Lists of Random Items & Other Things

[Yamaguchi]

Hi everyone. I'm finally starting a T2K campaign after a 25 year hiatus, with half a dozen mid to late 20 yr olds including my son, son-in-law, nephew....

We're all pretty excited about it but there are a few little things I'd like to do to make it a bit more fun.

Does anyone have a list of random odds and ends they can start out with? I'd love to have them have a few weird things to help build their character's history.

Also, does anyone have a list of random items that can be found when searching either a location or an NPC (dead or alive)?

Finally, how do you determine the size of an enemy encounter? I had a thought to make the enemy force's initiative equal to the group's total initiative. How do you guys do it?

[Legbreaker]

Finally, how do you determine the size of an enemy encounter? I had a thought to make the enemy force's initiative equal to the group's total initiative. How do you guys do it?
Which edition are you using? They all have the details on encounter size in there somewhere.
Bear in mind that just because there's an encounter, it doesn't mean the PCs will be fighting them. Sometimes it's best to run away, sometimes trade with them, sometimes both sides may even pretend they didn't see each other.

[Yamaguchi]

I'm using v2. I guess I'm talking about the inevitable conflict that results in shooting. Yes, I've been reading the encounter rules, but I can't seem to find any guidance on how to tailor the enemy numbers to the group size.

[Olefin]

that is more a function of both the dice but also your judgement as a GM - since its their first time I would go easy with them at least at the start and try to give them odds that arent daunting - think Keep on the Borderlands from Dungeons and Dragons - you start them off slow, get them some experience and some excitement and if they try to take on something too big do what you can to get them to disengage without getting themselves all killed off and hope they get the hint (i.e. sort of the thing you would do starting off a D&D campaign to discourage them from taking on dragons with level 1 fighters and magic users)

[kato13]

Welcome Aboard.

Hope to hear about your games.

We have something like that around here somewhere IIRC.

I'll dig around attachments and post it if I find anything.

Edit
Some links after quick search
https://forum.juhlin.com/showthread.php?t=2322
https://forum.juhlin.com/showthread.php?t=4582

I am going to regenerate the attachments list shortly and will see if I can find anything.

[Yamaguchi]

I'm digging into the rules some more (probably 90% forgotten after 25 years) and started paging through the Referee's Screen booklet. Looks like I'm playing v2.2. I knew there was a d20 change but couldn't find it until now.

Olefin, the cob webs are slowly clearing. I don't want to overwhelm them. The first combat encounter will be easy on them. They're definitely of the "shoot first" mindset right now. None of them are prior military and I'm retired army, so we've been discussing a lot of things. Should be interesting.

[Yamaguchi]

Welcome Aboard.

Hope to hear about your games.

We have something like that around here somewhere IIRC.

I'll dig around attachments and post it if I find anything.

Edit
Some links after quick search
https://forum.juhlin.com/showthread.php?t=2322
https://forum.juhlin.com/showthread.php?t=4582

I am going to regenerate the attachments list shortly and will see if I can find anything.

This is gold! Thanks, Kato!

We start in 10 days. Everyone's excited, me included.

[Vespers War]

I'm digging into the rules some more (probably 90% forgotten after 25 years) and started paging through the Referee's Screen booklet. Looks like I'm playing v2.2. I knew there was a d20 change but couldn't find it until now.

Olefin, the cob webs are slowly clearing. I don't want to overwhelm them. The first combat encounter will be easy on them. They're definitely of the "shoot first" mindset right now. None of them are prior military and I'm retired army, so we've been discussing a lot of things. Should be interesting.

For v2.2, human encounter statistics are on page 159. The easiest encounter would probably be Primitives, since they only come in groups of 2d6, can be Novice (described on page 139), and have Poor weapons (described on page 158). Second would probably be Hunters (1d6, Novice, Civilian), which might have horses that the party could use. Most other groups would (in my opinion) be either too large or too well-armed for a first encounter if the PCs are insistent on combat.

The other option would be an animal encounter per pages 162-163, which could give them a chance to get some food (30% of the animal's body weight per the Hunting section on page 149).

[StainlessSteelCynic]

Keep in mind too, that in the real world you avoid attacking the enemy unless you can get odds of at the very least, 3 to 1 in your favour. In many situations, the attacking commander tries to get odds of 5 to 1 or more in his favour.
So having said that, impress upon your players that their character's military training reinforces the idea of only attacking when you have 3 times as many troops as the enemy.

Scale your encounters at that level in the beginning so that they can have a few achievable victories and then when they start to get better with the game rules and more importantly, their tactics, increase the enemy size so that the players slowly lose their 3 to 1 advantage (and tell them that it's better to run away from battles they cannot win).

[Olefin]

For v2.2, human encounter statistics are on page 159. The easiest encounter would probably be Primitives, since they only come in groups of 2d6, can be Novice (described on page 139), and have Poor weapons (described on page 158). Second would probably be Hunters (1d6, Novice, Civilian), which might have horses that the party could use. Most other groups would (in my opinion) be either too large or too well-armed for a first encounter if the PCs are insistent on combat.

The other option would be an animal encounter per pages 162-163, which could give them a chance to get some food (30% of the animal's body weight per the Hunting section on page 149).

If you do have encounters with other military forces early on you can make them with either a very small group or one that is badly armed and thus not able to stand up in any kind of firefight with the group - i.e. possibly whats left of of a squad that got separated and is by itself or where you can have the players ambush them and thus gain a sufficient advantage to give the ratio that would be advantageous to them in combat

[Legbreaker]

There is absolutely NO shame in running away, even when the odds are in your favour.
In T2K resources are limited. ANY loss in combat (or otherwise too really) can be very difficult to replace. Only takes a single lucky hit to critically injure somebody (which is actually worse than outright death), damage your vehicle, destroy your fuel still, or any one of a million other things.
Avoiding combat can be the best way to survive, although on the other side of that coin, the winner is usually able to scavenge the battlefield relatively unmolested... :/

[StainlessSteelCynic]

But speaking of the other request - random lists - the following link has a reasonable random item generator for modern games that could be used for creating item lists for new characters. It's not so great for loot from bodies because I haven't seen it produce anything of a military nature (and sometimes you might get multiples of a particular item - like 3x chewing gum for example).
https://karbonkitty.github.io/rpg-generator-ts/

You can get things such as the following: -
a few keys, driver's licence, a few dollars, smartphone, photo of a child
pockets: nail clippers, dental floss
large purse: folding knife, bottle of juice, painkillers, soda can, chewing gum

If you want to mess around with a list of random "junk" items, the following list is also reasonable but obviously heavily slanted towards a certain post-apoc style game (a Fallout tabletop rpg): -
https://www.reddit.com/r/rpg/comments/2yy3in/450_random_junk_items_for_post_apocalypse/
And from that one, you really will get some "odd" items! :D (Mannequin head anyone? Or perhaps a mummified hand with six fingers?)

If you're prepared to spend a little money (and these things go for about US$1.00), the following lists on DriveThruRPG might be what you're looking for: -
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/browse/pub/3692/Fishwife-Games/subcategory/6435_29886/Apocalypse-Lists

You'll have to trawl through their product catalogue to see if anything suits your game but it seems the company (Fishwife Games) has built themselves on producing random loot lists ranging from what you can find in a modern storage building, to a hunting cabin, to backpacks, to toolshops and even to what you could find in a dumpster.