A Belated T5 Actual Play

[David Johansen]

So, one of the kids who's usually more into Bolt Action deigned to roleplay with the other teenagers at my store. He wanted to try T5 because I'd mentioned you could run mercenary campaigns. So they rolled up some soldiers and marines which went pretty quickly because I'd taken time to figure out character generation previously.

Seriously, it's clean and quick and easy once you know where everything is. Until then, just remember, that which does not kill you only serves to make you stronger. The medals table for soldier risk and reward rolls is in the Fame section. Just so you know. I sure didn't at first.

Okay, so anyhow, the set up was that they were imperial troops operating under a false flag as mercenaries on a world that was revolting and seceeding. As such, not being officially imperial troops the new government could cash in their reparation bonds and send them home, if they could make it to the star port. They ran across a patrol of local forces and anihilated them with superior fire power. The combat ran fairly smoothly, though the enemy were only very lightly armored and that Heavy Battle Sniper Rifle is really nasty.

Once they reached star town it became apparent that the local government had seized control even there and was looking for imperial troops and rounding up mercenaries for show trials. With a little sniffing around they learned that there was a "free port" on the other side of the planet where they could still get off world. They managed to hijack a local ornithopter and after a harrowing series of bad piloting rolls managed to crash a few days out from the free port with revolutionary government forces hot on their tails. Another fire fight ensued. With the enemy again getting slaughtered by superior fire power. At ranges less than 50m the difficulty is only 1d (if you're standing still, 2d if you're moving) and there's a +4 to hit a stationary human sized target. (size 5 - range 1) Oddly enough it works better than it sounds. You can get a -6 for taking cover (taking a -3 to hit) So really if you're willing to stand in the open and take the +1 to be hit for being first shooter you can really kill people but they can really kill you right back. The sniper rifle was again a big factor in the win.

Once in town they managed to aggrevate the local crime boss and many of the locals, but one cool headed player managed to settle things down. Then they met a patron who had an interest in funding a mercenary company and bankrolled them into a 40 year old 1000t freighter to serve as a mobile base.

That was as far as they went with it. The next week it was back to Black Watch space marines. Not that they hadn't enjoyed it but one of the players is currently obsessed with 40k and talked the others into it. That's okay, next time I want to be better prepared.

 

[cym0k]

That sounds awesome!

 

[Draconian]

....At ranges less than 50m the difficulty is only 1d (if you're standing still, 2d if you're moving) and there's a +4 to hit a stationary human sized target. (size 5 - range 1) Oddly enough it works better than it sounds. You can get a -6 for taking cover (taking a -3 to hit) So really if you're willing to stand in the open and take the +1 to be hit for being first shooter you can really kill people but they can really kill you right back. The sniper rifle was again a big factor in the win.

Well I'm glad to hear the combat system works. The ease of hitting probably comes from the fact the rounds are about a minute so you should be sure to hit something with a multi-bullet expenditure; regular, Snapfire or Autofire. The roll is per round, not individual bullet. Just thinking out loud here.

 

[Hemdian]

<snip>

Ditto what cmy0K said.

The ease of hitting probably comes from the fact the rounds are about a minute so you should be sure to hit something with a multi-bullet expenditure; regular, Snapfire or Autofire. The roll is per round, not individual bullet. Just thinking out loud here.

Not disagreeing but be careful thinking of a round as a minute. In a combat, the total number of rounds equals the total number of minutes, but individual rounds can vary in length. The following is what helped me conceptually:

Back in the day I played the Marvel Superhero game when it first came out. I have no idea if this is still true for the current edition but the first edition had one round equal to one comic panel. If you were playing Spiderman (for example) and you could find evidence (in an official comic) of Spiderman punching three goons in the same panel then in the game you could hit three goons in the same round. A comic frame was a unit of action of indeterminate length, a T5 round is a unit of action of indeterminate length.

 

[David Johansen]

It's just fuzzy and abstract is all. Rather than trying to simulate the physics the system just worries about what happened.