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Official development blog for the PARANOIA roleplaying game. No description is available at your security clearance. The Computer is your friend.

Tuesday, June 30, 2009

INTSEC Community Mission - Collateral Damage 

Troopers get much, much bigger guns than Troubleshooters, so we need a much, much bigger Collateral Damage table for those unfortunate occasions when a player rolls really badly with a tacnuke shell. Think of it as a Rolemaster fumble table for cone rifles. Suggestions for horrible collateral damage in the comments, please.

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Posted by: Gareth Hanrahan / 4:51 PM

Comments:
Does this really need a Collateral Damage table, though? I always thought of TacNukes as extremely binary sorts of weapons - either you have 0, normal state, or 1, exploded state. And if the flag sets from 0 to 1, pretty much everything around it explodes. There's no partial explosion or anything.
# posted by Blogger Allandaros : June 30, 2009 6:46 PM
 
There are smaller large weapons than tacnukes, Allandaros.

Like ones which could accidentally destroy a basic supporting wall, collapsing several levels.

Or ones which burst through the nearest wall into the adjacent armory, setting off every weapon in there.

Then you have the energy ones which incapacitate your victim with radiation. The residual radiation should be safe for anyone YELLOW clearance or below for 10-20 decades.

Let's not forget ice weapons which unintentionally cool the nearby water ducts, causing the water within to freeze and burst the pipes in incovenient locations. Or the flame weapons which heat up the nearby water ducts giving citizens water for bathing and drinking just a tad more scalding than they expected.

High-powered gauss guns may also magnetize nearby electronics plunging whole subsectors into darkness! Good thing bots are shielded against most of the effects, or their unforeseen behavior could be a lot worse.

I could go on but I have a sudden urge to get away from any local law enforcement...
# posted by Anonymous saulres : July 01, 2009 10:20 AM
 
One half of the room sinks by two centimeters. Many levels above you, rooms have suddenly gone several meters out of alignment.

It turns out that wall you just blew up was actually part of a sewage reservoir. Can you swim?

The hole in the floor is quite impressive. And deep. And growing by the second.

You've completely destroyed a nearby transbot, who was on a delivery run. You are fined 50 credits for the infraction, and 10,000 credits in replacement costs. Consult the Random Crate Contents table to see what was being transported.

You vaporize a wall to find a heavily armed troubleshooter team, who have been assigned to investigate reports of armed vandals in the sector.

That fluid that's spraying into the room now, is that acid, or B3 syrup concentrate?

You completely destroy a confession booth (with occupant), and there's no way the hallway cameras didn't record that.

This sector has been outfitted with a crumple zone. You are in it.

This shell was, in fact, a dud. Do you drop it in the garbage chute and fill out the Accidental Loss/Damage of Equipment Form? Or do you fill out the Defective Weapons/Equipment Form and carry the shell back to PLC, hoping it's really a dud?

I like saulres' comment about the ice weapon freezing nearby pipes. One would imagine an ice weapon could also freeze nereby clone tanks.
# posted by Anonymous Duane O'Brien : July 06, 2009 4:27 PM
 
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