|
I like the idea of a game that thrusts low-level non-combat oriented people into danger, forcing them to learn combat skills on the fly. One of the nastier game ideas I've had (one that I have yet to run) is a game in the Star Wars d20 system, where all players must be first-level Jedi with point buy stats of zero and a size category smaller than their species would normally be. That's right - a younglings game, set at the time of Order 66. It'd be less of a typical Star Wars adventure and more of a survival horror, with Anakin as the ultimate C'thuloid Big Bad.
A game in which inexperienced noncombatants are thrust together by an emergency circumstance is more frantic and exciting than one in which a team of grizzled murder professionals takes on appropriately-leveled jobs, but it has the downside that your players really should be taking every possibly opportunity to get out of the adventure as soon as possible. It really only works if either a) they're trapped somewhere physically, or b) the stakes are high and there is literally no one else they can get to help for whatever reason.
Anyway, Lily's Florenovia as represented in her stories has very little physical combat - it's populated with women, after all, and aggression is, to Lily, a masculine trait - but as this is a tabletop RPG, there's necessarily going to be something that requires dice rolling. Vera Washington may not be optimized for shooting at robots, but in a setting in which robot-shooting is rarely required, I certainly wouldn't say she's useless.
|
0584-------------------------------------
(Saturday afternoon, INT: EB and JH's living room)
LH: The robot at the end of the subterranean corridor is roughly two meters tall. It has four domed shoulders leading to large jointed arms...
MH: Ooh, mama likes.
LH: It senses your presence and its four drill hands begin to whirr menacingly...
MH: Mama no like! Mama no like!
LH: Indeed not. Ellen, you're up first.
--------------
EB: Okay, I move to here, draw and fire... plus d-four?
LH: Yep.
EB: Aaaand I miss.
LH: And?
EB: And nothing, that's my turn.
--------------
[silence]
--------------
EB: What? Vera's a psychiatrist. I didn't optimize her for combat.
MH: Oh my God, we're all going to die.
|