Sat 06 Feb 2021, 10:58
unfortunately i can not help with regarding the Operations/Wathcers aspect, as I am Swedish, we used the swedish edition and it did not have this aspect in it at the time.
In my English group, i felt that it was...cumbersome and hard to understand (Its not in retrospect) but when playing Online, i feel that it is a lot more work than reward as opposed to if everyone was around the same table.
I do recommend using it though, as the book is re-written , re-structured to fit this aspect , as opposed to the Swedish edition, and you can actually recruit the other tribes you are not directly in (A problem/ Freedom that arose in the swedish edition, you had to write in the other habitats yourself i you wanted to give the PC the option to recruit more tribes)
3: travel exploration.
Is fairly simple, it says how long it takes to travel from one side to the other, If i am not mistaken, taking the roads is easier, but riskier regarding watchers, taking the forest dont have as much watchers, but monsters etc.
There is a very comprehensible random encounter table within the book i highly recommend using, It has got encounters for all of paradise valley, depending on what type of terrain they are currently crossing.
absolutely do NOT LOOK AT GENLAB ALPHA AS MYZ BASE ADVENTURE!
Genlab Alpha like the other editions " Elysium, Mechatron" All in the end serve once perpous.
To introduce thier respective race to the base world of MYZ, and to give an origin to them.
None of them are meant to be a super long extended trek of traveling, they are all within an closed adventure and space , that all then ends with
" And then the survivors left out in to the zone"
Genlab Alpha should be looked as an extended adventure, if you play it according to the adventure therein, however Free league designed it along with all the other "Expantions" As a Stand alone edition, so if people wanted to , they could only have that box, but still have enough material to have hundreds of adventures within the Paradise Valley.
I would not worry TOO much about counting proper distance, regarding travling in paradise valley, what is more important is what happens on the way there " if anything" remember it is supposed to be a very opressive, setting , so even if they dont encounter a hostile watcher, have them pass a checkpoint, let a drone fly over them and scan them, have them witness an animal get abducted, (Again the random encounter table is very good for this) etc etc.
So instead of saying "you travel to the rat habitat without issue," Add a sight, impression, or the like, not to mention all the interesting animals they can encounter, and depdning on your PC fight with.
regarding food and water, Paradise valley is everything BUT the zone.
water is easily accessible throughout the valley, food as well "If you have a hunter" and trading within should work the same.
I began my economy in the valley with food and trading, as base, water worked for the right person but its easily accessible so not that many.
this...worked..to a start, however i soon realized i could not just basically make " Food = Money" as it soon turned out it was way to easy for them to acquire "via the hunter" food.
so, seeing as it was so easy for them to get food (Rule wise, you can EASILY make that harder and fuck it up for em ;P) so the rest of the valley should not have such a hard time acquiring food , with a few tribes expections.
so basically i started diminishing the value of food as a currency sense most animals in the valley could easily acquire it, not remove, diminish, and all of a sudden a nice balance was found, mixing both trading and food,
"Oh you want this bow with 2 damage and 2 gear dice?, well better give something of equal value, "
" a knife with 1 damage but 2 gear dice?....hmmm...throw in 4-5 food and we got a deal"
again this can easily be remedied by the hunter , but remember, they cant spam rolls, if they fail, and want a successes they better push, or waste a lot of hours finding nothing before trying again, I also limit thier class use, to tops 2-3 (3 if im kind) tries a day, there is only so much light in one day, and generally encourage to not roll again if they get a success, but it varies.
an important note, as boring as it is, is to keep track of weight, a LOT of times, pure food hoarding have been stopped due to shit being to heavy to carry.
no one likes item management, but in genlab alfa, and MYZ in general, it is important.
well I am never able to find myself short so i hope ya like this essay xP