The Conclave

I was wondering if anyone had made rules for aircraft in Inquisitor?

I know there are rules for skimmers, but I'm thinking along the lines of helicopters (well probably more like the Falcon from Halo) and valkyrie type aircraft.

Any ideas?
...

I've used such things in games quite a few times - I've never bothered with rules though, just had them controlled mostly by the GM with PCs occasionally getting to fly them by using actions and passing tests made up on the spot. As for attacking them, I usually make the damage appropriate for the weapon in question, suitably dramatic and exciting for the story.

/emote agrees.

Place a model on the board if need be but only apply what is needed to aid the drama.

In Reach, the important air-bourne scenes are the evacuation and the Nightclub, ONI building...etc sequence (plus the fighter combat sequence but I'll get to tahat one later); the evacuation is dramatically valuable but would (let's face it) be incredibly difficult to achieve with a game like Inquisitor - your players would simply be rolling to shoot at the emplaced hostiles as you flew by... difficult to build the drama in that way.
The second scene is less dramatically valuable, it is there primarily to give the game a sense of scale... some of you may remember one of the older staffers at GW talking at one point about the golden doors of the Imperial Palace needing to be four meters high (IIRC) to be appropriate for an Epic scale Emperor Titan... Scale therefore is not something many of us can afford to achieve.

As for the much more dogfight driven space fighter section, protecting the station and frigate and assaulting the Covenant Corvette... You're probably better off looking at games like Astronautica Imperia (or whatever it's called - the Forge World driven air to air combat based game).

As a final thought however...
We have, over the years, had lots of different people bringing forth character and rules suggestions which have (mostly) thinnly disguised concepts from a major movie or similar. When I've noted such threads I've tended to give the same advice.
If you want to play Star Wars then West End Games made a very good Star Wars RPG - and TSR/WotC now have the licence. If you want to play The Matrix then look at Feng Shui - it includes rules for running up the bullet stream being fired at you to get to the shooter...
If you really want to play a different game then it most likley already exists, play Inquisitor to play Inquisitor.

I'm planning to do this as a one off scenario set on the tops of skyscrapers in a large Imperial city.
If it works well I may include an aircraft in the campaign we are planning.

It's not going to only be about flying the vehicles, but they will be a major part to help get from one roof to another.

For the actual rules, they will probably be similar to the vehicle rules, but will also include altitude
Flying them effectively will probably require a "Pilot" skill. You coul probably still fly them without this skill, but not that well.
Designing rules for a parachute would also be a good idea...

*deep in thought*

...

Well, if you do write some and they work well you'll have to share - either post them on here or write them up for DM...

Quote from: InquisitorHeidfeld on October 15, 2010, 01:33:38 PMWe have, over the years, had lots of different people bringing forth character and rules suggestions which have (mostly) thinnly disguised concepts from a major movie or similar. When I've noted such threads I've tended to give the same advice.

I have to disagree. Inquisitor, as a game, is entirely in the hands of the players to do what they want.

If you fancy including some concept or another, while I'd want to make sure it could work within 40k and Inquisitor, I wouldn't say that these things cannot work. Inquisitor is all about including those cinematic action scenes from film and 40k is a pretty open sandbox. If you take something and make it gothic enough, then there's a lot of room for it in a large galaxy.

Yes, I would recommend steering clear of warrior psykers with plasma blades and a ranged weapon taboo, as it's just too much of an export from Star Wars, but there are other concepts which I think work fine.

I ran a campaign a while back that was somewhat based on Terminator - paraphrased a lot: Daemon has a plan that demands the death of character X, and has dispatched agents to kill him. An Eldar Farseer takes a dislike to this and sets a counter-plan in motion. Via a long and complex explanation, you are part of this - try and keep Character X alive.

As I was talking about in the "Backstory issues" thread only last night, it's about whether you merely copy or whether you actually rebuild a concept. Sure, my players worked out where the basic concept came from, but they didn't see the plot twist coming until it was too damn late. (Suffice to say, they were only told part of the Farseer's plan.)

