Black Ops: SFOD-D

CHARACTER CREATION:

Attributes:
Characters have 4 skill groups which contain 4 skills each. When creating the character, numbers are assigned to the skill groups, which is the base value used for the skills within that group. How the player assigns the number is completely up to the GM. The higher the number, the more proficient the character is at that task.

Specializations:
A character is given a total number of points that he can spread amongst his skills to represent special training or ability in certain areas. However, for every bonus that is assigned, an equal value must be subtracted from a separate skill. Note that the "ineptitude" needs to be equal to the bonus: for example, if you add 3 to engineering, and 2 to medicine, you need to subtract 3 from one skill and 2 from another. The GM determines the total number of points; a player is not required to use all of his points.

Swaps:
A character can swap in a skill to be included for the value of a different skill group. He may do this for a number of times set by the GM. For Example: If you have 6 in Knowhow, and 3 in Survival, you can swap Medicine with Driving to have a base value of 6 for Medicine and 3 for Driving.


Agility:
Actions based primarily around hand-eye coordination, flexibility, dexterity, and so on.

Small Arms:
Guns, guns, guns. From rifles, to pistols, to SMGs, to lasers, to blasters; if it's a normal sized firearm, this skill is used.

Stealth:
The art of moving around without being noticed.

Finesse:
Rates your character's physical alacrity, speed, etc.

Indirect:
Rates how well you can estimate the path of ballistic projectiles, such as launched grenades, rockets, and so on. Think of it as rating your ability to practically apply kinematics.


Brutality:
Actions based around brute force, sheer strength, and pain tolerance.

Strength:
Rates your physical capacity for feats of Strength

Endurance:
Rates how well you can hold up over time, although it also rates how well you can ignore pain, bad conditions, etc.

Throwing:
How well you can physically throw objects with the purpose of hitting something else.

Ego:
Equivalent of intimidation. How well you can literally brutalize someone into submission.


Knowhow:
Science and technical knowledge.

Engineering:
This doubles as a skill used for both repairing things and building things.

Big Guns:
Any oversize weapons like tank cannons fall under this category. Odds are, if the weapon is larger than you are, it should be using this skill. Note that calling in coordinates for indirect fire use this.

Driving:
Driving, Piloting, etc. all fall under this

High-Tech:
An understanding of science and other high-tech stuff. Used when dealing with computer systems, advanced calculations, and the like.


Survival:
Anything to do with keeping yourself alive in the world.

Medicine:
Both first-aid and extended care fall under this. How well you can stitch living things back together.

Empathy:
How well you can relate to other people. Used in persuasion, comprehending languages (spoken or signed), the performing arts, and so on.

Perception:
How good you are at noticing things around you.

Willpower:
Your ability to keep your sanity, focus, convictions, and so on in the face of resistance


Other Stats:

Movement:
How fast you move around is based on the speed of plot. That is, however fast you move is however fast makes sense. If you need, you can average around 1.5 m/s for walking and 7 m/s for full-tilt sprinting. Finesse is used if a situation brings a character's speed into doubt. Opposed finesse is used to see who is faster.

Health:
Characters start with a base health value of 6. They then add their Endurance value to this to get their total health. Once a character has hit 0 health, they are incapacitated, and have reached the point where they would need treatment usually lasting beyond the scope of the game. For roleplaying purposes, a character is still "alive" until they reach a negative hit-point value equal to their Endurance.


Feats / Quirks / Additional Skills:
Characters can be given Feats, Quirks, and Additional Skills, which are generally requested by the player and approved by the GM.

Feats:
Allow a character to do something extraordinary.

Quirks:
Give a trade off, allowing a character to do something extraordinary or be exceptionally good at something while giving some sort of drawback at the same time.

Additional Skills:
Give a bonus to a specific skill due to the background of the character. Generally a reward for a fleshed out background and bio.


THE GAME

Target Numbers:
Every task in the game that's not completely mediocre has a Target Number (TN) assigned to it. The value of a target number is from 1 to 20, 1 being painfully easy to 20 being insanely difficult. Note that the difference in difficulty between a 3 and 4 is much, much less than the difference between a 18 and 19. The bare minimum to succeed is to roll equal to the target number.

Modifiers:
The exact circumstances of an event change a lot. As such, things can influence a roll, giving anywhere from a -5 penalty to a +5 bonus. There is no limit on the number of modifiers that can be impacting a roll at one time.

Dice:
Standard number of sides to use is 12 (a d12). Roll the dice, then add the score of the appropriate skill to get your result of the roll. If it's equal to or higher than the TN, it's a success. Natural 12's almost always mean automatic wins, natural 1's almost always mean automatic failure. Automatic win/failures should be appropriately spectacular, funny, cool, violent, annoying, interesting, etc. Note that something unexpectedly good/bad can occur whenever these arise. A bullet might pass through 2 enemies, you could throw the pin instead of the grenade, etc.


