So, some kinda trail...Oregon like...

[Noon]

I'm coding up a text based game vaguely like Oregon trail, but in a post apocalyptic wilderness setting, traveling from a doomed village to safety. With no particular palladium IP in it.

I had the idea after all the long threads about how rare MDC is and offshoots of that. I thought it'd be interesting to make a simulator to set up some numbers in, get some votes on what the numbers should be set to. Maybe even get a quarum going!

Right now it's just a journey of five kilometer increments for one hundred kilometers. What events could occur to a villager traveling alone?

Also I intend to have various start scenarios - so apart from villagers, who else could be traveling? And with what gear?

[taalismn]

Also I intend to have various start scenarios - so apart from villagers, who else could be traveling? And with what gear?

Defenders...Cyberknights, LynSyrial, mercenaries hired to defend the villagers as a whole, or particular individuals and their possessions. Operators hired to keep vehicles going, Wilderness scouts to lead them. Merchants looking to evacuate their stock and resume business elsewhere. Traveling priests or mages joining to assist and lend support. Maybe even military deserters(could be Tolkeen soldiers abandoning ship or CS troopers looking for new lives), displaced/just-Rifted d-bees looking to join ANYBODY who looks like they're going somewhere and can tell them what's going on. Bandit spies looking to infiltrate the group and see if they have anything worth stealing/enslaving.

[Killer Cyborg]

I'm coding up a text based game vaguely like Oregon trail, but in a post apocalyptic wilderness setting, traveling from a doomed village to safety. With no particular palladium IP in it.

I had the idea after all the long threads about how rare MDC is and offshoots of that. I thought it'd be interesting to make a simulator to set up some numbers in, get some votes on what the numbers should be set to. Maybe even get a quarum going!

Right now it's just a journey of five kilometer increments for one hundred kilometers. What events could occur to a villager traveling alone?

Also I intend to have various start scenarios - so apart from villagers, who else could be traveling? And with what gear?

I remember a cheap (free, IIIRC) text-bast, post-apocalyptic game I played on my Apple II as a kid.
The only parts I remember is that if you went into certain areas, you'd get radiation poisoning, and that at one point you get to scavenge for food, and you can find several cans of various kinds.
One of them is tainted, and if you eat it, you die.

The best post-apocalyptic computer RPG I ever played was Wasteland, which had all kinds of scenarios (though mostly combat).

In any case, to answer your questions...

Possible events:
-Opportunity to rob a civilian
-Getting robbed by bandits
-Opportunity to hunt prey animal
-Getting hunted by predator
-Means of travel get impeded (if on foot, this could be a worn boot, shoe stuck in mud, or twisted ankle, etc.)
-Means of travel possibly accelerated (stream or river, easy road, long downhill stretch, find a vehicle or better shoes)
-Scavenging opportunities (which could result in good loot, or something bad, like the tainted food mentioned above)
-Foraging opportunities (as with scavenging)
-Encounter with an animals that does not seek to eat the character, but could still be a threat (startled moose or deer, giant porcupine or skunk, etc.)
-Weapon loss/malfunction
-Weapon upgrade (find better weapon, or find a scope or better ammo, etc.)
-Bad weather (snow, hail, dust storm, rain, sleet, wind, brutal sun, etc.)
-Good weather
-Curiosity (something interesting, but neither particularly useful or harmful. Much like the scenic overlooks in Oregon Trail)
-Shopping/trading opportunity

That's all I have on that right now.

Possible travelers:
-Traders traveling to a market. This could be a farmer, trapper, hunter, rancher, bowyer, loggers, smith, or anybody who might have goods that they need to sell in a larger or different market.
-Professional traders traveling from town to town.
-Criminals, run out of the previous town or on the run from the law, looking for a place to hole up.
-Performers looking for an audience.
-Wanders. Just wandering.
-Lawmen looking for criminals.
-Scholars looking for new knowledge (either traveling to a library, or to see a sage, or simply to collect information for their own use or works)
-Messengers

That's all I have on that right now.

I applaud your efforts, though, and hope that they turn out well.

[Noon]

Hoo, my mistake! Were getting to solutions before were getting to problems that need solutions!

I'll try and guide this better than I did: What's the chance, every five clicks, of running into some preditory monster? On average?

Or if any preditory encounter seems impossible on a hundred click journey, what else lurks out there?

What does the cyberknight defend against, in particular?