Mostly, I'd encourage people to build in what they think is cool. Yes, sometimes the answer should be "Are you sure this is the right game for you?", but if someone wants to build flight into Inquisitor... I don't see the problem with that.

I would say go the rules on the fly (If you'll excuse the pun) route on this one but I agree with Heidfeld in that if you want to play alot of airel stuff you might be best using another system to represent it.

I think shuttle/choppers/planes make great objectives but including them in game is always going to be slightly aukward as a plane would clear the average table in such a short space of time. Another thing to think about is how useful this kind of vehicle would be in this situation. My Great Grandfather flew bombers in the 40's and he once told me that even flying as low and slow as possible, you can't see people on the ground in a town or city and you obviously couldn't land unless you had a suitably open space (Even a VT vehicle is going to need alot of room to land.) From what you've said, If you have more than one flyer it will swamp everything down, especially when your players try to use them against each other. I'd go for narrow walk ways and cables, so that crossing the gaps is suitably dangerous.

did anyone else come here expecting rules for Drugs? or an I just a dope fiend?

For this game I'm going to be using the whole room...

Some preliminary ideas:

• helicopters or aircraft with vertical thrusters can rise/drop vertically (yards risen per action will depend on the engine's power)
  
• aircraft that only have rear thrusters have to travel forward a certain amount before rising (what do you think the ratio of horizontal distance to vertical distance should be)
  
• helicopters and aircraft with vertical thrusters can hover and keep their current position
  
• aircraft that only have rear thrusters cannot stop while in the air otherwise they will start falling
  
• it takes 4 actions to ready an aircraft (open cockpit, get in, close cockpit, turn on engine)
  
• other than that the aircraft follow all the rules for normal vehicles
  

parachute ideas:

• while falling if the character successfully passes an Initiative test he can deploy the parachute
  
• once the parachute is deployed the character floats down 6 yards per turn
  
• when the character lands he suffers D3 points of injury on both his legs
  

I'll be going away for a week (leaving tomorrow), so I should be able to think of some more rules during while I'm away

note that these are only ideas and any suggestions for improvement would be greatly appreciated

Quote from: Alta on October 15, 2010, 07:59:47 PM

• once the parachute is deployed the character floats down 6 yards per turn
  
• when the character lands he suffers D3 points of injury on both his legs
  

The first is pretty sluggish - I'm not an expert on parachutes specifically, but I do know drag very well.
6 yards a turn is slower than a walking pace for an average character (4 yards, average of two actions a turn), so I'd say it needs to be faster. After all, you do still fall fast enough to risk injury - 12 yards would make better sense.

In the latter case, I'd say it should be more of a case of pass a Strength test or take X damage (maybe 2D6, armour doesn't count) to a leg, chosen at random. After all, because of the way the injury system works D3 damage will either roll under the armour value of their leg locations and do nothing, or cause an automatic injury level.

It is possible to land without actually injuring yourself - and I'm personally of the opinion that armour shouldn't affect falling damage* - so an auto D3 damage doesn't really work for me.
*I make an exception for the "armour" on bionics, as that represents greater durability and resistance to damage.

I might also suggest grav chutes (powered anti-gravity devices). Those would be automatic activation, but they're also a lot heavier and hinder their owner a lot more (-1 Speed).

QuoteIf you want to play The Matrix then look at Feng Shui

Or GURPS Martial Arts - another good source of (unnecessarily) detailed martial arts rules and styles.

I've been giving thoughts, recently, to combined games: that is, two games playing simultaneously on the same table (or on separate tables that represent similar spaces).  Playing EPIC:A and Aeronautica Imperialis, for example, on one table should be perfectly feasible.  Equally, I can see the possibilities of playing a game of INQ on one table, with competing air support being played out on another.

Refer to my recent article for DM - A Twist in the Tale - for rules on Strafing and Bombing Runs in games of INQ.  Instead of using cards and playing them at will for these rules, one could easily represent them as happening when the position of the aircraft place them in range of the area in which the INQ game is taking place.

