Having played a few sessions of this I have a couple of questions. Please note I am working off of the v0.2 rules since those are the only full set of rules I have access to. I’m excited for the full release.
1. Gangs. How do they work? By that, I mean do they work like in Apocalypse World where they have a collective harm rating? Also, what is the general consensus on the level of firepower of a not “well armed” gang? This one is a lot more subjective and up to the group, but I’m curious how you all handle it.
2. What is the best way to handle fire fights? If the party is in a shoot out with multiple enemies, how do I handle Mix-It Up and applying harm to that group especially if no +area weapons are available? I’m probably thinking about fire fights wrong due to too many video game rpgs and D&D.
I feel like I had another question, but it is slipping my mind…
Consider that, unlike D&D, *World games don’t tend to care much about the mechanics of NPCs – the PCs are individuals with stat blocks, but nobody else has any mechanical weight.
So if you’ve got a large number of NPC combatants, there’s no need to treat them as a large number of individuals – there might be a few stand-out NPCs, but chances are many of them are just a mob of identical nameless minions (security guards, gangsters, random street thugs), and can be treated as a single threat. The exact numbers don’t matter much… depending on the tone of your game, a mob might be a large crowd of low-quality mooks (each 1 harm might drop four or five thugs) or it might be a smaller tougher group (1 harm drops one). It’s up to you to decide what it takes to remove that mob as a threat.
Hi Christopher, thanks for playing!
1. Gangs are expanded in the final edition. They basically work the same as in AW, so the rules in AW should work in the interim.
(Cue a backer with v0.6 telling me how they differ from AW 😉 )
As you say, well-armed will depend on the specific setting and situation your table has established. My default assumption would be that a regular gang has pistols and maybe light automatic weapons, which a well armed gang might have assualt rifles as standard (and on up…). But this one is definitely situation dependent and is a great chance to discuss the setting with the player who has a gang.
I’ll respond to your second question later, when I’m at home.