Worse Than The Disease OOC 2

[AdamSpeg]

Lemus doesn't think shooting the man is a good idea while Sean is so close, but he is keeping watch over the conversation and the bomber's collaborators. He makes sure the bomber doesn't move after Sean as he runs away, and is ready to fire if the man looks like he's going to break towards them.

[Volthawk]

I've been out of it a bit forum-wise (well, in general too but particularly for forum stuff), but my understanding is that all this is going on out of the sight of the rangers, but Sean's retreat will get him into their line of fire so they can act if the suicide guy follows, so I suppose they're just holding position, not wanting to provoke anything themselves yet.

[Shoot Da Moon]

Alright, we can move on then.

[Shoot Da Moon]

The target's on the floor now, and he's Move 1 until he Changes Posture to something better.

[Shoot Da Moon]

The van driving towards the area is currently 125 yards away, going at 10 yards a second.

[u-b]

"Huston, we have a problem"

Sean orders most of the group to retreat to NE house. One militia man is told to go to the cars. Bart is ordered to come to NE house with the dogs. Sean will take his time observing the north from the NE house, then we will move out.

I totally meant to write SE house as we have not yet checked NE.

And on the horizon, Sean spies a windowless black van driving towards the area in the distance, going down a old broken road. It is coming from the far north east.

I guess Sean could be able to see the van anyway as there is no tall structures in between, just pointing it out for you to confirm and maybe change some details, then I will post my actions.

[Shoot Da Moon]

"Huston, we have a problem"

I totally meant to write SE house as we have not yet checked NE.

I guess Sean could be able to see the van anyway as there is no tall structures in between, just pointing it out for you to confirm and maybe change some details, then I will post my actions.

Dang it.

Well, I guess you're right that you'd see the van coming, it's using an obvious road and no cover besides maybe the buildings themselves are present on that side.

[u-b]

Thinking of actions:
1. The van is 125 yards from NE building so maybe under 200 yards from Sean?
2. How "windowless" it is? Windshield (tinted)? Driver's door window (tinted)? The most interesting thing is whether Sean can see the driver.
3. Now, if Sean can see the driver, the question is about penalties... Say, the heart/torso have sitting (-2) and some cover (-2) and maybe some darkness (-X) if behind tinted glass? And for the thead it's just darkness? I am not sure if Sean can ignore point darkness while otherwise in daylight.

[Shoot Da Moon]

Thinking of actions:
1. The van is 125 yards from NE building so maybe under 200 yards from Sean?
2. How "windowless" it is? Windshield (tinted)? Driver's door window (tinted)? The most interesting thing is whether Sean can see the driver.
3. Now, if Sean can see the driver, the question is about penalties... Say, the heart/torso have sitting (-2) and some cover (-2) and maybe some darkness (-X) if behind tinted glass? And for the thead it's just darkness? I am not sure if Sean can ignore point darkness while otherwise in daylight.

1) Yup. Maybe 150-180 yards, Sean has not taken time to measure it out more fully.
2) Van's got a windshield (of course), both driver's side and passenger's side have side windows, maybe windows on the back (can't see from this angle), but no windows on the sides. Sean can vaguely see people in the windshield (not tinted) but it's a long distance and the sun's glare probably does not help.
3) No tinted glass. Penalties for sitting, cover. I don't think the darkness penalties for the time of day outside are anything more than -2 (only if it's late afternoon), at most. And I think we're still early enough in the day that is straight -0 Darkness?

[u-b]

Any more shots, or are you simply watching the van from a distance to see what happens?

Can Sean see someone sitting next to the driver?

[Shoot Da Moon]

Can Sean see someone sitting next to the driver?

Too hard to tell without getting out binos or whatever and actively zooming in on the van. You'd need to take time (a minute?) and make an Observation roll.

[Shoot Da Moon]

Do you still want to fire upon the passenger side, Sean?

And either way, can you double-check to see how many bullets are left loaded into your gun? I believe you are half-way empty on your current magazine.

Lemus, same question, how many shots have you got left?

[u-b]

Assuming Sean has spent four seconds aiming and looking, that should give more than enough time for the Rangers and Lemus to shoot at the cargo compartment (they were aiming already, so can shoot even twice). Sean will shoot, but I can as well resolve after them, so we wait for Volthawk?

So far Sean has spent a total of 19 rounds out of his 24-round semi-extended magazine.

[Shoot Da Moon]

That salvo probably killed everyone in that van.

[u-b]

2 from the east, 2 from the south-east. All of them are far away right now, from about 120 yards from Sean.

What would be the distances between these and our cars?

They aren't all on proper roads, some are going down streets between buildings or behind obstacles. That'll make it hard to aim at them from afar.

Can we quantify the difficulties? Like, "a 50% chance a given guy can be targeted with at most 1 second of aiming" or some skill penalty other such sort of thing.

[Shoot Da Moon]

What would be the distances between these and our cars?

Can we quantify the difficulties? Like, "a 50% chance a given guy can be targeted with at most 1 second of aiming" or some skill penalty other such sort of thing.

The car would be about 20 to 40 yards closer to them than Sean is. Still a decent ways off.

The buildings or other cover is reachable by the bikers in 2 or 3 seconds. If they keep going, they become visible again in another second, then they might duck behind cover again 1 or 2 seconds after that.

[AdamSpeg]

With classes starting back up, I'll have to go on leave from this game. Thanks for letting me play.