R.

Provided it is Inquisitor which you want to play (I'm afraid I got the impression that you wanted to play Reach using the Halo Ruleset from your initial post)...

What cause do the characters have to move between rooves? Why would they not, on grabbing a Thunderhawk or a Lightning... or whatever else, stay airbourne making full use of the added mobility, durability and armaments of the aircraft?
Why would they not fight things out on the ground?

If you have warband 'A' weakened so that they have to run from warband 'B' then that disadvantage is lost in the air, you can't impose a worse vehilcle on the first to reach them after all... and if, for some reason, you can then why would warband 'B' not simply strafe everything rather than putting down?

To use another Halo analogy, several of the bigger fights in Halo were less dangerous than they appeared because, with a little work and persistence it was possible to squeeze a Warthog through a doorway (and on one of them, a Scorpion)... Several fights in Halo: Reach are considerably easier if you can steal a Ghost; blow a wing off it and it'll actually fit through most doors...
So while the computer games can place certain restrictions to prevent you from bringing a Shotgun and a handful of grenades to a knife fight the same result is rather more difficult in the, more freeform, Inquisitor table.

So, have you given any considerations to these issues? Do you have any solutions?

i'm not sure wether this'd work for Inquisitor but i was watching Black Hawk Down the other day and they used a method of getting out of the helicopter by sliding down a cable, it might be an alternative to more hi-tech methods. alternatively you could just jump and pray.

Quote from: GAZKUL on October 23, 2010, 06:49:53 PMThey used a method of getting out of the helicopter by sliding down a cable.

It's called fast roping (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fast-roping).

...and the 40k rules for the Valkyrie make it clear that Imperial forces apparently use it, too.

R.

Going to test out these rules on Sunday.

I'm going to have 2 valkyries, but I need some idea of values for certain aspects of it's rules:

• Vertical thrusters - how much should it rise/drop per action?
  
• Rear thrusters - how far forward can it travel per action?
  
• Can hover
  
• Takes 4 actions to ready (open cockpit, get in, close cockpit, turn on engine)
  
• When firing from aircraft apply wind rules (choose one that best suits environment/conditions)
  
• If manned by a character who does not have the Pilot skill, roll scatter die for movement (hit roll=go intended direction, reroll scatter direction that is more than 90degrees from intended direction), cannot hover
  
• Other than that, follows all the rules for normal vehicles
  

Quote from: Alta on November 19, 2010, 06:19:59 PMIf manned by a character who does not have the Pilot skill, roll scatter die for movement (hit roll=go intended direction, re-roll scatter direction that is more than 90degrees from intended direction), cannot hover

I'd say that's going to make any character who hasn't got the pilot skill almost useless.

For some of my trademark "winging it" (pun only a happy coincidence), I'd go with something like this:

They'd probably be able to go in the right direction, vaguely at least, so what I'd do is scatter them D3 inches at the end of each action (movement or not), so they're sort of where they want to be, but find it hard to be precise and hold position. A risky action failure would result in a 2D6 yard scatter and no actions that turn as they struggled to regain control.
(However, if the "Risky Action" scatter is going to result in an impact, they may take an Initative test, and if passed, may re-roll the scatter - but must take the new result, even if it is worse.)

Any firing from/by an aircraft piloted by a non-pilot would be at half ballistic skill, as the unstable platform makes firing pretty vague and more guesswork and luck than skill.

This would mean that untrained pilots could still vaguely be used, but they'd have to be pretty careful not to get too near to buildings for risk of losing control and slamming sideways into them.

Yeah, that's probably best.

Any ideas on altitude/movement distances?

Quote from: Alta on November 19, 2010, 07:26:44 PMAny ideas on altitude/movement distances?

Totally depends on the size of your table and how fast you want them to be able to move around it. Considerably faster than on foot, of course - 20 yards upwards seems a reasonable "top speed", but you may have to gamble a bit.

