Wasteland Violence! and Mutant Violence! Redux
https://lukegearing.blot.im/violence#ref-1L37
Now there has been some changes since I last tried to make a Violence hack. Pseudo-Historic
Violence and its melee table have been replaced with a slightly modified
version of Violence in the Streets. A much closer and finely grained system. So
mutant equivalences will need to undergo a major adjustment.
Wasteland Violence is simple from a creation stand-point.
Why do the extra work when you can just remix D20 Modern Apocalypse?
Now Violence doesn’t really do skills and certainly not a D&D 3E-inspired
skill rank system, so the D20 roll needs to be adjusted.
I originally had an idea of taking the DC after 10, dividing
it by 2, rounding down and adding it back to 10. So, 15 = 12, 20 = 15, 25 = 17
and 30 = 20 etc. But in the end, it was simpler to just divide all DC by 2
and round down. This does have the nice synergy of making the DC 5 survival
check a DC of 2 or only fails on a roll of 1.
D20 loves modifiers and they come in blocks of 5 in D20 Apocalypse.
Therefore, it’s simple enough to treat each modifier of +/-5 as an Advantage
or Disadvantage.
The details of the carnage start on page 14 but the relevant
rules for exploring, scavenging and bartering start on page 17. After page 25
though it gets more into D&D weapon rules, which are ignorable. These stop
at page 29, since after that are vehicle rules which I’ll get into later.
The rarity og guns can be represented with roll on this tool for The Country (Luke Gearing/Violence Jam 1). Where you can roll to see what customisation and markings make your gun unique and traceable.
https://perchance.org/countryselect
- Looted Guns (Hauled out of long-cold dead hands) - rifles, pistols, machineguns at -4 to hit.
- Hunting Guns (Good for killing things that can't shoot back) - shotguns, rifles at -2 to hit.
- Military Guns (Nice, dangerous and valuable) - rifles, pistols, machineguns.
- Foreign Military Guns (Look cool, everyone knows who has one of these) - rifles, pistols, machineguns.
Since Violence at the Street Level doesn’t do spears, I had to make some up.
- Makeshift Spear: A metal blade taped or attached to the end of a stick
- Range 7 Lethality +3 Fragility 3 in 6
- Proper Spear: Time taken to properly attach a blade to a tall and straight pole
- Range 8 Lethality +3 Fragility 1 in 8
- Fire-Hardened Spear: The most common weapon for most of human history
- Range 8 Lethality +2 Fragility 1 in 8
Vehicles
A vehicle is a separate character that has the D20 stat
line. Since 90% of these are real-life stats that are found online, it can just
be elided like how Violence expects most things to be treated.
But really what is important is the Fuel Capacity and the
Gas Mileage. The thing that tells players how far they can go in the vehicle on
a single point of fuel.
For vehicular combat, play as normal Hand to hand combat,
except no one really has any skill in it. Additional things like spikes and
armour take up space and weight but increase Lethality. D20 Apocalypse has a
list of modifications that can serve as inspiration on pages 32-34.
A faster vehicle will eventually catch up with a slower one unless
th driver can somehow manoeuvre it into a location the overtaking vehicle cannot go.
Vehicles can have Injuries which effect their manoeuvrability
and a scavenged vehicle starts with 1d6 Injuries. Downed vehicles need repairs to
work again. Injuries to the Fuel Capacity and Gas Mileage reduce their value by
¼ per Injury.
Wilderness Survival and Travel
Violence doesn’t have much to say on the subject. The Empire
of Texas by Luke Gearing (the creator of Violence) has a person move one
24-mile hex while on foot/by wagon or two on horseback. There was seemingly no
adjustment for terrain.
For a 12-mile hex, I would say foot/wagon moves two hexes or
one when in rough terrain. A mounted character moved 4 hexes or 2 when in rough
terrain.
But I found a good version for 3-mile hexes, which agrees
with D20 Apocalypse, that the normal adult walking rate is 3 miles an hour. D20
Apocalypse also says vehicles are restricted to 30 miles an hour due to debris,
so that’s nice and simple.
I would like to credit someone, but I don’t remember who I
got these from.
Intended for use with
pseudohistorical Violence rules for tracking outdoor hexcrawls, but should be
generic enough to be usable across the board. Assumes 3-mile hexes or squares.
## Ailments
Life-threatening conditions such
as poison, hypothermia, bleeding, exhaustion, hunger, thirst etc should be
tracked the same as injuries and inflict stacking disadvantages.
Fast-acting conditions (i.e.
hypothermia, bleeding, petrification) should be checked against every hour to
avoid another stack of the same condition. Slower conditions (i.e. exhaustion,
hunger, curse) should be checked against daily.
A character may sustain up to 3
stacks of a given condition - any more and they are Downed, requiring
intervention by another character to avoid death.
## Travel
Average human walking speed is
3mph and therefore can cover 1 hex per hour 'as the crow flies' at a steady
pace. If running, 2 hexes per hour can be covered but untrained characters must
check against exhaustion. Exploring a hex thoroughly takes 3 hours.
