GearHead pen-and-paper?

[Epsilon]

I got to thinking about this in the shower (the shower spawns lots of weird thoughts for me), and now I'm interested. On Something Awful there's a Traditional Games forum, where a lot of people play play-by-post RPGs, and I bet I could probably get people to go through some mecha-stomping action if I posted for it.

My question is, how difficult would it be to make GearHead transition over to a tabletop RPG? Lots of the stuff could be cut out (random plot generators, etc.), but how difficult is, say, a round of combat? I'd probably simplify some of the stats ("speed 1" means your weapon takes a turn to recharge/reload/rechamber/whatever, etc.), of course. I'm just trying to think of how many dice rolls are needed per participant per tern. Off of the top of my head:

Mecha Piloting to move
Mecha Gunnery/Artillery to fire
Mecha Piloting to evade (?)
Electronic Warfare to avoid ill effects
Damage dealt
Components destroyed

I also know that there's some kind of odd step system used for the dice in Gearhead, based off of Earthdawn? Really, the time taken per round of combat dosen't make a huge deal - play-by-post usually goes at the rate of one post per person/day - it's the number of rounds. Even with lots of lancemates, combat can take an inordiate number of player rounds. I suppose I could shorten that by removing the need to individually move, tile-by-tile, until the enemy is met - that would shorten it drastically.

At any rate, I suppose I could dig through the source code later, to find a lot of this stuff, but I figured I'd get some input - especially from Joseph, if you don't want me hacking your game into a tabletop system for some goons and I, then obviously I won't.

Also, if anyone's curious, it would be based off of GH1, with some changes - the party isn't composed of a clone with amnesia, an AOL refugee, the last son of a ninja family and some guy with a weird robot-creation fetish.

[Burzmali]

The biggest challenge would be calculating some of the attack mechanics and redundant defenses.  For example, with dice rolls, an attack with a high RoF weapon with hyper against a target with external armor could take 15-20 minutes to resolve.

[Anticheese]

I suppose thats why its play-per-post as opposed to a live pnp session.

I'm not sure how (un)popular this suggestion is going to be, but a simplified set of the rules would certainly make things alot less head-achey

[PotatoEngineer]

You don't need to source-dive for most of the information.  The wiki has the combat system written up already.

[Joseph Hewitt]

You could write up some quick GH stats in Fuzion. The basic rule set can be downloaded from here:

http://www.thefuze.com/

Fuzion and Gearhead use the same sort of mechanics for many things (stat+skill=effect, mecha with individually defined body parts) so converting from one system to the other should be fairly easy.

[Epsilon]

Quoting: Burzmali

The biggest challenge would be calculating some of the attack mechanics and redundant defenses. For example, with dice rolls, an attack with a high RoF weapon with hyper against a target with external armor could take 15-20 minutes to resolve.

That can be easily resolved by, say, not allowing rapid-fire weapons with HYPER tags.

I'll check out Fuzion, but I'll probably end up just using that as a base for everything else. Thanks!

[macksting]

Another thing which would help is getting somebody to calculate rough probabilities and assigning integer-based bonuses accordingly. If having both of these skills gives a rough +20% increase in effectiveness of a defense or toward damage, make it a +2 bonus to one or the other. Or, if you're using Fuzion, maybe have it deal an extra two dice of damage?
That might be a bit much. It gets easier when you start working with decimal Kills.
If you're using d20, 20% is actually 4, so bear that in mind, too.

If you decide to use Fuzion, feel free to ask me for advice. If the version of Fuzion shown doesn't cover Kills, which is a measurement of damage and HP specific to large targets, then... well, make it do so. It's a pretty easy conversion.

[Epsilon]

Hrm. Just saying, Fuzion looks kinda... not suiting for what I want. Unfortunately, I have upcoming concerts until Thursday, so time will be short until then. I'm definitely thinking of just reworking GearHead stuff and changing anything overly awkward...

[macksting]

I still stand by my statement that many game mechanics can be boiled down to bonuses and minuses to the same effect if you're willing to find a mathematician to estimate the compound effects.

[Burzmali]

If you want the flavor, but not the mechanics just use Mekton Z.

[Onisuzume]

Well, you could have a glance at the GURPS ruleset.
Since it can be adjust to represent almost anything, including space ships and the like.

[Burzmali]

Quoting: Onisuzume

Well, you could have a glance at the GURPS ruleset.
Since it can be adjust to represent almost anything, including space ships and the like.

You could also stick your head in an oven, but I wouldn't recommend it.  Maybe once the rules for 4th edition come out, it will be worth a shot.

Don't get me wrong, as a GURPS gearhead, I love building huge complicated Mecha, but combat using them is... painful, and very prone to one-shot-one-kill.

[Erathoniel]

I'm working on an realistic war (small skirmishes, with rudimentary methods for large battles) simulator/RPG that you could use (natively Sci-Fi). It will have vehicle support (native), shell/weariness shock support (native), magic support (additional, but by me), faction support (if rudimentary, native), and easy play without a table top. The problem is that it will naturally support 4 stats, Strength, Endurance, Agility, and Willpower (intelligence and wisdom manifest as character perks/flaws). And perks and flaws, similar to Lionheart: Legacy of the Crusader (from Black Isle). It will need lots of big dice. I keep NecroDice, a dice-rolling application, in mind while making it. Lots of bonuses, lots of big rolls, perfect for high complexity. Plus it has a system for single-player and GM-free play, as well as low-interaction play (player queues up commands, GM automatically carries them out). Easy map system, can be drawn in tables or in a cheap vector editor (OpenOffice.Org comes to mind, as does Inkscape, if you need high-quality free editors).

[Epsilon]

Quoting: Onisuzume

Well, you could have a glance at the GURPS ruleset.
Since it can be adjust to represent almost anything, including space ships and the like.

I hear GURPS is crap for vehicles - which worries me, as I'm a commissar in a 40K Armoured Company game we're starting. Great for unique characters, not so much for vehicles.

Everything used in GearHead should be simple enough to distill to a usable state. Also,

Quoting: macksting

I still stand by my statement that many game mechanics can be boiled down to bonuses and minuses to the same effect if you're willing to find a mathematician to estimate the compound effects.

Have you heard of PDQ? Sounds kinda like that, minus needing someone with a doctorate in mathematics.

[macksting]

How's it work for that purpose? In fact, what is it?