Based on reading Chickenhawk, about Huey pilots in Vietnam, if you don't have training, you are useless. You will barely be able to go up, certainly won't be able to safely land, and will not be able to consistently go in the direction you want to. I'm ok with non-Pilots being a bit screwed.

Quote from: DapperAnarchist on November 19, 2010, 08:59:26 PMI'm ok with non-Pilots being a bit screwed.

Yeah, but given that many warbands may not include a pilot at all, you can't completely shaft them for that.

If I took Marco's warband... I'd be laughing, as both Arden and Jax have piloting skills - combine that with Jax's regeneration, and I don't really have to worry about losing all my piloting skill to a lucky shot.
Any other warband of mine, and the total pilot count is probably zero.

I'd just assume that many Inquisitor characters have enough gut instinct, luck, and possibly a crash course (likely emphasis on crash) they did two decades ago that they'd be able to at least try.
Of course, if pilots are plentiful in the warbands involved, increase the penalties for non-pilots.

I'd be inclined towards the harsh penalties for non pilots way of looking at this, but as you say it's a bit mean if one player doesn't have a pilot. You could just have some extra pilots to tag along with warbands without them but I think in the right group it might be fun to have some groups who can't fly who'll have to do some more thinking to get around such obsticle, Most players will have at least one guy who could find some kind of excuse for having some piloting skills though.

the simplest solution is to allow them to nominate a character to either have some background knowledge of piloting, or to have just taken a crash course in how not to let your inquisitor down.

I've told both players to nominate a character to be a pilot.

The table will be approximately 9' by 6½'.

For movement distances I was thinking; Slow: 6yards, Combat: 10yards, Fast: 14yards.
For altitude, I was thinking 3 or 6 yards up/down per action.

Quote from: Myriad on November 20, 2010, 09:00:19 AMnominate a character to either have some background knowledge of piloting

I think that's falling under "I know Kung Fu" (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/IKnowKungFu) - in short, a character who (as of right now) has always been able to do something.

I may leave holes in a character background to allow new hooks and events to be written in, but spontaneously developing skills is another matter - it doesn't encourage players to find creative solutions to a problem if they can suddenly have just the right skill or equipment to solve it.

While I wouldn't object to a character "giving it a go", complete talent out of the blue is too much.

Don't necessarily mistake the rules I suggested for really easy on non-pilots. Risky actions happen pretty frequently (30+% of the time for most speed values), so non-pilots will still be all over the place. If you want to make them tougher on said characters, increase the risky action scatter distance to 2D10 and add a 2D6 descent at the same time. That would make it pretty dangerous.

And probably rather more accurate than "randomised directions", because the likely consequences of piloting failure are not "Oh dear, I've gone left instead of forwards", but a completely messy loss of control.

These skills that they learn are only temporary. We aren't running a campaign yet, this is just a one off game. Of course if they want to design a character for that role and give them that skill, that is fine.

Well, thinking about it, and this may just be me, but in my warbands... well, one, the Inquisitor has his own one-man shuttle (which I will be building out of an old-school BSG Viper Mark II), another are Rogue Trader crew, another have two people who could reasonably know how to fly a valk or similar... Basically, not many would not have one or more who could.

That was my thinking. In my experience, the sort of warband that would have difficulty finding a pilot tends to be played by the kind of player who'd be up for the challenge of finding another way around the situation.

something worth noting is whether transports are assigned to warbands or are hijacked. If they're assigned then the problem resolves itself because you'd need to have a pilot in the first place and if you lost him you;ve lost the transport (as alot of the plot to Dawn of the Dead hindges on).

If you have more than one on the table I still think you'll get horrible bogged down unless you use GM control.

The corollory is that if they're hijacked then what is to stop one warband from hijacking both? or skuttling the one they can't control...

Again the question is simple, what are the Valkeries adding to the game? And what might an inventive player come up with to gain such an overpowering advantage? And of course what would be the result of the game should one side gain the advantage and the other not?