Edit: Cross posted with KC's post...

-Getting robbed by bandits
-Getting hunted by predator

The others are good. But these two, given atleast to me they can result in death, seem to need more detail.

Do the bandits, if they come up, just auto rob the villager?

And the predator, in particular - what kind? SDC? MDC? If the latter, it also raises the question of what the villager has or has a change of being equipped with. Like if we assigned a chance of the villager having a vibro blade, for example, rather than by default being equipped with one.

[Killer Cyborg]

I'll try and guide this better than I did: What's the chance, every five clicks, of running into some preditory monster? On average?
Or if any preditory encounter seems impossible on a hundred click journey, what else lurks out there?

Hm.
Is this on a road, or through wilderness?

[Noon]

I'll try and guide this better than I did: What's the chance, every five clicks, of running into some preditory monster? On average?
Or if any preditory encounter seems impossible on a hundred click journey, what else lurks out there?

Hm.
Is this on a road, or through wilderness?

Depends on whether folk here would say roads are generally available between villages. What did they have on the Oregon trail?

Also I edited my post above with some questions.

[Faceless Dude]

Attacked by ninjas. Lose 8 days

[taalismn]

Joined by Floopers. Hordes of Floopers. And they won't shut up,

[Noon]

Could also make the thing work off a chart to determine the amount of road vs the amount of wilderness that needs to be traveled, for each individual session of it.

[Hystrix]

I don't really have a suggestion, but I gotta say a Post Apocolyptic Oregon Trail. Sounds. Awesome. Just sayin'.

[Razzinold]

It does sound like a neat idea, I played the zombie version of it, it was a fun distraction.

[Noon]

Thanks for tha affirmations, all.

The idea was to try and develop a bit of a simulator, so as to try and find some middle ground simulation between all the divergent thoughts in the MDC threads or e-clip threads.

I guess without further details I could make up something on the 'preditor hunts you' entry - but no doubt my approach on how frequently you'd get hunted, if it's MDC and if you'd have any gear to respond to that and your escape chances would probably be divergent from everyone else's. I might include some capacity to spray irritant spices into a MDC creatures eyes to bother them and make a chance for escape - and I know I've had people here argue that couldn't be the case. On the other hand some sort of escape from a predator who's faster than you seems entirely unlikely to me. Without either, though, you're just dead (unless we get into what gear a villager has a percentage chance of having).

Ironically, as much as people argue in those threads, if I make up a little text based game, I'm guessing probably no one will argue about it at all! Perhaps I'll put in design notes amongst play that provocatively assert notions on how things should be! Maybe that'll trigger arguement, rather than passing the game by without comment but continuing the arguments in armour or e-clip threads?

[FatherMorpheus]

So what will your little program run on?

[Killer Cyborg]

Thanks for tha affirmations, all.

The idea was to try and develop a bit of a simulator, so as to try and find some middle ground simulation between all the divergent thoughts in the MDC threads or e-clip threads.

I guess without further details I could make up something on the 'preditor hunts you' entry - but no doubt my approach on how frequently you'd get hunted, if it's MDC and if you'd have any gear to respond to that and your escape chances would probably be divergent from everyone else's.

Ironically, as much as people argue in those threads, if I make up a little text based game, I'm guessing probably no one will argue about it at all! Perhaps I'll put in design notes amongst play that provocatively assert notions on how things should be! Maybe that'll trigger arguement, rather than passing the game by without comment but continuing the arguments in armour or e-clip threads?

I was thinking about this earlier this morning, and I don't know of any place that includes information about the likelihood of encountering dangerous creatures.

BUT there is a "Random Wilderness Encounter Table" in SB2.
The apparent purpose of the table is for when a GM wants the party to encounter something in the wilderness, but doesn't have anything planned, or simply wants to make things more random.
The table is written for the East Coast, during the time of the Mechanoid Invasion.
Just to spitball something, you could look at that table and take out all of the encounters that would not be occurring if the Mechanoids had not invaded, under the logic that in other regions where there are no mechanoids, nothing in particular would be happening at those percentages.
That leaves a 60% chance of nothing in particular happening, and a 40% chance of something happening.

Of course, I don't know of any good way to gauge how often one would roll on this table, no idea whether it would be appropriate every minute of travel, or every mile, or every day, or every 100 miles, or what.

