Great White Games/Pinnacle Entertainment Group

[Candi]

Hello all,

So I'm trying to put together a homebrew setting for when my gaming group reunites in the Fall. The idea is to have a guns blazing, past-future setting with bits and pieces stolen from all of our favourite genres and settings. I'm having some trouble with the mish mash and looking for help of any sort - advice, ideas, suggestions. Anything is golden.

The basic premise is a mish-mash of Steampunk Themes (Victorian, 'old-remade' mentality, technology gone wild, Anarchistic), Romanticised Western Ideology (Duels to settle disputes, gun-slinging self-administered law), magic is somehow integrated into the setting, and modern guns and equipment (to some extent futuristic as I'm having nanoweave armor and some Cyber-y tech) sans full-auto weapons (group doesn't like them much for many reasons, the largest of which is how incredibly deadly they are).

I guess it's not that basic, but the ideas are there. Some of the inspiration of the setting is coming from Resonance of Fate (for which I've only seen videos of but the game seems to have the feel I'm going for. Lots of pistol action) I'm also drawing from Equilibrium and the like in terms of a heavy focus on gun combat and will probably try to integrate a kind of "Gun-Kata" Arcane Background of some sort.

I'm have a couple of major roadblocks:
Duels: I know of Deadlands but I'm not familiar with it's duel system, from what I gather it's kind of like a quick game of Poker? In any case I need to borrow or make a dueling system that is very FFF (duels will probably be a common occurrence).

Stunts: I want to encourage players to do fancy tricks in fights. Flipping into the air and taking shots at multiple foes, sliding under some crates and shooting while sliding. Acrobatics, stunts and so on should be a part of regular gun play. I want to encourage this type of over the top cinematics, the best way I know of is the Thrilling Tales Stunts idea where you give a player a Benny for attempting a stunt. Either that or treating stunts in a way similar to Tricks. Perhaps an alternate type of Benny like Deadlands Fate Chips (more vague Deadlands notions here..)

Weaponry: In my first draft of the setting I've listed three classes of weapons and a huge table of upgrades purchasable for each weapon class. Classes are Pistols, Rifles and Shotguns. And weapon upgrades are things from scopes, to range increases, damage increases, AP, semi-auto and right up to adding a grenade launcher or syringe launcher secondary fire. I'm wondering if going with a standard list of pistols, rifles and shotguns (SW:EX + Thrilling Tales trimmed down gun lists) and reducing add-ons just to the unique interesting ones (such as the over and under or syringe launcher) is a better approach then completely customizable weapons (which is a cool idea but has a lot of creation time overhead).


And as I said, any ideas or advice is strongly appreciated. This is the first time I've tried to codify a Savage Setting. Normally I just tell the players the basics and then make up rules as necessary during character creation and introduce a handful of Setting Rules on game day. This is a whole new ball park for me.

[Candi]

Been mulling this over for a few days, talking to friends and this is what I've got so far. Ideas and opinions welcome!

Duels
Because duels in this game need to cover more than just a 1v1 gentleman's duel but also "mexican standoff" type duels as well (where you have a large group of people all with holstered weapons drawing at once) I need something that will work regardless of the number of participants. I also didn't want to restrict players to dueling with pistols (since the setting encourages players to pick a "Favoured Weapon Type" and stick to it, I don't want Dueling to be a 'Pistol' think, the Rifle and Shotgun crowd should also be able to participate - if at a penalty).

Stage 1 The Stare Down
Drawing first has its benefits, but he who draws first is always at fault. If you were defending yourself then you're in the clear if you kill the opponent. So you make an effort to encourage your opponent to draw first, giving you the moral high ground. Or, you can sacrifice the moral high ground for speed and the law be damned.

All combatants choose a target to "staredown" and then make Opposed Spirit checks. If you wish to draw first instead of rolling your Spirit Check simply place your spirit and Wild Dice with Snake Eyes facing up.

The loser draws first, if the loser was beaten by a Raise then the winner gets +1 Shooting as they predict their opponents breaking.

If you chose to draw and didn't roll you get +2 to your Shooting roll, but only if you are the only one to do so. If your opponent also didn't roll then no one gets a bonus.

Stage 2 The Draw
Quick hands make quick duels. The name of the game is fast draw, first shot has the best chance of survival.

Deal 2 Cards to everyone face down. Those with Level-Headed get 4 and those with Quick may reveal any cards 5 or below and be dealt replacement cards face down.

Then everyone reveals one card, the player with the highest card in this reveal gets +1 Shooting. The player revealing the lowest card takes -1 Shooting. A joker reveal gets that player +2 Shooting.

Shotugns and Rifles are unwieldy and not well designed for quick draw in duels. As such those with Shotguns and Rifles are treated as having a card 2 numbers lower than the one they reveal (so if a Rifle user reveals a King it is treated as a Jack of the same suit). A fighter with a Sawed off shotgun or short barreled rifle only treats their card as 1 number lower.

Stage 3 Fire!
Then everyone reveals their second card, this determines initiative order in the usual way. Working through the initiative order everyone picks targets and shoots! You only get 1 action in this round of combat (no free actions) so it is highly advised that you shoot someone