Quote from: Alta on November 19, 2010, 06:19:59 PM
Going to test out these rules on Sunday.

Were you able to try these rules at the weekend?  If so, how well did they work?

As I see it there are three basic scenarios by which the Valkyries are featured...

1,) Both Parties begin in Valkyries:
Basically we're dealing with a standard car chase format, except that as both cars are loaded with fixed forward mounted weapons the chase car has the distinct advantage... Both groups will have pilots at the stick and therefore you may as well ignore altitude altogether and use the standard vehicle rules and a rolling road.

However... Why would either party dismount (other than being damaged to a point that they fall from the sky... in which case it's less dismount and more plunge)? and why would the first party to dismount hang around to allow the second party to bring their Valkyrie into play rather than rapidly grabbing some very hard cover?

Without really good answers to that one then you may as well begin the game on the ground having told a story about the air chase which brought the two groups there.


2,) Both parties begin on the ground and fight to the Valyries.
The opposite position from the above, effectively a standard game with the Valkyries as a destination objective.

So why would the first party to arrive at the Valkyries not take control of both? Or if they don't have the numbers then why not scuttle the second? Or if there are too many to take control of/scuttle why would they not use as many as they can control simply as firepower to prevent the second party reaching the remainder?

A Valkyrie mounts enough firepower to mince most warbands in seconds, it'd be like a wild west gunslinger drawing down on an Apache Helicopter.

Without really good answers here then it's much more sensible to play a standard ground game with the Valkyries as an objective rather than an actual part of the game.


3,) One Party begins in a Valkyrie, the other on the ground.
The same problems arise here as with the above, one party has significantly more firepower available to them than the other, if the second party have a Valkyrie to move to then the first party can riddle it with holes and prevent its use and if it comes in later then it can be shot down on approach...

And if it shoots them down then all you get is a role reversal...


If you're intending to start one group on the ground but give them plenty of time to reach their Valkyrie without incident then you're actually dealing with scenario 1 rather than 3 but every use I can think of with two competative Valkyries is a variation on one of these...

So what are the Valyries adding to the game?

The rules worked rather well. The scenario was a trade taking place on the high rooftops of the Hive World, Perithan IV. The vehicles weren't valkyries, they were light tactical transports. The only weapon they were armed with was a side mounted autogun. Inquisitor Lycanson (http://www.the-conclave.co.uk/forum/index.php?topic=1117.0) and his warband got in their transport, with a reckless pilot, and flew over to meet the Quelli Santificati (http://www.the-conclave.co.uk/forum/index.php?topic=1071.0). Once the trade was done, the Inquisitor set off again to head back with the artefact. But the artefact was actually a bomb, placed by the man who organised the trade. It exploded, stunning everyone inside and cutting all power to the transport. They and the ship plummeted down, scraping down the side of a large skyscraper.

I think, to use aircraft in Inquisitor they need to be civilian vehicles. I may not use them again, it depends. Maybe if ever I want to bring in an Arbites force to quell the fighting I might bring in some more heavily armed aircraft...

On the topic of parachutes I recently had a scenario featuring several characters using grav-chutes to secure a landing pad for the transport carrying the rest of their warbands.

These are the rules I used:
Select a time to pull the "rip cord"; early, mid or late and a location to aim for. Each turn a character is from landing on the table counts as being 15 yards away from his landing point (eg. a character who is 2 turns away from landing is 30 yards above the surface).
Early: takes 2 turns to drift to the surface, scatters 2D10 yards from his target location
Mid: Takes 1 turn to drift to the surface, scatter 2D6 yards
Late: Lands that turn, takes actions as normal, scatters 2D3 yards, takes D6 damage to each leg.

A character must pass a I test or they pull their cord late and move one 'step' down the sequence (late turns to mid, mid to early. Early is the latest you can activate the chute, otherwise the safety systems cut in and automatically trigger the chute (at the early level).

So those are the rules I used.