But looking over that table and thinking about it, I remembered the old Adventure Book that came in the GM's screen, and it has a random encounter table for Xiticix Country.
As with the mechanoid tables, we can remove any encounters with Xiticix, in order to get a rough idea of what the landscape would be like outside of Xiticix territory.
I am also taking out incidents where nothing particular happens, even if it can be rolled on the table (you see a deer, or a bear that runs away, etc.)

This time, there is a 49% chance of nothing in particular happening.

THIS random encounter table, though, has directions for use: "Roll as often as once for every 1d4 hour interval spent in Xiticix territory"
With the additional note that GMs can instead pick out the most interesting ones and play them out.

Now, since the wording there is "as often as," that means that the maximum chance of encountering something dangerous would be 51% per 1d4 hours in the wilderness.
The minimum, I suppose, would be that you don't roll on the table at all, and just decide that nothing at all happens (as far as big threats go).

This table was written up for encounters in a region which the Xiticix consider to be their territory, so no settlements are allowed to exist there, but they ignore individuals and small groups as long as they "keep their noses clean, don't make their presence obvious by building campfires, or do anything that could be construed to endanger or damage the land (like cutting down trees), and don't interfere with [xiticix] activity."
Which means that this is going to be wilderness that is completely unsettled: no roads, no towns, no open fields from farming, etc.
It's essentially virgin wilderness.
In more civilized areas, the odds of encountering a creature would be lower, as the monster population would be cut down by travelers, adventurers, militias, angry mobs, armies, etc.

It seems that there should be some kind of division or spectrum, because the likelihood of encountering hostiles would vary by region.

Pulling some categories and numbers completely out of my... magic hat... here is a rough idea of what to expect:

Virgin Wilderness (as above) 51% chance of hostile encounter every 1d4 hours at most.
Untamed Wilderness 50% chance of hostile encounter every 1d6 hours at most.
Tamed Wilderness 40% chance of hostile encounter every 2d4 hours at most.
Countryside 30% chance of hostile encounter every 2d6 hours at most.
Settled Land 20% chance of hostile encounter every 3d6 hours at most.
Civilized Land 10% chance of hostile encounter every 4d6 hours at most.

Of course, I haven't flipped through the Rifts Adventure Guide yet, and there may be important/relevant stuff in there.
But this might give you some stuff to get you started.

Edit:
And the above does NOT take into account whoever or whatever is civilizing the land: in CS territory, you'd use the Civilized Land numbers, but they wouldn't include Coalition patrols. If the travelers are hostile to the CS (and/or vice-versa), the numbers for encountering Xiticix in the random tables could instead be replaced with CS troops (with more showing up if backup is called for, etc. etc.)

[Noon]

So what will your little program run on?

I'm doing it in php, so it'll be browser based, no download needed.

I'm working on the day/night cycle right now, since were working in variable hourly increments.

[Noon]

Currently I have a raptor encounter sitting at a 10% chance (after 2D4 hours of travel you roll a chance). I've got it at 10% as an eyeball figure now.

And I've got it pretty generous, looking at it from an out of game perspective (atleast my idea of generous) that you can dodge and if you roll a nat 20, you escape it.

When really in my mind without some extra variable it'd just run you down and your doomed. Currently the villager has - no gear and no chance of gear. Even if he had gear, as I've suggested in other threads, it'd just get ground down and no income to pay for it.

I've put in a 10% clear chance path as well, which has you moving at full walking speed (instead of half speed because of rough terrain) so you can occasionally find a path that goes in your direction for a few kilometers.

I'm ready to put it up and link to it. I'm just interested in making it sure it ties to the argument threads, instead of just becoming 'ah, you did a game...and now...back to arguing in threads'.

[Killer Cyborg]

By "no gear," you mean "no Mega-Damage" gear?
Or just "nothing but his clothing?"

[Noon]

More a contextual 'no gear', as in no gear particularly relevant to the situation.

The scenario is leaving a starving village, so a little food, a bag, a staff, clothes, I'd imagined so far.

I was thinking of a chance encounter being to find some bar or chunk of MDC scrap along the way, to use as a parrying item VS MD attacks. On the other hand, as is, it'd be kinda identical to dodging (or worse, for being impromptu parrying object). So something would have to be added. Actually in the game I run, if players fail a parry my house rules allow a dodge roll on top of that. It's a toss up between the wording in the books not explicitly prohibiting that PLUS that it makes for survivability.