[Shoot Da Moon]

Dang it, we'll need someone to NPC Lemus then.

And we may have to consider another recruitment pass to see if new players wanna join?

[u-b]

And we may have to consider another recruitment pass to see if new players wanna join?

I'm not sure about re-recruitment while we are stuck in the middle of this. This feels like I am the only one making decisions and the others are just pulling the triggers. Not sure how this could be helped, but likely we'll have to have more non-combat stuff for new people to do.

I'll do two militia men and Lemus (Bart and one mitia man are in transit, so will skip on this round) and leave the Rangers to Volthawk.

[u-b]

It will take me some time to update the ammo used by Lemus. Should not be too difficult to track, just give me a few of days.

[Shoot Da Moon]

Everything okay in your end, players?

[u-b]

Sorry I'm being slow the last week. I have no clear idea of how best to proceed so was sort of taking my time to think it over. Should have probably requested Volthawk's input right away, but I guess he's still busy.

It seems we haven't done the N "poison gas" house (which might or might not be safe to visit right now, both in terms of residual gas and in general). Other than that, we have:
1. Teepee/gas station.
2. Recently used metal hatch.
3. Some camp to the north?
4. Unknown amount of time until the next reinforcement, which they will have.

I'm leaning to something like the following at the moment:
1. Maybe ignore the camp?
2. Move some men to NE building?
3. Get some men into NBC gear?
4. Reposition the humvee somewhere when we are done with this?
5. Follow the wounded person?

I'd surely have Volthawk's take on this before we proceed, because if we are caught underground when more reinforcements arrive, the Rangers will have to fight on their own.

[Shoot Da Moon]

Interesting thoughts.

Other players, what do you think? I assume there might be RL trouble on your end, so you can't post as much or right now?

[u-b]

I think we have only Volthawk left and not much even of him at the moment, so I'm not sure if I really should solo this wargame. I surely can, with some amount of screw-up for lack of a second opinion, and I will have my due amount of fun, but maybe we can do better? I guess that depends on whether and when Volthawk can expect to be back. He's sort of active on the forums, so maybe PM him? If he would be sparsely available or has lost interest, maybe we could be better off starting another game, either in this same world or elsewhere, so that everyone is on the same scale and the scale itself is a bit less? I am not sure we will have better luck rectuiting people into existing enterprise. I did not apply the last time around because I am not a huge fun of horror mindset, but will consider many other genres.

[Volthawk]

Yeah, sorry. I've just been finding it really hard to keep interest/investment in this particular protracted battle, particularly since the ranger directly thing isn't really doing it for me in Richard's absence and it broadly ticks on without me anyway, so when my opinion is asked I sometimes miss it. I'm still interested in the game as a whole, it's just that, well...we've been in these buildings for, what, nearly half a year now and while I do like GURPS combat and this game's had some fun battles...

But yeah, that's unfair of me, bit of an a-hole move to go quiet like that. Sorry. As far as the current situation goes, it seems like sticking around up top is just asking for a war of attrition that doesn't look great for us given that, like you said, they don't seem to be running low on reinforcements. Seems to me like there are two practical choices - either we make use of the gap between reinforcements to get into the Gutter and do the damage we can before pulling out, or we just cut our losses and leave. Trying to clear the place out fully feels like a bit of a fool's errand - although on that note, I haven't been exactly keeping track of what we've got on us (minus ranger grenades and such), but do we have enough explosives with us to do some structural damage to the buildings? Making some barriers might delay any else coming long enough to make an attack on the Gutters more practical. As far as the rangers holding out above while a smaller group attacks the Gutters goes...that seems like the most practical approach, because as it stands they're doing a pretty good job of stalling us out, and it's not impossible that they'll eventually throw out something that can't be stopped by mass rifle/BAR fire.

[Shoot Da Moon]

I was worried the action was starting to drag and the players were losing spirit. Leaving a PC directly out of the action and having the player control NPCs was not a sure thing. I am heavily tempted to try recruiting more players, if we're not totally stuck in a sand trap here.

[u-b]

In contrast with Volthawk, I'm not against this type of action, but I do prefer it to be some collective game. As for letting his PC out of the action, that's only half of the problem if he would prefer not to command a mass of troops. Namely, that someone else will have to command the whole mass and he'll still end up in somebody else's wargame, so to speak, not sure if he would like it or not. Same thing with prospective new players. I think we are transitioning out of squad level of a typical RPG and not everyone will be a fan. Not sure if an how we do anything about it. I'm techically not against sending people on missions and letting you resolve it, but with stakes and scales as they currently are it is implausible that the PCs will delegate the whole operations for maybe another in-game-year, so we are likely to have both PCs and lots of NPCs in the very same fight, should we pick any.

Anyway, having gotten Volthawk's opinion on our plans, I'll write IC to get the men underground.

[Shoot Da Moon]

Sean, you do not need to keep rolling Stealth skill. You've already rolled it once, I can just use that result if it comes into play. Multiple rolling is just chasing critical failures.

Otherwise, you're fine. Coming up on a climax, in fact.

[u-b]

If Sean does not kill those three men, the BAR guy and the M16 guy will aim at them on round 1 and shoot at them on round 2. Presumably, targeting something unarmored, like legs. I'll roll at that point.

[u-b]

OC: what do the rest of the guys do, then we handle the remaining bad guy.

I think Lemus and Rangers should stay put, Lemus waiting for orders wigh GL and Rangers ready to shoot if some people decide to emerge from the doors right behind Sean.