Mar 20 2024
How To Play Salvage Union
How to play Salvage Union.
Hi everyone, this is a special episode of Firebreathing Kittens. I’m the game master for an upcoming session using the rules for Salvage Union. This episode is a summary of what I learned after reading the rule book. Hopefully this will be a handy guide for how to play for my players, will help me organize myself, and will be useful for you listeners, too, who are looking to play Salvage Union yourselves.
The sections I’ll talk about are:
Writing prompt
How to attack
Distances
Actions
Initiative
Character creation
Pushing a mech
How to salvage
Writing prompt: The general idea of this system is that you and your mech are exploring the wasteland of a ruined civilization. You have friends who also have mechs and are exploring with you, which is good, because you wouldn’t want to be alone, not with all those Bio-Titan behemoth monstrosities that are amalgamations of creatures and machines, roaming the scrap filled battlefields. Can you salvage something useful from this scarred region, creating opportunity from the debris? Let’s find out, in Salvage Union.
How to attack: I will describe the general idea first and then dive into specifics. The general idea is that to attack, first you choose a target you can see who is within weapon range. Next you roll to hit. If you successfully hit, then you inflict your weapon damage. The game master subtracts your weapon’s damage from your target’s either hit points or structure points. Biological things like pilots have hit points, and constructed things like mechs have structure points. Most player characters start at 10 hit points. Most level 1 mechs range between 9 and 17 structure points. Most allied non player characters have 4 four hit points. Tech level 1 weapons deal between 1 and 4 damage per hit. That means that on average it takes as few as three or as many as ten strikes to reduce something that had 10 HP to 0, at which point they fall unconscious and are at the mercy of a mortal blow or not.
Now let’s discuss specifics. Salvage Union uses a twenty sided dice, also called a d20. There are no modifiers or bonuses to add onto the roll. If you get a 1, you fail horribly. You miss the target you’re attacking, you suffer something called a Setback with a capital S, and a severe consequence of the Game Master’s choice happens. Setbacks can affect your health, your reputation, your items, your environment, et cetera. For example with health: you could get hurt, such as taking two HP damage out of your 10 HP total, or roll on the critical injury table, or your module is destroyed. Some examples that affect your reputation are that you could lose an ally, a bounty could be put on your head, you could realize you broke a law and are now cast out of a community. Example setbacks impacting your inventory are that your weapon jams or runs out of ammo, you lose one of your treasured possessions, or your weapon’s effectiveness is now less than it should be. Example environmental setbacks are that your path is blocked by debris, or the town you were heading to got decimated by Bio-Titans before you could get there, or enemies are now flanking you. Those are just some of the potential consequences of rolling a 1 on the d20. If you roll between a 2 and 5, you fail and still face the Setback with a capital S, but without the severe consequence. If you roll between a 6 and a 10 on the dice, then you succeed at what you were trying to do, but you face a tough choice. Your gamemaster will give you a choice between setbacks. If you were attacking, you still hit, but you’re also going to have to make a tough choice. If you roll an 11 to 19 on the dice, you succeed! If you were attacking, you hit your target and deal standard damage. If you weren’t attacking, you achieve your goal without any compromises. And lastly if you roll a twenty on the twenty sided dice, you nailed it. You manage an outstanding success, and may achieve an additional bonus of your choice as well as your intended action. If you were attacking, you can choose to double your damage or do an appropriate bonus effect.
Here is an example of how to attack. You’re approaching a scrap heap, preparing to harvest it in your mech. You reach out your mech’s left hand. Like a pit trap spider, an amalgamation of machine and biology clamps down upon your mech’s left hand! It starts to drag you into its pit! You attack the enemy bio-titan with your mech’s chainsaw arm. You roll a d20 to see if you hit. You roll a 10, so you do succeed and hit, dealing two damage with your chainsaw arm to the pit trap creature-machine, but your game master gives you two Setbacks with a capital S to pick from. Either the module on your left hand was damaged by the bite, and your rigging arm now takes three energy to use instead of its normal two energy, or something unspecified and negative has happened in the town you were heading to. That’s an example of an attack in Salvage Union. You can also roll that d20 to do most skill actions you would do in other roleplaying games, such as convincing an NPC to tell you something, or intimidating an enemy. If you’re interested in sneaking, stealing, and performing similar rogue activities frequently, consider the ranger skill tree, where you auto-succeed at those activities if you take the infiltration advanced move.