If anyone wants to suggest a percentage chance of some kind of MD weapon like a vibro blade, just pitch it and I'll put it in and we'll try it out.

MD grenades are actually pretty cheap MD weapons, but I keep imagining the raptor being upon you before you can throw, meaning you can't use them anymore without blowing yourself up in the blast radius. Could add in both a chance for grenades and also a chance on raptor attacks of seeing the raptor first (OR even that you get a rustling bushes message and choice of throwing a grenade - and on some occasions, it was just some birds or some small SDC creature foraging)

Annnddd here's a link to the preliminary version: http://driftwurld.freehostingcloud.com/trail/main.php

[Noon]

So a second scenario - perhaps one more akin to a PC - a vagabond type character, with plastic boy armour (35 MDC) and a vibro blade.

Let's say the scenario is taking furs for trade to a village about 300 kilometers away. The distance is indicative of how far you have to go before goods that are more plentiful in one region are less plentiful (and thus become valuable) in another region.

The thing is, I could only imagine such goods being worth a handful of credits.

So take even one point of damage to the armour and you're at a considerable loss on the journey.

Which kind of puts you in the same position as the villager with no armour, as being hit even once is no good (sure, you'll live, but it's still a fail as much as being killed is a fail).

Maybe some sort of sub quest you can come across, where people know of where MDC critter bones or the discarded scales of a fury beetle lay, so you can go get them and use them to repair up to the first five MDC or so of damage?

[Killer Cyborg]

So a second scenario - perhaps one more akin to a PC - a vagabond type character, with plastic boy armour (35 MDC) and a vibro blade.

Let's say the scenario is taking furs for trade to a village about 300 kilometers away. The distance is indicative of how far you have to go before goods that are more plentiful in one region are less plentiful (and thus become valuable) in another region.

The thing is, I could only imagine such goods being worth a handful of credits.

So take even one point of damage to the armour and you're at a considerable loss on the journey.

Which kind of puts you in the same position as the villager with no armour, as being hit even once is no good (sure, you'll live, but it's still a fail as much as being killed is a fail).

Nice.

Maybe some sort of sub quest you can come across, where people know of where MDC critter bones or the discarded scales of a fury beetle lay, so you can go get them and use them to repair up to the first five MDC or so of damage?

If you have the right skills, that might work.

[Noon]

Well, with forming a quarum/consensus in mind, what are the right skills?

I'm pretty open - I was either going to have blacksmiths in villages do it (and how they do it is left nebulous) or the player can less efficiently use those components to do a light repair without any particular skills at all. If the skill is in the old RMB or in ultimate, that's a plus.

[Noon]

Well, without any feedback I'll continue with no skills needed!

I'm thinking you have to trade 1 MDC piece for a blacksmith to use your other pieces for repair, or if there is no blacksmith but tools are available at the safe haven, you have a 50% chance of needing two MDC pieces to do one MDC of work and you have to trade something minor (perhaps even just berries you find while traveling) to be allowed access to the havens tools.

Actually the other, new post from a new GM to rifts asking about armour again reminded me, I might put in some magic armour scrolls as well.

[Noon]

Yeah, I'll be updating it soon.

As is, every 90+1d20 kilometers, there's a small farm or small village.

At the small farm you can trade 1 MDC scrap for use of their tools, and repair 1 MD on your armour for every 2 scrap you have (up to the first 10 points of damage on your armour)

At the small village, you can trade 1 MDC scrap to a blacksmith who repairs 1 MD on your armour for every 1 piece of scrap you have (again up to the first 10 points).

You can carry up to ten scrap at a time.

As well as the encounter chance, there's another roll for scrap hunting. This is a kind of SDC encounter, where the threat is SDC, so you don't some cheap SDC armour and hunt for the scrap. I really like how this ties in SDC into an MDC world and GM's could do alot with it! Right now it's a basic gauntlet of things hitting you (or your SDC armour), but that's cool. Makes hitpoints/SDC matter (as well as makes resting matter).

Eventually I'll write it up, because I'm trying to make it all usable right at the game table.

As usual, if any of that seems way crazy, please post! First 10 points of damage seem too much? I'm trying to nail down a consensus. I'll assume if no one posts, then it wasn't too crazy an idea! It'll atleast have that merit going for it!

