SR4 Miniature Movement Rules, Grid-based tactical combat FUN! Options

[Veggiesama]

For those of you who despise the idea of hosting fights on a grid or find the idea of quantifying some aspects of SR4's vague movement system to be unthinkable, I beg you to turn back now. Hostile replies of "Back in my day..." or "Miniatures destroy imagination!" will not help, thank you.

For everyone else who may be interested in dynamic visible battles, please read on.

The aim of these rules is to simplify determining distances, line of sight, and combat organization for players and GMs alike. It's also meant to add more fun, increasing the tactical and strategic aspects of SR4's combat system for those who don't mind learning a few extra rules.

Here is where you may find the one-page chart of two tables (character movements and weapon ranges), along with the temporary rules:
http://myfilestash.com/userfiles/veggiesam...ma/movement.pdf

Here's an example map (the Stuffer Shack from "Food Fight"!) to spur your imagination. Sorry, I know it's cruddy, but I only had a few minutes to make it:
http://myfilestash.com/userfiles/veggiesam...tuffershack.png

Here are the main facts you need to know:
- 1 Grid Square = 2 Meters
- Both tables use squares instead of meters.
- The idea is that every character will move when it comes to their initiative count, whether or not they get an action during that initiative pass. For example, this can allow you to accurately run away from a grenade, plan out a melee charging attack, or reach a good place to gain cover.
- Walking Trolls and Running Humans/Trolls take a very small hit to their movement rate (they lose 1 meter, or half a square, for the sake of every number being even).
- Weapon Ranges have been boosted slightly to fit with the "even number philosophy".

What is the Character Movement Table for?
- The book recommends, when it becomes necessary to know how far you can move in one initiative pass, to divide your total movement by the number of initiative passes in the round.
- This table does that for you, by metatype and number of passes in round. Most of the time this will come out with a remainder, but the table addresses this for you (ex. Human walks 10m per round. If there's only one init pass in the round, he moves 5 squares. If there's two, you'll come up with 2.5. Since you can't move 2.5 squares per round, I decided the first pass you'd be allowed to move 3, second pass 2. Each pass is seperated by commas.).

What is the Weapon Range Table for?
- It's an easy reference for calculating distance by squares. The original table was mostly divided into 5-meter ranges (or multiples of 5; ex. taser short range 1-5m, med range 6-10m, etc.), so this one converts each of those five meters into three squares. Yes, they practically became six meters now, but since every square is two meters, it was either six or four (if that makes any sense). Plus it felt better to be at maximum short range for pistols at 3 squares away, not 2.

Why are there XXX's on the Weapon Range Table?
- I didn't calculate super-huge ranges. The amount of squares you'd be counting would be so goddamn high, it'd be impractical and a waste of time. Fifty squares seemed like a reasonable maximum on my laziness, so if you want to use more than 50, you're probably using your whole basement as the battle map, so good luck with that.

Why does this remind me of d20 Miniature Movement rules?
- Because I think d20 did a very good job of simplifying combat with miniatures. I'm definitely taking some of my inspiration from there, so if you despised d20 for its rules of cover or attacks of opportunity (not that I'm using them... yet...), you might not like what I've been doing.

Lemme see another example!
- High IP is 3. In the first pass, a dwarf may walk 2 or run 4 squares. In the second pass, the dwarf may walk 1 or run 3. Same for third pass. If on the third pass he wants to sprint, he will roll a Running Test. If he gets 4 hits, he may then run 3+4=8 squares.

What is left to be done?
- I probably should have waited before I got more solid rules, but I want to see if there's any interest in this little project of mine.
- Interceptions: debating whether to handle them almost exactly like D&D Attacks of Opportunity, or slight changes to it (i'll post my ideas later)
- Melee Combat: whether they should have to just move beside a character or actually into their opponent's square, still deciding
- Grenades & Blasts: pretty easy: if a blast radius is -1/m, it's just going to be -2/square.
- Vehicles, Matrix, Astral Plane: these rules are not designed to handle these gameplay areas for obvious reasons
- Sample Maps & Mini's: designing your own miniatures (imho) is a lot more fun than purchasing a pre-painted one, and it won't cost you a penny (actually, i lied... my mini's cost one cent each, because i printed off small paper disks and taped them onto the heads of pennies)

I know this was an incredibly long and boring post, but if you have any ideas/suggestions/criticisms/comments/interest/flames, please leave a reply. I'm gonna go through with this (whether you like it or not) for my own games, but I just want to see if the community has any interest in SR4 Mini rules.