First off, I’m not using any play mats, or cards on a tabletop or anything. I’ll be Overseeing a game with friends remotely over Discord and using a virtual tabletop. RPG only.
“Spend 5 experience points (XP) on the archetype card” - Does this mean only skills and such shown on the archetype card can be purchased? Or does the char already have all the skills and perks on the card at inception. The “on the archetype card” is throwing me.
Scout archetype shows “Urban”, which I found in Perks, and “Shoot to stun” in the specialties area. “Shoot to stun” doesn’t exist in the text of the PDF. What is it a specialty of? Urban doesn’t seem to be a specialty, but is an outright perk. Confused.
Some Gifts and Scars aren’t quantified when it seems the should be. Such as “Quickdraw”. Does it mean the character can draw a weapon without using any kind of action?
Is there an explanation of weapons cards? How do I know how many rounds a weapon holds per magazine. And is a “load” (for purchase purposes) a single round? Single magazine?
Is there an explanation of Equipment cards? Some I can figure out, but for the food items, I’m not haiving much luck. For example: Squirrel Stew shows one trash can icon (which seems to mean it is removed from inventory when consumed, makes sense), but the icons next to the trash can I can’t find in the icon index. They’re similar to the damage icon, but seem inverted. Obviously eating food items heals you, but they’re not a health icon. I just need references for the cards of all types.
The skills/perks shown on the archetype cards are already owned by the archetypes. You don’t have to purchase them.
The scout starts with “urban”, but any character who doesn’t has “urban” can purchase it with exp. That’s why it is in the perk list.
“Shoot to stun” is special to that archetype if it cannot be purchased anywhere else and it doesn’t apply to expertise skills, but to combat. So when you scout is attacking, he rolls certain dice (depending on his weapons, perks, circumstances). And if one dice happens to show a bottle, the target is stunned.
The effects of gifts and scars should only offer small benefits/penalties. I believe the overseer decides when gifts/scars should be applied and how much impact they have. For example “Quickdraw” could give a character a headstart in combat. When the party was ambushed, everyone has skip one activation, but the player with Quickdraw can argue that their character was paranoid/wary and gets to act instead. The overseer can then decide if they want to allow or deny that.
I believe an single load is not a single magazin, since it should be enough to last for a battle. Instead I think it’s the ammo that a character can carry on themselves, i.e. in belts and pouches, so it’s easy to use during combat.
It’s up to the overseer to decide when a character has emptied a load, if they have to spend an action reloading, if you want to keep track of every single bullet or not.
But you’re right, for players who want a very detailed approach the info on weapons is insufficient.
The icons next to the trashcan are damage tokens. It means you can remove that many damage tokens - put them in the trash so to say.
Banquo seems to have answered most of your questions, but here is my input in a couple of cases:
Yeah, as Banquo noted, the archetype card comes with everything on the card and doesn’t need to be purchased.
The wording here is a little confusing - I think it’s meant in the same way as “spend five dollars on your wife” - it doesn’t mean that the five dollars are physically on your wife, but rather than the five dollars will be spent on things for her. Archetype card is often used interchangeably with “character” in the rules, as each character is (based on) one card.
The full text of both abilities are on the archetype card (pg 39), as they are for all abilities “built in” to archetypes. Shoot to stun is in “symbol speak”, but what the three icons mean (left to right) are: <rifles skill>, <bottle symbol>, and <stunned condition>. These “special effects” are detailed on pg 50, but essentially what it means is: whenever a Scout character makes an attack using the rifle skill, he can spend an bottlecap icon to inflict the stunned condition on the target of the attack.
Note it doesn’t give him a blue die though (the only way to generate a bottlecap icon), so he’ll have to be using a weapon which gives him one.
Ok, so the rules for weapon cards are unfortunately kind of spread all over the place. The main places to look are special effects (referenced above on p50), p55-58 (the main attack actions in combat - shoot, throw and close combat), p63 (damage), p66-67 (criticals) and p69-72 (advanced combat and weapons). Ammunition specifically is covered under weapons on p77-78 (in a nutshell, don’t worry about tracking it unless you think it’s relevant, or the player rolls a complication - the X symbol on the d20 - when using the weapon).
For other equipment cards, they are a bit better organised, being covered from p73-78. Note however that they often reference other sections of the rules - the food items reference healing on p66 (which covers your specific questions about the symbols).
Generally speaking - like a lot of RPGs - the rules don’t cover every minutae. It is expected that GMs will rule on (often in discussion with players) things the rules don’t specifically cover in detail.
Thanks , sometimes I lack the right words when explaining something. Your phrasing is much better.
What I’d like to add is, that you have bottle(cap) icons on all yellow, green and black dice. They are just not as common as on the special effect dice.
Thanks very much for the replies, folks! You’ve definitely cleared up a few things.
As for ammo and reloading. It would seem that if you’re not tracking individual rounds, there doesn’t seem much point in single shot vs semi-auto weapons, unless I’m misunderstanding (likely). Is there a rate of fire for weapons?
Some of this is not reading enough, or skipping around. So yes, Much appreciated!
