Several weeks ago, I was delighted to find a couple friends of mine in my hometown have been up to something exciting, and I thought what better way than to launch a new series of posts to revive this long-dead blog. [Let's Look At] is where I try to read through and dissect every chapter and corner of a new RPG that I have yet to play, and explore it with all of my musings about its design, some notes, and experimental plays to better understand it. I don't really intend these examinations to be a review of the game, but rants and raves may seep through the seams at times.
Now that I'm done looking through all the rules for the game, it's time to begin going hands-on with it to get a feel of how the rules and mechanics work together in tandem. Naturally, the first way to see the gears turning in this game is by creating a character.
Since there are the three Races in Mutans & Machine-Guns, I've decided that I create a character for each and then eventually compare them to each other to see what are the main strengths and weaknesses for each, whether in their statistical balance or design.
For starters, I would go for with a Pure Human character since they are the ones with the least complications to their creation. So let's go step-by-step as I go through the process.
First I would have to distribute 8 points to the four abilities of Combat, Social, Physical, and Mental. The lowest I can go for an ability is 1, so that's the minimum, but an ability cannot start more than 3. So I've decided to play it straight and distribute my points evenly to be like this:
Physical 2
Mental 2
Combat 2
Social 2
Since my Defense is fixed at 9, next I will have to roll for my character's Hitpoints.
Pure Human characters get a starting Hitpoint of 12+1D6, which again is the highest among all the races. So the Hitpoint I got was:
Hitpoint 12+(1d6=3) = 15
Up next is to see how much starting Gold/Trade Units I have before I starting buying my equipment. As a Pure Human, I do gain an additional +2 Gold/TU, so adding that to the 2d6 roll, I get:
Gold/TU (2d6=10)+2 = 12
With that amount, I started off by picking a ranged weapon first because it seemed more important and went with a Shotgun (1d6+3 damage, range 2) that cost me 10 Gold/TU. I could have spent all of my Gold/TU on Heavy Shotgun that deals an additional one damage than my weapon of choice, but I wanted to keep some TU for a melee weapon whenever any enemies get close. So with my remaining Gold/TU, I armed myself with a Hand Axe (1d6 damage).
I forfeited the idea of getting any armour because they were too expensive (5 TU for the cheapest Leather Jacket that only grants +1 DEF), and I'm not really sure how anyone could manage to afford one without getting a measly weapon even with maximum starting TU (14) for Pure Human.
And that's pretty much it. What I really liked about this character creation process is that it was very quick because there isn't much to consider about. I mostly reacted to what I rolled for my Gold/TU and that was probably the hardest part of this otherwise very easy process.
Though the process was fast, but it did feel a little stale that I'm not allowed to put more though into making my character. I can understand if it was meant to be a quick plug-and-play type of game, but I would like to have my players to be able to put some thought into creating what kind of characters they would like with the rules. Maybe if the Abilities had more influence in the character making thought process, then it would make it a little more fun for me. Then again, Pure Human characters do seem like the most straightforward and boring of the Races.
So for my next character (and post), I would be rolling up a Mutant Human.
Now that I'm done looking through all the rules for the game, it's time to begin going hands-on with it to get a feel of how the rules and mechanics work together in tandem. Naturally, the first way to see the gears turning in this game is by creating a character.
Since there are the three Races in Mutans & Machine-Guns, I've decided that I create a character for each and then eventually compare them to each other to see what are the main strengths and weaknesses for each, whether in their statistical balance or design.
For starters, I would go for with a Pure Human character since they are the ones with the least complications to their creation. So let's go step-by-step as I go through the process.
First I would have to distribute 8 points to the four abilities of Combat, Social, Physical, and Mental. The lowest I can go for an ability is 1, so that's the minimum, but an ability cannot start more than 3. So I've decided to play it straight and distribute my points evenly to be like this:
Physical 2
Mental 2
Combat 2
Social 2
Since my Defense is fixed at 9, next I will have to roll for my character's Hitpoints.
Pure Human characters get a starting Hitpoint of 12+1D6, which again is the highest among all the races. So the Hitpoint I got was:
Hitpoint 12+(1d6=3) = 15
Up next is to see how much starting Gold/Trade Units I have before I starting buying my equipment. As a Pure Human, I do gain an additional +2 Gold/TU, so adding that to the 2d6 roll, I get:
Gold/TU (2d6=10)+2 = 12
With that amount, I started off by picking a ranged weapon first because it seemed more important and went with a Shotgun (1d6+3 damage, range 2) that cost me 10 Gold/TU. I could have spent all of my Gold/TU on Heavy Shotgun that deals an additional one damage than my weapon of choice, but I wanted to keep some TU for a melee weapon whenever any enemies get close. So with my remaining Gold/TU, I armed myself with a Hand Axe (1d6 damage).
I forfeited the idea of getting any armour because they were too expensive (5 TU for the cheapest Leather Jacket that only grants +1 DEF), and I'm not really sure how anyone could manage to afford one without getting a measly weapon even with maximum starting TU (14) for Pure Human.
And that's pretty much it. What I really liked about this character creation process is that it was very quick because there isn't much to consider about. I mostly reacted to what I rolled for my Gold/TU and that was probably the hardest part of this otherwise very easy process.
Though the process was fast, but it did feel a little stale that I'm not allowed to put more though into making my character. I can understand if it was meant to be a quick plug-and-play type of game, but I would like to have my players to be able to put some thought into creating what kind of characters they would like with the rules. Maybe if the Abilities had more influence in the character making thought process, then it would make it a little more fun for me. Then again, Pure Human characters do seem like the most straightforward and boring of the Races.
So for my next character (and post), I would be rolling up a Mutant Human.
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