A ray of hope II

[Adm.Lee]

As I mentioned [URL="http://forum.juhlin.com/showthread.php?t=3452"]here, I offered my son and his pals a T2k game for the summer. After Origins, I invited in group member Rnitze and his son, too. Character generation was yesterday, so we are on our way. I really wish I'd had more than one copy of the careers pages on hand, I had to go around the table to get everyone's terms in.

Rules are v.2.2 (mostly); I told them all to roll up 2 PCs, to allow for casualties. I was planning to run good ol' "Escape from Kalisz" but events intervened. Early on, at least two of them entered the Marines for their first terms, so I asked if everyone wanted to play Marines, rather than Army. Most said yes, so I will be shifting to make use of Raellus' "Task Force Inchon" concept. (Off to read that again tonight....)

As it is, we've got 7 Marines (1 Irish-born, 1 East German), 4 soldiers and a Navy Lt. j.g. Two of the Marines are a sniper team, 1 Marine and 1 soldier are engineers, and the ranking officer is an Army intel geek. They rolled for vehicles, and negotiated for a BMP-B (vice a Bradley) and a HMMWV.

Some of the guys started to get a glimmer of character-building through the lifepath system, using their choices in careers to build some story. One had 4 terms as a FedEx truckdriver before getting drafted. One had two criminal terms, followed by 2 as a cop before joining the Army MPs. One went to university to earn a Ph.D., then spent 4 terms as a geology professor before the war came along.

Something I noted is that some of them damaged my illusions on the [skill + attribute vs.d20] system, maxxing out their Small Arms skill and putting their biggest stat into Strength. There's a sniper with 9 Str and 10 skill, meaning his Short range, aimed shot, to-hit number is 76. (Yes, I know, he can still miss the shot on a roll of 17-20.)

I showed them a BRDM shooting at their BMP, which I think drove home that it's not THAT well-armored.

Something that surprised me: no one talked about where their characters were from. I remember that being a key piece of chargen (both rules editions) even when we first started playing. What I mean is that no one talked about their home state or city, "This guy's from Boston, and he played in a band," "This guy's from Hamburg," or "He's from south of nowhere in Tennessee." For that matter, one doesn't even have a name.

As for gear, I just had them give me a wish list, and I reviewed it this afternoon, then tacked on food & fuel and some miscellaneous stuff. Shooting starts on Tuesday afternoon, but there's one more kid that wants in, and he needs characters (They're gonna want a corpsman, so that may be one of them).