FMA AAAR, ASAP, OK? [longish]

Hey, it's a good day for crypic acronyms, isn't it?  Of course, YMMV.

We did a small playtest game of FMA last night, with mixed results.  If
we'd 
gotten started at a decent hour, and hadn't been so tired, it would have

been a lot less mixed -- but I figure that, if nothing else, we did a
good 
simulation of a late night game at a con.

We had four players, and four sides, with three of the sides being
mostly 
identical:
   One officer with assault rifle,
   Two troopers with assault rifles,
   One trooper with a light machinegun.
   All had full light armor (d8), and a 6" move.  Weapon stats were
those 
listed in the playtest rules.

The fourth force had five men (1 officer, 3 troopers, 1 heavy weapon;
all 
armed as above) in light armor (d6) with a 6" move.

The figures used for the first three forces were GZG NSL, GZG UN,
Denizen 
Federation Marines, and the fourth force was made up of LEG's "Future 
Warriors".

The scenario was a dead simple one, designed to get us playing as
quickly as 
possible.  At the center of the (very) densely terrained board, little
Helga 
VonPlütdevice (played by a Rafm figure of a young girl carrying a
teddybear) 
was placed.  Helga, being the daughter of Professor Heinrich
VonPlütdevice, 
is exactly the kind of leverage that an unscrupulous government could
use to 
put pressure upon the good professor.  And since Helga had managed to
elude 
her bodyguards, and was currently having a tea party in the center of a 
blasted urban wasteland....

Each player started off in one corner of the board, equidistant from
Helga.	
When the first person came within LOS of Helga, she instantly recieved a
1d6 
combat move, directly away from that person.  Thereafter, she was moved 
whenever someone was within her LOS (moving 1d6 inches each time) as
soon as 
that person had finished both of their actions.  The players had to get
into 
close combat with Helga (against her d6 quality die); if they won, they
had 
her in their grip and could drag her off their corner of the board, with

their move reduced to 4" while carrying her.  If they lost, she was 
instantly moved 1d6 inches away from them.  Soldiers who were suppressed

instantly dropped her; Helga herself was immune to suppression.

The scenario was sound (and will probably be a good con game someday 
soon....), but the players got impatient after two hours of chasing the 
little darling around the board.  I've never seen so many bad dice
rolls.... 
  At the end of the game, the NSL had three men left, the UN had two,
the 
Fed Marines had two, and the Future Warriors had three.  Helga was
declared 
the winner, and we all went home.

The game was enjoyed, and will certainly be played again.  The system
seemed 
to have a somewhat bland feel to it, but this was solely the result of 
giving everyone identical forces.  It played quickly, and easily, and
but 
was surprisingly non-leathal.  Most fire was ineffective, probably
thanks to 
the amount of available cover.	The players expressed a prefernece for 
ShockForce for "quick and dirty" games, but felt that FMA would work
very 
well as a more detailed system.  It was also thought that the game would

have worked better on my miniscule table if we had used 15mm figures and

measured with cms rather than inches.

A few thoughts:
  Anyone figured out how to do multiple targets with automatic weapons? 
My 
feeling is that you should drop the firepower die by one level for each 
additional target, as long as the targets are within X inches of each
other. 
  What X should be, I don't know.

Multiple suppression would be a good thing, I think.  As a mechanism,
how 
about limiting the number of suppression that can be placed upon a
figure to 
his motivation level?  A highly motivated soldier could then only suffer

from one suppression, while a poorly motivated man could have as many as

three at a time.

John Crimmins	 john1x@hotmail.com   johncrim@voicenet.com
	http://www.voicenet.com/~johncrim/index.html
    Home of "Destroy All Monsters!" and other nonsense.

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