COMBAT

Initiative:
When combat starts, all characters immediately declare their actions. Along with their actions, they provide me with an appropriate skill roll for that action, and an initiative roll. This initiative roll will determine when they take their actions. When attacked, the GM rolls your character's defense rolls to determine whether your characters have been hit or not (attack and defense rules detailed below). Players must declare on their action whether they want to use Edge to dodge attacks that turn or not. Edge spent in this way will be applied on all defense-related Survival/Melee Combat rolls until the player's next turn.

So, to boil down the new combat sequence:

1. GM declares the beginning of a combat
2. Players declare actions
3. Players roll dice to determine how well they perform their actions
4. Players roll initiative to determine when their individual actions take place
5. Players declare whether or not to use Edge for any defense rolls that turn.
6. GM performs steps 2 to 5 for any enemies and allies (NPCs)
7. GM determines changes to the battlescape based on Player and NPCs actions, their success or failure, and circumstantial stuff.
8. Repeat steps 2 to 7 until combat ends.

The Turn:
A turn lasts around 2 or 3 seconds. In this time, a player can do one action. Shooting a gun, throwing a rock, moving around, tying your shoes, or hacking a computer are all examples of an action. The GM can declare that some actions are too involved to be completed in one turn, and set a number of turns they must be focused on. If actions are not too involved, they can be woven together (such as shooting a quick burst and moving a short distance, or making a perception check while moving), however, this might result in a penalty at the GM's discretion.

Ranged Attacks:
When a character uses some form of weapon that launches a ballistic projectile (not a grenade), he rolls a dice and adds the result to the appropriate skill. This result is compared against a TN; if it is equal to or greater, the shot hits. Some things make shooting more complicated:

Range: Ranges are divided into Point-Blank, Close, Medium, Long, and Extreme. Point-Blank shots are so close and easy the characters gains a +2 bonus to his attack rolls. All point-blank shots, regardless of gun type, are within 5 meters or so. Close shots are within the weapon's close range, and suffer no modifiers. Medium shots are further out, and suffer a -2 penalty. Long shots suffer a -4 penalty. Extreme shots suffer a -6 penalty.

Target Numbers: The base TN to hit a man-sized target at a weapon's "short" range is 8.

Modifiers: Depending on many, many factors, there will be bonuses or penalties to a shot ranging from -5 to +5 that will affect the probability. Factors include cover (or lack thereof), distractions, dispersion of targets (if firing on a group), use of semi/full auto fire, concealment, body posture, gun position, and anything else that can affect how well you can aim. The GM will apply all modifiers at his discretion.

Elusive Targets: If a victim is aware of his attacker and the victim is close enough to cover that offers a +2 bonus or higher, and the attack rolls a hit, the victim can make a last ditch effort to dodge the attack, rolling Finesse or Perception (whichever is higher) against a TN of the attacker's score. A character gives up his next turn's actions if he does this. Note that players need to declare they are willing to do this BEFORE the turn in which the damage takes place.

Automatic/Semi-Automatic Fire: Firing more bullets can sometimes help hit the target. Weapons that can fire in semi/auto modes can give bonuses if the player declares that they are liberally using ammunition. Note that this can actually give penalties in some circumstances where the recoil would hinder aiming enough that the additional bullets don't matter.

Shooting More Than One Target: If a weapon creates an explosion, or can send lots of ammo downrange in a short timespan, it's perfectly reasonable for a player to try to shoot more than one target. The player describes his targets and how liberally he's using his ammo, then rolls an attack. The GM decides how successful the attack is on a case by case basis judging by circumstances such as how dispersed the targets are, what weapon is being used, and how high the player rolls on the attack.

Melee Attacks:
The two skills used in melee fighting are Agility and Brutality. To attack, roll a dice and add either one as your bonus (player's choice). Damage dealt is half of the other value (rounded up). The victim (if aware) rolls with either their Agility or Brutality (once again, their choice). If the attacker scores above the defender, the defender takes full damage. If the defender scores above the attacker, no damage is dealt. If the scores are equal, both take half damage as the pair beat the crap out of each other.

Damage:
When a character is hit, they take the weapon's damage score, then add half the amount by which the attack roll beat the TN to damage (rounding DOWN). The victim suffers this amount of damage. If the roll to attack is equal to the TN, damage is halved (the hit is a graze).

Being Wounded:
A player suffers a penalty for being wounded equal to half the amount of wounds they have sustained. This only starts once the total wounds a character has is below 10. A character can reduce this penalty by half (rounding down) for their NEXT turn by making an Endurance or Willpower roll against a TN of 10. Note that the penalty they are trying to resist applies to this roll. The GM can decide that a character is too wounded or in too much pain to attempt this.

