I know the game is cinematic and combat is a bit abstract.
But how big are zones usually in warfare (guns blazing)?
I guess they change sizes depending on scenes.
And also:
What does “Mode” mean on the weapon stat block on the character sheet?
Can’t find it anywhere in the rulebooks.
In my game I divide zones two ways. The first, and by far the BEST use of zones (in my opinion) is to use the terrain rules. Have each zone have something IN IT that makes it a zone. For example, a zone could have a bunch of concrete barriers to be used for cover. Or a zone could have a wrecked and burning car making the zone “dangerous terrain” or a zone could have a quantronic terminal in it for hacking.
Sometimes however you just have to divide zones by distance that makes sense. In my game I usually divide my zones into about 20-25 square meter areas, and I conform them roughly to the features of the terrain, and put the borders of zones at doorways, the end of hallways, that sort of thing.
But really it’s abstract, and it’s whatever makes the most sense, and as you put it whatever is the most “cinematic”.
I looked at the character sheet and I’m not actually seeing “Mode” on the weapon stat block. I’m only seeing Weapon Name, Range, Damage, Burst, Size, Ammo, and Qualities. Maybe you’ve got a different version of the character sheet?
Thanks for the tips.
And I’ve also been thinking about having each zone be around 30 - 50 square meter areas.
Out of curiosity, what character sheet are you using? I have the ones from modiphius. Though I’m currently creating my own “barebones” one.
Zones are as big or as small as you want or need them to be when you’re setting up the scene.
And that’s not especially helpful by itself. @Murrdox has some good suggestions for the practical side of it, but there’s another factor which is useful to consider: you can vary the size of zones within a single area.
The most common reason to do this to create the feeling of dense or open terrain - a large zone can be moved and fought across easily, so one big area is fine, while lots of smaller zones constrain movement and shooting, akin to dense terrain.
Terrain inside buildings is normally quite easy: walls, rooms, corridors, and the like make good natural divisions. Urban areas aren’t much different - you can probably pick out small assortment of key features and points of interest that you can build a zone around (with each zone being the immediate vicinity around those features (that pedestrian crossing is one zone, that bus stop is another, the parked car over there is a third zone, etc.).
Beyond that, a lot of it is gut feeling and judgement calls… but one of the things about action-movie style combat is that action scenes tend to happen in interesting places, and interesting places are full of useful objects, places, and divisions of space that lend themselves to defining zones. The kinds of open, empty spaces that are harder to break into zones are also the kinds of places that are less interesting to have action scenes in.
That may be a legacy error (something present in an older draft of the rules which wasn’t updated later) - in the earliest drafts (when the system was closer to the Mutant Chronicles version), weapons had a Mode (Single, Semi-Auto, Full Auto) instead of Burst, though the end result was the same (in mechanical terms, Single was Burst 1, Semi-Auto was Burst 2, Full Auto was Burst 3). However, I’m not seeing it on the character sheet in my copy of the rulebook, so I’m not sure where you’ve seen that error.
@LazySlacker I heavily recommend that you look at the character creation tool. https://infinity.modiphiusapps.hostinguk.org/
I think with the life path system that I personally find that it’s more fun to use the book and roll myself so that I have time to really think through the random life events. The tool makes it a little TOO quick and easy, which lets you sprint past these major life moments with less impact.
That said, it DOES do a really great job of generating character sheets and filling everything out for you. The only downside is that it doesn’t incorporate all of the faction books yet.
Also, you’re totally correct that the old version of the character sheet on DriveThru and on Modiphius’ website are the older outdated ones. I think we need to ping Modiphius to update the version of the character sheet in their Downloads section with the one from the rulebook. I have been using the version that is generated from the character generation tool, which mirrors what is in the rulebook, and was also I believe made available for download in the Kickstarter package. I’m trying to find a version of it published out there on the web and I’m not seeing it.
I suggest you look at this article: https://killstring.blogspot.com/2018/01/youre-in-danger-zone-2d20-combat.html
Oh yeah, I’ve read that, it was a nice read and cleared some things up ~