Distances: Distances in Salvage Union are: close range, medium, long, and far. Close range is like, you can walk up to it in just a second or two. Medium range is you could throw something and hit it. Long range is you can still see it with your unaided eye, and discern its outline. Far range is outside of the accuracy of most weapons.
Actions: Salvage Union defines lengths of times by using a word and then the word action. A downtime action represents one week. A long action takes about one hour. A short action takes about ten minutes and is too long to be during combat. A turn action is something you could do in a minute or so. Yes, you can do a turn action in combat as your whole turn. One turn action is needed for a mech to start up or shut down. A free action doesn’t take up much time at all. Talking to other characters is a free action. And lastly a re-action is less than ten seconds and is so fast that someone could re-act on someone else’s turn.
Initiative: You and all of your fellow players and allied NPCs act together in what is called a group. The enemy band of five wastelanders that ambushed you also count as one group. This first round, the wastelanders ambushed you, so they go first. One of them takes their action, firing a ranged attack at the players before ducking behind the scrap heap. Then after they’re finished, if you’re still alive, it’s the players’ turn. One player can move and take one action, and as many free actions as you like. Then it’s back to the enemy group, where again one enemy can attack your group. Then it’s back to your group, where one player character can move and perform an action, and as many free actions as they like. It goes back and forth between groups like that. Once everyone has acted, the round is over. At the end of the round, one player character represents everybody and rolls a twenty sided dice. They consult the group iniative table to see what the next round is like. If they roll a 1, well, you’re ambushed again. That means the wastelanders attacked you, then hid, and you don’t know where they went. Imagine an old west movie with a shootout, and you can’t see where they’re coming from. If they roll a 2 to a 5, one NPC of the GM’s choice, probably an enemy, gets one turn in, and then play passes to the player group. If they roll a 6 to a 10, then one NPC chosen by the players acts first. Then the player group can go. On an 11 to 19, one player chosen by the player characters can act first, with play then passing to the enemy NPC group. And lastly if you roll a 20 on the group initiative table, two pilots can act before the enemy group can go.
Character creation: You’re going to be creating three different things in Salvage Union: a pilot, a mech, and a crawler. The pilot is your character. The mech is their vehicle, or steed. The crawler is a slowly moving setting, like a cruise ship.
The pilot starts with their appearance, 10 hit points, 5 ability points, 6 inventory spots, a core class, a starting ability from your core class, two tech 1 pilot equipments, a call sign, a background, a keepsake, and a motto.
Let’s build an example pilot named Sadie. She’s a shy macrotous elf, with big old ears sticking out horizontal from her silver hair. Sadie starts with 10 hit points, 5 ability points, 6 inventory spots, the core class of Hacker, and the starting ability of Well Actually… This lets her ask questions about systems, modules, or technology. When she asks a question, her player rolls a twenty sided dice, also called a d20. On a 20 she can ask 5 questions and get legitimately true answers. From 11-19 she can ask three questions and still be getting truthful answers. From 6-10 she can ask two questions and get one true answer and one false answer. From 2-5 you have to make up an answer to your own question. And on a one, everyone knows you don’t know the answer. She’s got two tech 1 pilot equipments, which are a first aid kit and a portable comms unit. The first aid kit has three uses. It lets Sadie give a target creature in close range 3 hit points as a turn action. The portable comms unit lets Sadie communicate with anything else that has the communicator trait within medium range as a free action. They both take up an inventory spot. Inventory spots are also taken up by weapons, which take up one inventory spot, and scrap, which takes up three inventory spots, so make sure to keep track of how many open inventory spots you have left. Continuing, Sadie gets a call sign of Silver Mouse, which people can call her on their communicator. She gets a background of Corpo Exec, which represents that she comes from being at the top of its hierarchy, and that something caused her to stray away from the luxurious life it gave her. Her keepsake is one of her mother’s earrings. She’s looking for the other one. And her motto is: be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle. You can spend your five ability points on anything you want, have fun browsing through the things that cost AP. There seem to be a wide variety of ways to customize your pilot. Advanced and Legendary abilities can be unlocked at high levels. For my players in my upcoming game, I recommend choosing one of the character paths or mech builds that gives you access to the salvaging trait, so that you can participate in salvaging, see page 248.
