20120827

Kriegstagebuch 001: Sunday Night Firefight

One of the really appealing aspects of Cyberpunk 2020 is highly visual nature of combat. To be sure combat is gritty and dangerous - but also very descriptive. With two of my players unavailable last night, I ran the other two through a couple CP2020 combats. We whipped up characters using the Friday Night Firefight quick generation rules from the 2013 boxed set, and armed and armored them using the quick and dirty expendables chart in the 2020 core book.

PCs:
Chris - armed with a HK MP2013 10mm submachine gun and wearing a heavy armored jacket.
Jon - armed with a Sternmeyer Type 35 11mm heavy handgun and also wearing a heavy armored jacket.

NPC:
Fred - armed with an FN-RAL 7.62mm battle rifle and wearing medium armored jacket.

The set up was random. Fred was positioned on the east sidewalk of a city avenue, about two storefronts north of the corner with the cross street. Chris and Jon are 20m south-west, they are crossing the cross street on the other side of the avenue, about 4m from the north-west curb. Neither group is in cover when initiative is called.

Fred gets the drop and emptied the RAL's 30rd magazine at the two, at a range of 20m. Nine rounds find targets, five on Jon and four on Chris. The first round is absorbed by Jon's jacket, but the next round causes a serious wound to Jon's unarmored right leg. The following three rounds all compromise the jacket's kevlar weave and drill into Jon's torso. Jon falls to the pavement stunned with potentially mortal wounds. Chris is hit in the left leg, right arm, and twice in the torso. The leg wound is minor. The hit to the right arm penetrates the jackets kevlar layers but inflicts minor damage. The two torso hits are more serious - both penetrate and inflict serious founds. Despite these critical wounds, Chris is able to return fire with a long burst from the HK. Fred is still in the open and takes eight 10mm slugs. The first round hits Fred right in the noggin - his skull ruptures like a ripe watermelon - instantly fatal. The next round binds up in the armor over Fred's torso, the third strikes the femoral in his left thigh, followed by a round that traumatically amputates the leg above the knee. Two more rounds drill into the left leg, followed by one to the right and a final hit to the bloody stump of the left thigh.

3.2 seconds had elapsed.

Originally I'd planned to have two gunmen, but seeing the extreme havoc that the battle rifle caused I settled on one. Barney did show up for a later bar fight. Fred was taken right out and Barney, though unable to cause any significant damage to either Chris or Jon, was able to absorb a great many hits before being KO'd. I think we went about 6 rounds in the hand-to-hand... that's a bit less than 20 seconds.

Chris seemed to enjoy the system - Jon not as much. Me - I loved it - it's been years since I ran Interlock and I forgot how detailed and deadly it was. Skill sets need to be reigned in or it will be a bloody meat parade. Both shooters hit at rather high hit ratios - Fred with 30% and Chris with 25%.  Both were world class shooters (top 10%) and I was not using the 2013 rule for coolness under fire.  With some reigning in of 9 and 10 level skills, supplanting a 2d6 roll for the 1d10, and the coolness under fire rules (essentially a COOL save modified by the number of firefights you've been in) - hit ratios should drop to a more reasonable 15-25% or so.

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