The Five-Fingered Discount

Hi,

OK, so I can describe tech as “color” and it has no effect. Cool. That’s useful and I can buy actual in-game features on an as-needed basis.

But let’s say I’m poor. I have few or no resource points to spend on cool gadgets.

I really need a SCrEW gun. It can be a standard from-the-book gun but it has to be “real”. It needs to blow big fat holes through other people in a Firefight. Not Color in any way.

I can’t afford to buy it, but I certainly know where I could find such a gun. Maybe I know a guy or maybe there’s a gun store or something.

Can I forgo a Resources test in favor of some other sort of test(s) that allows me to get the gun for “free”? I’m thinking of stealing the gun, but maybe I just sweet-talk my friend into letting me borrow his (using Circles or DoW or something).

It’s kinda petty for these low-end items, but perhaps someday I need to steal an assault shuttle. I come up with a good plan and take off in it. Then I get into a fight with the shuttle. Assuming that dice are hitting the table can I use the ordnance on the shuttle without paying resource points?

I feel like the answer in all these cases is: yes, if you’ve made some sort of appropriate test then you should be able to get the item you’re looking for even if you didn’t build/buy it.

Here’s the flip-side to my question: I’ve spent a lot of time customizing my personal sidearm. It can do lots of neat things the average gun can’t. It’s not color, it’s not hard tech, it’s very personalized stuff. Can the gun just “be stolen” from me? Is one roll sufficient? Here what I’m asking is that if I’ve put lots of resources into some tech, how easy/hard is it to take that away from me?

later
Tom

Well, you could use a conflict or possibly building scene to steal an assault shuttle, yeah.

As for the other, if the guy exists and is hard tech, then any adds to the gun which are color (and I don’t buy that they’re neither. Everything is either color or hard tech) can be nullified with color, but the gun itself can’t be. So my hard-tech CEBW in color fast-draw holster wouldn’t provide any bonus in a draw-down, but the gun’s still there. On the other hand, if you have hard tech adds, like a targetter that gives +1d, can’t be nullified like that.

Hi Tom,

Zab’s right. Those are the situations that drive the game. You want or need something and the GM’s saying, “Uh uh, that’s not something you’re going to just ‘pick up.’ It’s rare, restricted military tech. You’re going to have to work for that. How do you want to tackle it?”

That’s a standard BE building scene, my friend! (That will hopefully lead to some nice bigger conflicts.)

-L