Second, you’re going to be building a mech. Your mech starts with 20 tech 1 scrap. You can spend this scrap to pick your chassis, which will come with its own stats and ability. You can also spend this scrap to pick your tech 1 systems and modules. Also choose your mech’s quirk, appearance, and pattern name.
Let’s build an example mech. Sadie’s mech starts with 20 tech 1 scrap, which you use as currency to buy the mech based on its salvage value, which is like its cost. The symbol for salvage value is a gear, so if you see a 10 inside a gear with a lot of teeth, that’s a salvage value of 10. Sadie spends 10 tech 1 scrap buying the 10 salvage value chassis model called the spectrum. That’s half her scrap, so she writes down that she has 10 remaining to spend on systems and modules. Systems and modules include things like weapons and salvaging tools, so you might not want to spend all your salvage value on the chassis alone. The spectrum chassis has a bunch of stats, so she writes those down, too. The spectrum comes with 17 structure points, 11 energy points, 3 heat cap, 7 system slots, 4 module slots, 6 cargo capacity, tech level 1, 10 salvage value, those all go on the mech’s character sheet. The symbol for systems and modules is a triangle, so if you see a 1 inside a triangle that means it takes up one module slot. From this example, this mech had a maximum of four module slots. Energy points are something you run out of, and heat cap is something you don’t want to build up to, or your mech can overheat. The mech also comes with an ability, which for this example is called Data Scanner. This ability lets you spend two energy points to scan a single object in close range. It can be a mech, system, module, vehicle, creature, artefact, structure, fauna, flora, anything. You can ask two questions about the object and the answers given must be true. You also now have its blueprint if it was an intact mech chassis, system, or module. This is a neat combo with Sadie’s other ability. She’s going to get so many rewards for asking questions during the game. Maybe having all these good possible outcomes will motivate her to overcome her shyness, speak up, and ask a question. If she can just overcome her fear of new people enough to ask a question, so many good things will happen. It’s neat when mechanics encourage roleplaying. Next she pick a quirk for her mech, for example the cockpit has far, far too many buttons. And an appearance, which is that it has spiky bits, the better for extending to probe objects it’s investigating. Lastly, she gives it a pattern name: Tickle Monster. And voila! Sadie has a mech. For my players in my upcoming game, I encourage you to take a look at the rigging arm on page 167 so that you’ll be able to participate in rigging salvage action, see page 249. Triangles are how many system or module spots you need open to take it, the T number is the tech level, and the number inside the gear is the salvage value.
Lastly, the party is going to be sharing a crawler. Someone, possibly the Game Master, will pick a crawler type, writing down its ability, stats, bonuses, structure points, upkeep, and upgrade cost. Choose a tech 1 weapons system for your crawler, and give it a name and tag number. Name the crawler’s NPCs and give them each their own background, keepsake, motto, and 4 HP each. You Game Master might hand everyone a page with their crawler information on it before the game starts. If you’re a player in my upcoming Salvage Union game, that’s what I’m going to do, so you don’t have to build the crawler yourself. But since this is an example of how to play Salvage Union, let’s build an example crawler together.
A crawler is basically a roaming settlement. Imagine a tour bus with all the members of a band on it, or a cruise ship, or a generational space flight. In this example, we’re building a trade caravan crawler, so imagine a series of covered wagons rolling out from Saint Louis to head to California back in the eighteen hundreds. This crawler has an ability: improved trading bay. When you begin to roll for what is available in the trading bay, use an improved table instead of the one generally available to most players. It also comes with an NPC who is an experienced trader. For example Khairul Smith is on board and they’re really good at getting deals on boats. They’ve got a keepsake of cool person hair gel, and a motto of “success is the best revenge”. By being present, Khairul Smith reduces the cost of any mech chassis, system, or module available in the improved trading bay by one scrap, with a minimum cost of one. And they have 4 HP, so if you let them die you lose that bonus to your trades. Righto, we’re done with character creation. We’ve created a pilot, we’ve created a mech, and we’ve explained how to build a crawler, which I imagine might be done by your game master.