Example 1:
A character has 12 total HP, and is wounded to 8 HP. He takes a -1 penalty to all actions.

Example 2:
A character has 8 total HP, and is wounded to 4 HP. He takes a -2 penalty to all actions.

Example 3:
A character has 14 total HP, and is wounded to 11 HP. He takes no penalties.

Wounded Effects:
Being hurt is a funny thing; weird stuff can happen. You might get knocked down, start to bleed, break a limb, or really anything else. It's up to the GM to assign these effects (to both characters and NPCs) whenever he thinks it fits the scenario.

Healing (Unwounding):
Using the medicine skill, characters can heal themselves or other characters. Roll a dice and add the medicine skill. For every multiple of 5, one HP is healed. A character can only benefit from this once per scene. The exception to this rule is if a character is wounded, healed, and wounded again- however, the character can't be healed any more than his HP were at after he was healed. Example: A character with 10 HP is hit and reduced to 5 HP, then healed to 7 HP, then hit again to 3 HP. The maximum amount of healing would bring him back to 7 HP.

Ammunition Expenditure:
Occasionally, when the GM deems it appropriate or the character rolls a "1" on a shooting-related roll, that character runs out of ammo. Aside from tracking an appropriate unit of reloads (be it clips, magazines, belts, cells, whatever), there's no tracking of ammo.


EQUIPMENT
All gear falls under these categories: Weapons, Personal, Survival, Gadgets/Tools, Misc.

WEAPONS:
Arguably the most important category.

Creating Guns:
Through all of history, mankind has developed countless firearms of assorted varieties far too numerous for me to bother listing here. So, as such, I've created general guidelines as to how to convert any weapon you like into this game. Note that it's customary for the GM to work out what weapons will be likely encountered in the game and to have statistics for them.

Step 1: Range
Look up the weapon's maximum EFFECTIVE (that word is important) range. Note this as the "Extreme" range of the weapon. Divide this into quarters; each successive step is another range increment. That is, when a target is within that distance, it falls into that range category. If you want easy numbers, round the range to the nearest hundred meters.

Step 2: Damage
Look up the round used by the weapon, and match it with the group closest in this list:
-Small Pistol (9mm, 5.7mm, .38): 3 Damage
-Medium Pistol (10mm, .40, .45): 4 Damage
-Large Pistol (.357, .44, .50): 5 Damage
-Assault Rifle (5.56 mm): 5 Damage
-Battle Rifle (7.62 mm): 6 Damage
-Rifle (.300, .30-06): 7 Damage
-Heavy Rifle (.338 Magnum, .50): 8 Damage

Step 3: Attributes
Does your weapon or the round it uses have any special qualities about it? What are its benefits and drawbacks? Machine Guns might need to be mounted on a tripod to be used effectively, some rounds are designed to go through armor or be used in silenced weapons, some weapons are unwieldy to move around with, etc.

Example 1:
Let's translate an M16A4 Assault Rifle into in-game terms. First off, it's maximum effective range is 550 meters, which rounds nicely to 600 meters. Next, it uses a 5.56 NATO round, which fits into the Assault Rifle category. Finally, the M16A4 sports a RIS (Rail Integrated System), meaning that putting on attachments is very easy. Here's the final result:

M16A4 Assault Rifle - Damage 5
Range: Extreme - 600m; Long - 450 m; Medium - 300m; Short - 150m
Notes: RIS (Rail Integrated System)

Example 2:
Now we'll try it with a P90 Submachine gun. Its maximum effective range is 150 meters, and it uses a 5.7x28mm round, which fits into the Small Pistol category. The 5.7x28mm round is an interesting one: it's designed to punch through armor very well, despite being pistol-sized. The weapon itself is also very compact, making it easy to use in tight environments. Final result:

P90 Submachine gun - Damage 3
Ranges: Extreme - 150m; Long - 110m; Medium - 70m; Short - 35m
Notes: Ignores 1 Armor DR; Compact

Melee Weapons:
These will almost invariably fit into one of the following categories:

Body: As noted in Melee Combat (above)
Knife: Damage 3
Close Combat Weapon: Damage 4
Debris (anything else): Damage 1-5, depending on material and size

Throwing Weapons:
These weapons use the "Throwing" skill, and are things that you pick up and toss physically.

Grenades:
Any grenade has the following ranges:
Extreme - 50m; Long - 35m; Medium - 20m; Short - 10m
Damage and other effects are set by the GM depending on the type, whether it be fragmentation, high explosive, thermite, white phosphorus, flashbang, etc.

