The Gaming Den

Yes, I run at a lot of cons. Anyway, next January it's Arcanacon, and I figure I'll do the last of my various 40k-based things. This one is designed to be more than a little bit silly, as convention games should be.


The players will be a squad from the Adeptus Arbites - the spess police. Their case is in pursuing a fiendish villain who should by no rights be this deep into Imperial territory: the Lord of the Alpha Legion, the Black Hand: MASTER of disguise. He could be anyone, or anything!

Effectively, it will be a case of the PCs chasing down clues and leads, shaking up witnesses, and falling for the most lame disguises ever. After all, they are dealing with the Black Hand: MASTER of disguise.

Depending on what my funds are like in the meantime, I hope to use minis. Including hilariously bad disguises. I'm talking "A little old lady, hunched over with her walking stick. Well I say little, she's actually 8' tall and clad in spiked power armour. And it's not so much a walking stick as a chainsword. She seems burdened by a shopping bag with a tin of cat food and bowl of porridge. There is something that looks a bit like a melta bomb in the bag, too."

For the system, I want something really frigging simple, with amusing phrases worked in. So basically, in combat:
Fine -> Hurt -> Badly Hurt -> Possibly Dead (-> Dead)
Except ideally using the names of criminal offences people would be charged with for inflicting those conditions. So "Fine -> Assault -> Aggravated Assault -> Attempted Murder (-> Murder)"?

Options:
[*]Police Brutality/CHAOS! (attack: roll 1d6, if it's less than your stat, you damage them)
[*]Suppression/HUGE! (defend: roll 1d6, if it's less than your stat, a hit actually misses)
[*]Apprehend/Trickery (complicate things: block an exit off, make one person unable to attack/flee, make one person immune-from-being-attacked, generally give all enemies a -1 generic penalty)
[*]Scarper/You Haven't Seen The Last of Me! (flee: roll 1d6, if it's less than your stat, you escape via a nearby exit)

When dealing with investigation, they have the following options:
[*]Pun ("social attack")
[*]ENHANCE! (used to actually find clues in the first place)
[*]Sunglasses ("social defence")
[*]??? (need a good name for "following the evidence/making stupid leaps of logic".)

As you can see, it's pretty basic. The emphasis is more on having joke names for abilities and letting the players do stupid shit. Note that there is no skill for "Recognising that the 8' tall guardsman in spiked power armour is in actual fact a Chaos Space Marine".

I will refine this over time. I welcome any thoughts and ideas.

I think of Eureka for the leaps of logic, but that's not quite as entertaining as the others.