Panzerkraken
Armored Squid
- Joined
- Sep 17, 2018
- Messages
- 316
- Reaction score
- 528
I'm running Living Steel in the Free League T2kv4 system, with a mix of complete civilians and Army veterans in the play group acting in the capacity of the setting's Operational Team of, effectively, Special Forces, with me taking their relative experience or lack thereof into account and helping to feed them the right courses of action and TTPs to keep in reasonably sci-fi authentic.
In the setting, they were visiting a new local lord at his resort and had been shown a gracious time the day before, followed by a dinner event, and generally treated well. As a few were puttering around that morning they heard some gunfire too close in the distance, and becoming suspicious, started to gear up. Within minutes there's a knock at their suite door, and a security guard for the resort says "Excuse me, sir. There's been an incident, I've been sent to collect your weapons and bring you downstairs."
I thought that obvious adventure hook would be obvious and the party would either a) accede and go downstairs to find out what was up, or b) they would resist the disarming part until they received some kind of explanation. I did not expect when one of the actual vets yanked up his assault rifle, audibly charged it, and pointed it at the security guard yelling "You're not going to take my gun!"
What should have happened would be the normal reaction for bodyguard/security person who was shaken up over dealing with a kidnapping/extraction of the local lord by another armed force who was tasked with bringing these strangers down to talk to the security chief but found them fully armed and armored in their suite: The guy should have fallen back, bringing his SMG up and yelling "They're part of it!", and the player in question would have shot him with the AR. Building security would have responded in force, and while the PCs are good compared to them, there's over 100 security personnel, and there were machinegun nests covering the kill zone from the building to the woods outside. They wouldn't have gotten away.
Instead I had the security guard ask the guy who he'd been talking to "Can you make him stop that?! I'm just talking here." and then retreated to call his superior in, who was suitably indignant about a perfectly reasonable request regardless of the current emergency and pointed out in full hearing of the entire group that he thought he was dealing with professional Soldiers but was revising that opinion based on the Team's actions. Eventually, the adventure continued.
Afterwards, my wife (a player and also one of the other Vets at the table) railed at me in private for about an hour on ROE violations and how she wished she had thought fast enough to have the right reaction to it (something along the lines of yelling at him not to mess up their Key Leader Engagement) and also about how they spend more time teaching you that you're NOT allowed to point your weapon at stuff than they do teaching you TO point it.
In any case, the adventure went off the rest of the way and they were successful in rescuing the Noble from the extraction team, but honestly.. I almost feel bad for not killing the whole party to remind that guy that one person's undisciplined actions can mess up an entire operation.
In the setting, they were visiting a new local lord at his resort and had been shown a gracious time the day before, followed by a dinner event, and generally treated well. As a few were puttering around that morning they heard some gunfire too close in the distance, and becoming suspicious, started to gear up. Within minutes there's a knock at their suite door, and a security guard for the resort says "Excuse me, sir. There's been an incident, I've been sent to collect your weapons and bring you downstairs."
I thought that obvious adventure hook would be obvious and the party would either a) accede and go downstairs to find out what was up, or b) they would resist the disarming part until they received some kind of explanation. I did not expect when one of the actual vets yanked up his assault rifle, audibly charged it, and pointed it at the security guard yelling "You're not going to take my gun!"
What should have happened would be the normal reaction for bodyguard/security person who was shaken up over dealing with a kidnapping/extraction of the local lord by another armed force who was tasked with bringing these strangers down to talk to the security chief but found them fully armed and armored in their suite: The guy should have fallen back, bringing his SMG up and yelling "They're part of it!", and the player in question would have shot him with the AR. Building security would have responded in force, and while the PCs are good compared to them, there's over 100 security personnel, and there were machinegun nests covering the kill zone from the building to the woods outside. They wouldn't have gotten away.
Instead I had the security guard ask the guy who he'd been talking to "Can you make him stop that?! I'm just talking here." and then retreated to call his superior in, who was suitably indignant about a perfectly reasonable request regardless of the current emergency and pointed out in full hearing of the entire group that he thought he was dealing with professional Soldiers but was revising that opinion based on the Team's actions. Eventually, the adventure continued.
Afterwards, my wife (a player and also one of the other Vets at the table) railed at me in private for about an hour on ROE violations and how she wished she had thought fast enough to have the right reaction to it (something along the lines of yelling at him not to mess up their Key Leader Engagement) and also about how they spend more time teaching you that you're NOT allowed to point your weapon at stuff than they do teaching you TO point it.
In any case, the adventure went off the rest of the way and they were successful in rescuing the Noble from the extraction team, but honestly.. I almost feel bad for not killing the whole party to remind that guy that one person's undisciplined actions can mess up an entire operation.