Other Stuff:
The GM mostly uses his judgment as to range increments. Everything from knives to swords to chairs can potentially be used as a thrown weapon. Also note that a character's Strength value will have to do with just how much they can lift and how far they can throw it.

Weapon Qualities:
Ultimately, the features and characteristics of a weapon are entirely too numerous to list without the game becoming entirely boring. If a situation where these characteristics could make things more convenient or inconvenient for a character comes into play, the GM is more than welcome to incorporate them into the game. An example of this would be soldiers having a hard time maneuvering with rifles (rather than SMGs) in close-quarters.

PERSONAL:
Armor, clothing, tactical gear, and the like fall under this category.

Armor:
Simple enough. There are things in this world (believe it or not) that can kill you, and people that dislike you enough to use them against you. Armor protects you from them. Armor can work in a multitude of ways; as long as it makes you harder to hurt, it's still considered armor. It might give you damage reduction, raise your target number, or both, or maybe something else. For example:

OTV (Outer Tactical Vest)
-Base DR: 1
-Finesse Penalty: -1
-SAPI Plate Inserts: +4 DR, reduce by 2 every hit (replaceable)
-DR works against most ballistic threats
-MOLLE webbing for equipment

Clothing:
List what you're wearing. Pants, shirts, gloves, balaclavas, goggles, hats, boots, socks, lucky underwear, everything. Some might have in-game effects. For example, wearing camouflage will give a bonus to Stealth, or wearing goggles will prevent you from being blinded by things splashing in your face.

Tactical Gear:
Backpacks, rigs, vests, butt-packs, drop-bags, mag-pouches, assault-packs, and everything else fit into this category. Consider this the category to list what you hold everything else in.

SURVIVAL:
Anything to do with staying alive or making living more comfortable. Tents, food, water, foldable chairs, first-aid kits, surgeon's tools, floss, antibiotics and the like all fit in here.

GADGETS/TOOLS:
Anything you use to make the environment more suited towards your needs, or you use to make a task easier. No, explosives belong under the WEAPONS category, not this one. Night vision goggles, lock-picks, shovels, grappling hooks, binoculars, laser designators, radios, compasses, GPS uplinks, and so on.

MISC:
Anything and everything else. Stuffed animals, pendants, signed autobiographies, rings, worn out records from the 70s, whatever.

GETTING EQUIPMENT:
Generally speaking, you get equipment in whatever way it makes sense. If your character is in the military, it will be issued to you. Otherwise, you might find it, buy it, or even make it. A good method is for the player to make a "wish list" and the GM to go through and add, approve, or remove items as he sees fit for the character's starting equipment.


EDGE:
Less serious games can incorporate the use of "Edge". Edge is an attribute that follows around players, rather than characters. Edge starts at a value of '5', and can be increased by making the game entertaining, or spent in order to bend the rules of the game. Edge is awarded to players for in-game antics, not out of game antics. Edge has almost unlimited use, but several things to note:

Extra Action:
One point of Edge can be spent to take an extra action in a combat turn. This can be done only once per turn, and the action is taken on the character's turn. A player does not have to declare in advance that he is spending Edge this way.

Increase Chance of Success:
One point of Edge can be spent to double a character's bonus to any roll. If the character suffers a penalty to that particular roll, Edge can be spent to halve the penalty. Only one point of Edge may be spent this way per dice roll.

Weird Stuff:
One point of Edge can be spent to do something weird or seemingly impossible. Back-flipping hatchet attacks (or really anything else you'd see the Spetsnaz do), Matrix-esque dives, intercepting bullets with other bullets (think Wanted), or gun-kata techniques all fall under this. The GM can declare that something is entirely too outrageous to be done.


CHARACTER EXAMPLE:
Note that this is just an example- sheets can and should be varied to be most conveniently adapted to the game being played.


Name: Sample McExampleson
Rank: Sergeant
Role: Being an example

HP: 12/12

Agility (4)
-Small Arms +3 (9) - Swap with Driving
-Stealth +1 (5)
-Finesse (4)
-Indirect (4)

Brutality (4)
-Strength (4)
-Endurance (4)
-Throwing -1 (3)
-Ego (4)

Knowhow (6)
-Engineering (6)
-Big Guns (6)
-Driving -3 (1) - Swap with Small Arms
-High-Tech (6)

Survival (2)
-Medicine (2)
-Empathy (2)
-Perception (2)
-Willpower (2)

Biography: Write a few quips about yourself.

Feats/Quirks/Additional Skills:

Equipment:

WEAPONS:
Ranged:
Melee:
Thrown/Explosives:
Ammo:

PERSONAL:
Armor:
Clothing:
Tactical Gear:

SURVIVAL:
Medical Supplies:
Food/Drink:
Other:

GADGETS/TOOLS:

MISC: