cheaper and also doesn't weigh 15lbs. Also, there would be an in game cost for a heavy weapon versus the obvious high availability of rifles.

[General Maximus]

Yup, I agree with you reid!!

I'm in the process of designing cheap, light weight barriers. These barriers can be used as turrets, walls, gunners seats, etc... I'll get some pic's after they are tested out. I'm making them so they can easy fit into a car and be moved around on the battle field. It should add a lot to the game. I was even thinking these can be used to rep a parked vechile.

And I was thinking they can be some what color coded
gray - Can be destoyed by explosives
black - perment structure, no effect by explosives

I also picked up a nerf long bow ($20) and cut of the bow part. It looks nice and can work as an RPG. It comes with 3 foam rockets. The only issue it only fires 35 feet. So you will have to get close to use it, but I don't think that will be a problem. Maybe rockets will do more damage then gernades?

Saws - The benifit is they have a huge clip size (big bonus in air soft) and we can make the skill inexpensive. Changing clips in a middle of fire fight can lead to death very quickly.

As for detemining ammo in a clip, I'm going to count out how many BB's fit in a speed loader. From there you can easly detemine how empty a speed loader needs to be to have placed X BB's into a clip. It will get us into the clip ranges eric was talking about with out folks haivng to count out BB's. Simple and fast to determine. It than can be added to the full but as a rule of thumb note.

I'm loving this!!

[dier_cire]

exactly what I was thinking clip size wise. A permanant marker can place lines at correct points so just fill to the line and load. If you want to only have one physical clip, just carry a couple preloaded speedloaders onto the field. They are very cheap and only slightly slower than an actual clip swap.

[General Maximus]

What can I say ried, great minds think a like!!

[Dallid]

The problem with clip sizes, from what I can tell on air-soft sites, is many versions of automatic rifles come with high-capacity clips, and many versions don’t. However, I suppose it’d be easy enough to only fill your 500 round clip with 30 pellets unless you had the high-capacity (or SAW) skill. That may indeed account for the required difference in impressiveness for SAW vs. rifle.

I’d rather encourage players to carry preloaded clips on a mission rather than preloaded loaders, but loaders would work, too. Probably require that one loader fits into each clip pouch you have so we don’t have someone carrying the equivalent of 20 clips in their vest pocket.

Sounds like 450 fps is out, from what I’m reading. We’ll see if sniper rifles still have a significantly longer range at 400. If not, we’ll need a sniper call.

[General Maximus]

You bring up a good point. How much ammo should a person be able to carry? Does it really matter? If a person wants to carry 4000 BB's around, they still have to place them into clips, speed loaders, etc.. and goodluck doing that in the middle of fire fight. The ammo carrying limit would only have an effect inbetween battles in which you might or might not be able to get back to home base or your vechile to refill.
Not sure if ammo carrying limit is needed or adds anything to the game.


On the sniper rifle and 450 fps, what have you found out??

And what do you suggest how to handle sniper calls? Eric and I came up with an idea utlizing 2 people, but I'm not a big fan of it. A good sniper rifle can fire accurtaly much farther than AEG rifle. But you are looking to sink at lest $100 + into sniper rifle. They are not cheap! + you have to get a good scope and use heavier bullets to maintance accuracy a little farther.

[dier_cire]

SAWs (and all guns) should be determined by phys-rep. Not just using a full auto rifle and calling it one. Otherwise, there is no reason to buy a more expensive skill. Basically, by spending a crap ton of money, you get an event or two head start. Overall, not a major deal since the rifles will be easier to aim and carry.

Ammo shouldn't be limited unless you actually plan on dealing with ammo as an item you pick up after combat. Personally, I'd avoid the complication and just assume you are going to find enough ammo to keep you going. Micromanaging money output to that level is more stress on the GM staff than it's worth, personally.

And 400fps will shoot 1/3rd farther than 300fps. Since you'll most likely be putting far more money into it, you're really looking at double the average store bought AEG. I can't stress enough how little fps actually accounts for being able to shoot long range. A $300 gun at 290fps will out range a $100 gun at 320fps.

[General Maximus]

To true on the sniper rifle Eric. I know, we have seen it.
But than how do we make a good distenition between normal guns and sniper rifles? In my research the sniper rifles typical have a higher FPS than normal rifles. Also the sniper rifles are much higher quality and cost more to allow for the accurate long distance hits.

Though, lower FPS expensive guns can fire great distances accuratly, it is some times to feel the hit. Most of there power is spent by time it hits the target. The higher FPS would keep help with that minor issue.

There is defently a difference between quality of weapons and FPS. What is scary is a high FPS high quality sniper rifle. You defently would have some distance than. I just don't want to spend the $500 for one.

To help keep things balanced, I see us doing a couple things
1. Make spring guns very cheap to use skill wise
2. Make full auto with large clips very expensive to have skill wise
3. Make using a sniper rifle and saws cheap skill wise. If a person is willing to pay the cash, than they should have a minor benifit of paying skill less points to use the weapon. They are paying money to add an asome element to the game which enhances the game for everybody.

[cole45]

you could allow slightly higher fps to sniper rifles, but rule that you can;t shoot them at people close. (50ft-100ft). add in a vetting proceedure where the GM approve the sniper through test

[dier_cire]

That's pretty much the idea.

Sniper rifles will normally be higher fps. The ones that aren't are either cheap crap or the top tier stuff just needing upgrades. High fps is ok, as long as the gun passes the tests mentioned above (a grouping test and a impact at Xft test). Any decent sniper rifle will run you at least $100 and they go up quickly.

All I was saying before was don't just look at fps when considering how to handle sniper rifles. If your sniper rifle can shoot 450fps but has a 3ft grouping at 100ft, it shouldn't enter game.

For determining a sniper rifle, you just look at the phys-rep. If it looks like and operates like one, go nuts. I'd avoid allowing semi-auto though.

[General Maximus]

A 3ft spread sniper is bad. Mine holds to about a 6" spread at 200-250 ft. But I spent about $120 on it.

I think a firing range is going to required at the game site. Which can be incorperated into game. People can target pratice during mission breaks and contests can be done. Just need a good back stop (some boards) and targets! Hmm, that sounds like fun!