| I got some good news Friday.  The players in my 
campaign have decided to put the game on hold until there are a few more books 
out.  They are unhappy with the following things: Bombers Unclear ruling on how many powers a Gadgeteer can put 
into an item Improving their characters. Right onto the first one. Bombers. I have said this before.  Bombers are obscenely 
hard.  Yeah, they get two arms and then think about running.  My 
bomber just blows himself up and is now complaining that DP are sending really 
tough people after him. Anyway, that part I can deal with.  What I am 
getting at is that no matter what part of the body he blows up, he multiplies it 
by his size. His arm is not size 7.  For a full torso 
explosion, sure, I'll let him have size, but not an arm.  There is an 
example of a bomber in the book who blows up in Patriots face.  I tell you 
this, unless Patriot was some sort of invulnerable hero with 4 delta points and 
armour on, he was at least going down.  Even with a pretty poor damage 
roll, multiplying by size can do a lot of damage to someone. Most character types are size 5 wearing some sort of 
armour  (5 / - ).  Average strength of 3 is 3 wounds. Bomber rolls 2D6+2xSize for an arm (think it is right, 
can't find book).  Say he rolls 4.  +2 is 6 times size (use my bomber 
as example Size 7 - really hefty) is a total of 42. Minus 5 armour is 37 divided by size (5) is 7 wounds 
massive.  That is dead or at least KO'd by spending delta points.  If 
the poor smuck is laying there and someone survives the bomber blows another arm 
and splat! No more bad guys. In my game, the bomber did this at the end of the 
ripper scenario.  The other players felt cheated as he blew one arm, then 
blew the other (rolled a 6 and spent delta points) to stop what happened next - 
I threw something extra at them :). I don't know if anyone else has used bombers yet, but 
they are a tad OTT IMHO. What I am suggesting is that they get double damage for 
an arm / leg and possibly size plus one for full body boom.  Sure, blowing 
totally is a huge amount of damage, but he reforms an hour later...trapped under 
tonnes of rubble and no one knows he is there!!  Muhahahahaha. That leads me onto the player complaining that he can't 
see where he can take his character.  "All I can do is blow 
up." that really ragged on me.  I told them all that 
they can come up with new tricks.  I suggested that as the bomber (chief 
complainer) reforms a limb after an hour that he could do a trick where he could 
regenerate somehow.  He would need 2 successes on a healing roll to heal an 
extra wound level.   He instead got shaped charge, touched a location on a 
target and smiled and told me that it is applied to all locations.  I was 
not amused.  I've now ruled that shaped charge is to a single location when 
touching.  He wanted me to see what you guys thought of it.  Hopefully 
I can get some back up from Matt on this. They all want to be able to gain additional packages 
and somehow improve their characters.  I just told them to thing about 
tricks they could do with what they got.  Then there is the moan that the 
tricks are a little restrictive.  Bombers and blasters are damage 
freaks.  Why can't they do other things?  I was fighting a losing 
battle with them, plus they wanted more info on what was going on, so we shelved 
the game until crescent city comes out. I'll get onto the Gadgeteer now.  He has 3 items 
with 5 powers in them.  Only one is offensive - a powered down energy 
blast, but the rest are saying that he is able to build more gadgets in the 
future and he has no restrictions on how much he can put in them.  See the 
gadgeteers description in the main rules - they can do that. None of what he asked for was OTT, but he has 15 
different things he can do - levitate, go invisible, track, blaster, a medical 
kit to give a +5 healing bonus to name but a few. Sure he spends a lot of time maintaining things, but he 
is a jack of all trades.  If I say one gets damaged in a fight or stops 
working, I feel like I am taking away his creativity.   I still think that gadgeteers need their own 
sourcebook, possibly with some refined rules, incorporating the rules from Delta 
Prime (which are great) and giving additional gadgets, some of which may be 
available to DP and some to the defiance.  Some help here on putting some 
restrictions would be good, even if it is just to preserve my 
sanity. Anyway, we are having a discussion Tuesday night on 
what they feel is a problem (they had a meeting and decided to tell me after 
they had a decision to put it on hold for a while) and then I will be putting it 
all out here for discussion and assistance. Overall, they really loved playing, but there were 
similarities with Deadlands when it first came out - great system, too many 
holes that needed filling in.  We will be back playing the game, have no 
doubts there, but players will be players! Thanks for taking time in reading, suggestions and help 
would be good. Mark |