Pushing a mech: You can push your mech to add two heat to it and re roll a d20 dice. First, resolve all the effects of the re-roll. Then add two to the mech’s heat and roll a heat check d20 dice. If your mech has less heat than the number you roll on the dice, it’s fine. If your heat is equal to or greater than your roll, then your reactor has overloaded. Roll on the reactor overload table. Your mech might shut down, blow a module, or explode and be completely destroyed. That’s no good. To reduce how much heat you have, shut it down and let it cool off for one hour. After the hour, heat resets to zero. While it’s shut off, it’s vulnerable and takes twice as much damage from attacks.
Here is an example of pushing. A behemoth bio-titan dragged one of the party members back to its lair and has spun it up in a silk cocoon to eat later. The bio-titan is currently sleeping its physical damage off in one corner of the lair. You are trying to sneak your way into the lair to rescue your friend unnoticed. You roll a d20 to make a stealth check. The d20 lands on a 4, which means you fail and are about to experience a Setback with a capital S. Based upon the roleplaying situation, you are guessing that the GM is going to do an environmental Setback, where the behemoth bio-titan wakes up. But you know you’re not match for that machine-creature. That’s what you told your friend earlier, the one who’s now in a cocoon. Even though your mech only has a heat capacity of three and pushing would add two, you think this is worth it, and you push your mech. First, you re-roll that d20 dice. Success! A 15! You succeed at what you were trying to do, which was to sneak up to that cocoon without waking the behemoth up. You achieve your goal without any compromises. Now that we have resolved the effects of the re-roll, we add two to the mech’s heat and we roll a heat check. You’re haven’t reached your mech’s heat capacity of three, so that’s good. If you had, you would have to make a heat check every turn you start at your heat capacity. But you’re not there yet, so it’s just one heat check for having pushed and re-rolled the dice. You roll for the heat check and consult the table on page 235. You get a 12, and see that from an 11 to 19, your mech reactor has overheated. Subtract two, the number of heat you currently have, from your structure points, which are like hit points for mechs. The mech shuts down and gains the vulnerable trait, where it takes double damage from any attack. It will re-activate at the end of your next turn, and won’t decrease how much heat it has until you shut it down and let it cool off for one hour. But in this example, pushing the mech was worth it. You’re at the cocoon with your friend and can beging to cut them free, the bio-titan behemoth none the wiser.
How to salvage: Players who posses the salvaging or rigging traits can area salvage, mech salvage, scrap, repair, patch up, load, mount, and craft. If that includes you, it’s not a bad idea to print out or screen capture pages 248 and 249, which lists your salvaging moves. There are five types of item you can find in the wasteland that can be useful to you. Chassis are the core frame of the mech, the part that has all the stats. For example a jackhammer, mule, and kraken are three chassis good at mining, carrying cargo, and swimming, respectively. Systems are hardware that can be mounted on a chassis, such as excavator arms and weapons. Modules are software that you can upgrade your chassis with, like a better sound system or faster RAM. A vehicle is something like a carriage or a wagon that isn’t quite a mech. And lastly, scrap is that very last working part pulled from an otherwise completely broken junk heap, a component that might be useful for crafting something one day. The wasteland leaves objects in a range of conditions, ranging from intact, to damaged, to destroyed. To salvage an area, roll to area salvage and if you’re successful, reduce the supply of that area by one. Most areas default start at five supply. Chassis, systems and modules take up as many cargo spots as their salvage value number. Each piece of scrap you harvest takes up one mech cargo spot, or three pilot inventory spots.
Hopefully this little rules chat helps my players build their characters and understand combat a bit. And for everyone listening, hopefully now you’re excited to find the Salvage Union rule book yourself, and play a game with friends. I’m looking forward to playing Salvage Union in an upcoming adventure.
