SINGLE: 1 hit. melee, poss pistols
DOUBLE?: 2 hits. poss pistols
TRIPLE: 3 hits. rifles
CLEAVE: 3 hits, disable struck location. Boltguns and chain weapons
POWER: Down to 0 hits. If delivered by melee, will destroy a parrying weapon or item. Everything nasty.
SUPPRESSION: If not in cover or diving into it, 1 hit per second.
GRENADE: 3 hits and fall over to all people within 5m (MASS TRIPLE STRIKEDOWN)
FLAME: 1 hit per second, and FEAR. Ignores cover.
WARP: 4 hits, sorcerous.
ZERO: Nothing
FEAR: Run away
HOLD: Immune to FEAR, if issued by your superior. Includes the FEAR in FLAME
TERROR: Really run away
CHARGE: Immune to the pinning effects of suppression, if issued by your superior
RESIST: Blocked an effect with a limited resource: e.g. a force-field
IMMUNE: Blocked an effect with an unlimited resource.
Standard melee weapons deal SINGLE, and thus this does not need to be called. If you land a blow, do not land another for a clear second. If you wish to shoot in melee combat, remember your 3 second cooldown and that the one-second rule applies to shots as well. If you are in a melee combat, you may not target enemies outside of it with ranged weapons.
If you wish to shoot someone with a ranged weapon, you must first spend three seconds aiming and so on. During this time you may walk around, but you need to keep a consistent line of sight on them. Diving for cover and sprinting will interrupt your aiming period. Being shot will not. After the three seconds, you may call your damage, in the format ``Clear description of target, DAMAGE CALL''}. If you wish to shoot again, you will then need to begin the aiming process again.
You cannot shoot into melee combat of your own volition. If ordered to, you should hit your friend with your first shot, and then alternate between targets, unless it seems completely ridiculous (e.g. your target is huge).
Aimed ranged damage will hit the torso for effects such as CLEAVE and POWER.
If you have the ability to call it, you may call SUPPRESSION by spending three seconds readying the weapon as usual. You then start expending ammo at [somerate], and must fire for a minimum of three seconds. SUPPRESSION will affect a ninety degree arc in front of you.
Basic cover, such as a berm of earth, a tree, or a wall, provides you with the ability to call RESIST to any ranged damage call except FLAME. While using this ability, you must be doing nothing but hiding.
Someone with an appropriate background skill could, given appropriate roleplay, upgrade cover. For example a barricade might allow you to pop up and shoot - you may spend up to 5s at a time not hiding without losing the ability to call RESIST.
If you see a grenade incoming, you may jump on it and call RESIST GRENADE. Doing this prevents the GRENADE call from taking effect, but incapacitates you.
When you are struck by a melee weapon, shot by a ranged weapon, or otherwise take damage, you will lose one or more hits as appropriate for the call. If the call is CLEAVE or POWER, it may also disable a limb, in which case you cannot use that limb until treated by a medic.
All lost hits will refresh fifteen minutes after you last take damage. If you wish to be treated earlier, or if you have a disabled limb, then you may get a medic to perform field surgery on you anyway.
When you lose your last hit, or have your torso or head disabled by CLEAVE or POWER, fall to the floor. You are now incapacitated. You can moan (incoherent speech, no screaming in combat to preserve callspace) and crawl slowly, but are mostly useless. This state will last until you are executed or treated.
You may permanently kill a downed/unresisting monster with appropriate roleplay for a few seconds. If you are downed by monsters, they may do the same to you - when your friends reach you to treat you, you will then have the same effects as drawing a black bead.
The treatment rules will occasionally instruct the medic or victim to make a bead draw. Medics and refs will carry a bead bag. The medic should draw from their personal bag, while any other players who need to make a draw should find a ref.
A bead bag will normally contain twenty-five beads, ranked from worst to best: 1 Black, 8(4) Blue, 8 Red, 8(12) White. The normal results are:
Wound tokens represent the potential to acquire particularly serious injuries that are more dangerous to treat on the field. If you have any wound tokens for any reason, move each bead up one category on bead draws. Multiple wound tokens will stack.
It is possible to acquire wound tokens in three main ways.
Treatment is conducted by characters with the Medic skill, in one of two ways:
Field Surgery: This takes two minutes of roleplaying treating the wounds of one character. At the end of this period, the medic conducts a bead draw, taking into account any wound tokens the character has gained. They may lie and claim the bead is darker than it really is, but not lighter. Assuming you survive, you will regain all hits.
Adrenaline: This can be administered with 10 seconds of appropriate roleplay, which includes giving a wound token to the target. The target is immediately restored to full hits, but should see a ref to conduct a bead draw after the combat.
If you acquire a serious wound, your medic will deal you a wound card. These may affect your skills or ability to perform other actions.
If you have a serious wound, a character who was a doctor might be able to fix you. They should roleplay extensive surgery, and the effects will be judged by a ref.
Without any skills, you
To create a character, first pick two skills from the following list:
Secondly, you should pick a background for your character. This is what they were doing before they were drafted into the PDF. With sufficient extended roleplay, these may prove useful at ref discretion. Suggested examples include: Carpenter, Doctor, Aristocrat, Thief, Mechanic, Scholar, Farmer.
Old page content
currently lives at https://docs.google.com/document/d/1eQBb2hoeLTvLkza2GURUYVmfPlda9UgZ5KyT1jhIDvw/edit
Things still to do:
Argh, things.
If you're going in this direction, why not go the whole hog and replace calls like "strike", "power" and "fear" with "thwack", "kapow" and "boo", for a completely IC call system. Part of me wants people to have to hold up a card with the call and several !s on it, too... --Jacob
Can I ask why it goes straight from 1 to 3 hits on the damage call but armour gives 4 pts of protection, meaning even an armoured PDF trooper with an extra hit can take only 1 shot without dropping? That if you see something able to call BANG, ZORCH or BOOM it's clearly some horrific problem you need to shoot up right now? Considering guns can't miss, I see what you mean by high death rate if anything short of a lascannon's calling that. --Jim
PDF? I just keep coming up with "Portable Document Format". --Chevron
I'm putting this link here one because I can and two, to ask if this is going any further as an idea so that I can use these lines to get myself shot by my own allies http://isthataboltguninyourpocket.tumblr.com/ --Jim