[Killer Cyborg]

Okay, as far as armor repair goes:

The Armorer/Field Armorer skill allows for up to 20 MDC to be repaired on body armor (RGMG 58), with the proper equipment.
There is a note that "a major overhaul is not possible" as a general rule for this skill, so I'd say that the amount that can be repaired should also be limited to some percentage of the body armor's total damage capacity.
If you're working on armor with 25 MDC total, and it's down to 5 MDC, I don't think that you could repair all 20 points, for example.

There is no real info on what kind of equipment would be required, but I'd say that at the least, you'd need a laser torch or plasma torch, and mega-damage scrap.
But the scrap should be some kind of material that can be melted or welded into place. Mega-damage metal would work, MDC plastic would work.
A LOT of the MDC materials in Rifts, though, are ceramics, and that would be tougher to use for repair work, because I don't think that you can weld ceramics.
Although if you have some SDC material such as steel, you might be able to use the melted steel to kind of glue bits of MDC ceramic scrap into place.
Similarly, some MDC materials are natural materials: wood, bone, scales, whatever.
Some of those, like wood, might not take well to the high temperatures of that kind of patch job. Then again, MDC wood might, because the normal temperatures required to ignite wood would generally be SDC damage.
You might even be able to use SDC scrap, to an extent, but it wouldn't be as effective because the patched places could be vulnerable to SDC attacks, and it would require a high SDC material in order to equal the equivalent of even 1 MDC

Ideally, I think that one should have a full workshop, complete with some kind of form/press that could be used to shape the body armor correctly, as well as the right ceramic materials (some kind of clay, I guess), and an oven to bake it in until it sets.
The right kind of clay might be able to be used for field repairs, but I assume that it would have to be a special kind, and that it would have to be free of impurities.
A laser or plasma torch could be used to clean/soften the edges of the damaged area, the clay might be able to spackle the stuff in place, and bake it with the torch. A successful skill check would definitely be needed.
Likewise, there might be some kinds of plastic that could be used similarly for repairs, and that might come in portable repair kits.
Such kits would likely be expensive.

Also, I think that in one of the books, there is the MDC equivalent of bondo, a kind of metal-imbedded epoxy used in car body repair. If I'm remembering correctly, this would be in one of the more recent books, probably a merc book or something.

The Weapons Engineer skill (RGMG 59) also mentions the ability to "add and repair body armor and is an expert welder."
There is no limit on the amount of MDC that is able to be repaired with this skill, but I would think that it would be reasonable to either impose the same limits as for the Armorer/Field Armorer skill (20 MDC) for field repairs, or to impose a lower limit (maybe 5-10 MDC) due to the far that this skill specializes in weapons, not armor, or even to assume that the ability is only really meant for when the character has a full workshop.

The General Repair & Maintenance skill (RGMG 75) mentions that it allow the character to "even do minor patchwork on armor (restores 1d6 MDC). Roll once to see whether the character can figure out what is broken, what must be done to fix it, and whether it is beyond his meager abilities to repair. Roll again to determine success or failure in making the actual repair. If failure, the player may try again, but only twice."
and
"Reduce skill proficiency by half if the item is extremely damaged, complex, high-tech or alien."
I think that THIS skill is the one most likely to be had by an average, non-military character, and sets some good precedents.
I'd allow bonuses for the diagnosis for simple armor damage (one cause), but keep in mind that part of the roll in this case is to determine whether it's even fixable by the character.
And if the armor is "extremely damaged," then penalties kick in.
So the sooner you can attempt repairs, the better, and the more chance of success you would have.

The Jury-Rig skill (RUE 324) states that it allows the character to "repair almost anything, and even build something out of scrap components."
I think it's talking more about mechanical and electrical devices, about restoring function to them, but in a pinch, with the right materials and equipment, I might see a character being able to perform minor field repairs (probably less than with the General Repair skill) on body armor.
But the repairs would be more along the lines of "let's duct tape some scrap metal over this hole," because Jury Rigged repairs only hold for 4d6 hours or 2d4 days; they're not permanent repairs.

The Leather Working armor mentions that the skill allows the character to make leather goods, "even SDC leather armor (the character can repair leather armor too).
With the right equipment, and some mega-damage hides, I'd allow them to make and/or repair MDC leather armor (stats would be on the low end of the "Homemade MDC Armor" that's statted on p. 193 of the RGMG.
(Actually, I might kick it down a notch, as that armor has a minimum of 30-40 MDC, and that seems a bit high.)
The Skin & Prepare Hides skill would be necessary, along with the right tools, to turn MDC hides into leather.

RUE 326 has a Salvage skill, which allows a character to "find, identify, pick up, strip down, evaluate and possibly sell, any debris, wreckage, and junk that they can locate."

Sorry I took so long to give this input.
Hope that it helps!

You also might want to read my thread analyzing SDC armor vs. MD attacks, if you haven't already done so. It might spark some ideas.

[Noon]

I put this aside to read latter, but then forgot I was going away for awhile! Sorry to take awhile.

It's a shame there's not a theme in Rifts of monsters who do around 1 MD/3D6x10 SDC attacks. Then you could just have very heavy SDC armour, to a degree.

I don't have the game masters guide...but there's a 'sneak peak' options out there (I've bought alot of rifts books and looking at a tiny part of it is really just advertising towards buying it).

The general repair skill doesn't seem to say when to roll. There's some latitude there. Otherwise - well, from test runs I shifted the 5 damage that was repairable to 10. A raptor can just snap through that, even with the kinda generous escape capacity the PC has currently.

On repair, I don't know how sophisticated it needs to be - if most blows are to the main body (as some game texts like to describe it as), then if you have layers of MDC fragments on the main body, that's the important thing. Even if they are strapped on or such. On mythbusters, IIRC, they once made quite nice bullet stopping armour with bathroom tiles. Sure, SDC bullets, but SDC tiles in that case.

Edit: Also the attacks of raptors are snapping attacks, rather than penetrative (like a laser is). if you can just stop the jaws from taking too much of a mouthful with some ablative armour, that's pretty much what you need. You don't need armour that can ablate laser fire.

Or otherwise there needs to be some idea on taking the already generous escape ability of a PC and increasing it somehow? Maybe flash bangs or something? Thermite as a weapon?

Just posting this now to update this thread. May add more ideas as I think of other stuff.

[Noon]

Actually if you think of there being alot of individuals with the general repair skill, it could be viable - I just ran a program to check what it's like. If a small farm has 1D6 people who have the general repair skill and small village has 2D6 people with the skill, that's probably a good amount of repair, as they all get one roll each (for checking what the problem is, then if that passes two chances of giving a single roll of 1D6 MD repair).

Edit: Actually 3D6 for the small village might be a good number. Seems possible to me. They don't all need their own set of repair gear, either.

So an armour at half MDC is half the skill, which is kind of a losing condition. Possible to get out of, but unlikely.

But I'd be inclined to just say that once the plastic boy armour is reduced to 10 MDC, the general repair can't work on it. Thus you have a hard fail condition there. Sure if you pay for repairs you can get out of that, but the furs trader just doesn't get that kind of money from this trade journey.

Maybe each one who can do a repair will take one piece of armour scrap in trade for doing the repairs?

Implementing this will take a bit of a rewrite of the code so far as I had quite a different system going.

[Killer Cyborg]

Actually if you think of there being alot of individuals with the general repair skill, it could be viable - I just ran a program to check what it's like. If a small farm has 1D6 people who have the general repair skill and small village has 2D6 people with the skill, that's probably a good amount of repair, as they all get one roll each (for checking what the problem is, then if that passes two chances of giving a single roll of 1D6 MD repair).

Edit: Actually 3D6 for the small village might be a good number. Seems possible to me. They don't all need their own set of repair gear, either.

Depending on what you consider to be a "small farm," I might suggest 1d4 for that.
But if a small village is several hundred people, then yeah, 3d6 sounds right. Maybe more.
You might even go with something like "1d6 per 50 people" for villages and such.
The more rural the area, the more independent people would have to be, so the more common that kind of skill would be, I think.
In larger cities, the skill would be rarer, and often important enough for somebody to run a repair shop.

So an armour at half MDC is half the skill, which is kind of a losing condition. Possible to get out of, but unlikely.

But I'd be inclined to just say that once the plastic boy armour is reduced to 10 MDC, the general repair can't work on it. Thus you have a hard fail condition there. Sure if you pay for repairs you can get out of that, but the furs trader just doesn't get that kind of money from this trade journey.

Maybe each one who can do a repair will take one piece of armour scrap in trade for doing the repairs?

Implementing this will take a bit of a rewrite of the code so far as I had quite a different system going.

Trading scrap seems fairly reasonable. Not sure exactly what ratio would be best, though.