## Rest
6 hours of sleep is the minimum
to clear 1 stack of exhaustion. Food, shelter and a source of heat are
required. Lacking one or more incurs a check to clear the exhaustion, two or
more is at disadvantage.
The rest of the rules (bar one exception) are from The Empire of Texas
The day is divided into 4 6-hour Watches. Once per Watch, check for Encounters. It is assumed two of these are spent travelling, one establishing camp and resting, and the last sleeping.
Me - I like 8 hour blocks better because 12 hours is a bit too subject to the weather and daylight. But either can use the table from here:
https://mythlands-erce.blogspot.com/2024/04/the-3-mile-hex-natural-unit-for.html
Hours with walking per 3 mile Hex, half the time for horses and 1/10th (6 minutes) by vehicle. Unless an off-road vehicle, vehicles treats any terrain with just a trail as rugged terrain and any without any track as very rugged. Like many this in Violence, carrying capacity is an exercise for the Referee.
If food and water are not found, each member (and horse)in the caravan consumes 1 Food and Water ration. Horses require double rations in the desert.
Back to Texas
Encounters
Roll a d6 - on a 6, an Encounter occurs. Determine Surprise, Distance and Disposition. If an item of interest is present in the hex, the encounter swill resolve nearby. In some cases, the disposition and surprise may result in ‘no encounter’ - a small group warily watches the unaware players.
Surprise
For each party, roll a d6. On a result of 1 or 2, that party is Surprised - they are unaware of the encounter.
Distance
If the PCs are surprised, the encounter happens at a range of d20*10 feet. This might represent an ambush or a stealthy band, as determined by Disposition. The NPCs may not engage, and simply observe.
If the NPCs are surprised, or neither are surprised, the encounter happens at a range of d20*100 feet – the other group spotted at a significant range. Depending on Disposition, unsurprised NPCs may attempt to approach or flee.
Disposition
For NPC parties, roll 1d6:
1) Violent.
2) Hostile.
3) Cautious.
4) Wary.
5) Friendly.
6) Desperate.
Desperate groups may be starving, dehydrated, injured or out of ammunition.
Revising Mutants
A mutant has four points split between Animal/Human. These detrmine how human or animal-looking the mutant is. The five mutant shapes are also reflected by the five possible states of mutant. So, no Human Features needed and not BIO-E either unless you are buying species abilities for finer details.
Every point on Man is a Competencies and every point on Animal is a Trait from the species entry in TMNT&OS. Competencies got moved from the main Violence document to page 4 of a PDF called Special Investigation Unit, currently linked at the top of the webpage. If you don't want to treat a Trait as one line on the write-up, be more granular and optionally treat it as 20 BIO-E. Bonuses granted by Species can be used to fill a Trait slot. Every point of Animal is -1 to DV for social interactions with humans.
Extra Attacks from Species Traits is Advantage. For Heroic games, each hero gets four Plot Points to revese the Down status and major NPCs get two.
Traits that only gives S.D.C gives -2 to Down Checks. Light/Medium/Heavy/Extra-Heavy Armour is -1 per tier to Injury checks. It can be hard or fleshy but is still tissue and/or layers of minerals.
Since we are revising for Violence in the Streets, natural weapons must be accounted for. The easiest answer for Reach is 0, since natural weapons are parts of the body touching another, but many animals keeps foes at bay without bodily risk.
Look at the species' intial Growth value (1 to 20). Every 2 points above or below 10 is -1/+1 Reach.
Add/Subtract 1.5 Reach for each point towards Human, stopping at Reach 0, round other final results down in all cases. A Growth 1 (-5 Reach) bug can be kept away with a short stick, a Growth 20 (+5 Reach) elephant just pushes past in a fist fight.
Natural Weapons are by definition, dangerous. So the Lethality of them goes up by the damage dice.
D4 = 0 D6 = +2 D8 = +3 D10 = +4 2D6 = +5
While it's simpler to say mutants turninng into human-looking pizza-eaters implies they become omnivorous and lactate-digesting by default. It's too tempting to pass up mutant scavenging rules.
Mutants need a majority of whatever protein their base species eats; vegetable or animal. A Ration of the right type is Good Food and they need one ration per day. Otherwise, they can eat two Bad Rations to get the same effect. This includes food of the wrong type, has no real nutritional value or what has spoilt. Eating only Bad Food give Disadvantage the next day, as does eating only 1 Bad Food in a day. Some species which scavenge garbage are find with eating Bad Food and grazing herbivores can spend a Watch (6 hours) solely stationary grazing to generate 1 Bad Food for themselves.
Making an NPC
So compared to Violence, a mutant NPC sounds complex. But not really, a foe is still just a bonus to hit and a weapon. Just a Referee must also decide if they have a natural weapon as a backup or primary weapon and if they are naturally outsie the human body range. Giving a Lethality and Reach modifer as the Referee feels like it. A mutant is just as likely to have functioning giant ears, a sharp nose, natural body armour as a human is to have a radio reciever or spare grenade. Whatever is needed to to make the foe engaging for the players.
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