[Noon]

http://driftwurld.freehostingcloud.com/trail/main.php

Okay, updated!

As well as the scenario where you start with MDC armour, there's a test scenario which is there to test the repair system. I actually went to a fixed number of repair people, two in a small farm, ten in a small village. I thought rolling the amount in a table top game along with the skill rolls would be annoying to do. And I treated it as if the PC has the repair skill as well, so that effectively makes it three checks in a small farm, eleven checks in a small village (basically if the PC does repairs, he still hands over one piece of scrap to the village for use of their tools).

Between 11 and 17 MDC the skill at repairing the armour is halved, which is a bad thing!

At 10 MDC or less, only repairs at a workshop can repair the armour. This means you failed the journey, even if you survive!

http://driftwurld.freehostingcloud.com/trail/main.php

[Noon]

I'm recoding this at the moment so there's like a network of settlements you can travel to (might even have some which get destroyed by monsters every so often, so part of the travel map dissapears every so often!)

Must get around to writing up a table top usable version too, to post here. Just typing that to poke myself into doing so at some point this lifetime!

[Killer Cyborg]

Sounds cool!

[Noon]

Danke! I'm currently looking at a PC without armour. I'm thinking after a failed dodge (which would be death), some sort of method to get the raptor to instead eat or bite a pack of food as a distraction. I was thinking of a second roll, that needs to beat the raptors strike roll? Or is that too much a divergence from the ruleset?

[Noon]

*Pushes Johnnycat93 toward the raptor, where he is promptly eaten*

Well, there are other methods. Perhaps less agreeable ones?

[Noon]

But seriously, I've played in other game systems where food has been used to distract monsters.

The question here is implementation.

Does it sound better if the food distraction occur before a roll to hit is made by the raptor? What sort of roll is involved, if any?

Or is distracting monsters with food just implausible?

[Noon]

Maybe roll high to try and distract it with the meat? Then if that doesn't work, roll the dodge roll?

What number is high?

I think it'd be interesting if by hook and crook someone without armour had a chance of getting away. Make that number high though and really there is no chance.

[Killer Cyborg]

I'd require the defender to actively parry with the food.

Or have an AR for a backpack if hit from behind.

[Noon]

I'd require the defender to actively parry with the food.

Or have an AR for a backpack if hit from behind.

Depends if you get a dodge after such a parry attempt. If only the parry, then may as well skip the meat distraction and its back to just a dodge roll.

Johnnycat93, that's almost like a parry in itself?

Question is, do you get that roll and a dodge roll if the first fails (this would make the combat far less one sided and interesting)

I guess if you only got the parry perhaps the chance to find a low branch to climb up and escape by each turn could be increased. Since if the raptor is distracted by meat, the branch doesn't have to be as low in order to climb it because you can spend just that little bit more time scrambling up one. So that could be the advantage of a meat distraction.

[Noon]

Well currently in the test code, the character has no bonus and the raptor doesn't either, making the average of it's rolls around 10 as well, so it's kinda similar in that way.

Rolling against 11 would be handy because if the raptor had rolled 18 to strike, then it's pretty much game over.

Will wait and see what KC or anyone else has to say about parrying.

[Killer Cyborg]

I'd require the defender to actively parry with the food.

Or have an AR for a backpack if hit from behind.

Depends if you get a dodge after such a parry attempt. If only the parry, then may as well skip the meat distraction and its back to just a dodge roll.

As something of a purist, I'd stick with only one attempt at defense (unless Roll With Impact factors into it).

I guess if you only got the parry perhaps the chance to find a low branch to climb up and escape by each turn could be increased. Since if the raptor is distracted by meat, the branch doesn't have to be as low in order to climb it because you can spend just that little bit more time scrambling up one. So that could be the advantage of a meat distraction.

Or more time to run away, yeah.
A dodge doesn't get you much in Rifts- it buys you just enough time to get attacked again, unless you have more attacks than your opponent.
(Which is actually possible when dealing with animals, come to think of it... they didn't get updated with the Two Attacks For Living.)
But distracting them with food buys you as long as it takes them to eat the meal. Maybe longer, if the reason for their attack was to eat you, and they're full after they eat your food.

[Noon]

So the meat could distract for more than one attack. Maybe a percentile chance to satiate the raptor as well.

Edit: So, I'm looking at a dodge currently, along with a kind of meat distraction roll as well, 11+ distracts for, say, 1D4 attacks.