Zero Dark - Experimental Weapons

Back some time last year when I was still holding things together a bit better, I was all enthusiastic about publishing some fan-made content for Horizon Wars: Zero Dark.

Well, here's a learning thing: there aren't enough players of Zero Dark to be able to consistently generate fan-made content for publication. It's always interesting to me to think about the relationship between sales and actual games played, but that's a topic for another day.

Today, instead, I'm thinking about one of the few really good submissions I had that were, at least, inspired by this idea even if it arrived much later than I'd asked and, in any case, had already abandoned that particular flight of fancy. Jonathan Lupton was responsible for "The Eistla-Sedna Weapons Catalogue" and it really got me thinking about weapons in Zero Dark.

Now, I set out with the very sincere and conscious intention of not making weapons "a thing" in the game, because I wanted to make sure that players could use whatever minis they liked and apply their own imagination to their Zero Dark experience. Good intentions, I'm sure you'll agree, but it seems they may have been at least a little out of step with the psychology of the typical wargamer (especially the type weaned on 40k).

And, to be fair, it has to be said that weapons can't always do what we'd like them to do. The classic example being that it's quite hard to build a sniper archetype in Zero Dark, because damage output falls with range, even with a high F and Lethal - and the high F doesn't always feel right, anyway.

So I'm looking at adding some new rules to an eventual second edition to give weapons more variety.

None of what follows has any particular bearing on Jonathan's article, which I'll probably share with patrons in due course. But it got me thinking, and this is where I ended up:

Booster Dice

An idea that might apply to quite a few of these rules is the addition of booster dice. Booster dice can do a few things, depending on the weapon equipped to the hero, but they all look the same: they're d12s (of course) of a distinctive colour.

BOOSTS

Boosts are like upgrades. For now, treat them as just another upgrade option, but boosts might well end up having a slightly different framework to upgrades in a new edition. For now, also, you are welcome to try mixing and matching boosts.

Sniper boost

If you add the sniper boost to a hero then, in a shoot action, a sniper adds +1 booster dice for every full 12" a target is away from them, up to a maximum of 3. So a sniper would add two booster dice to a target 27" away, and three to a target 40" away.

Sniper boosts are used just like other dice in a shoot action except that, if a "1" is shown on a booster dice, the shot misses regardless of the results of any other dice, including Lucky 12s.

Carbine boost

If you give a hero a carbine then, in a shoot action, the hero adds +2 booster dice to shoot actions at targets at less than 6" range and +1 booster dice to shoot actions at targets between 6" and 12".

Voodoo boost

In a sci-fi setting, there are always those extra-fancy guns that fire photon bolts or plasma beams or quantum disruption fields or whatever. If you decide a hero is equipped with voodoo boost, you always roll +1 booster dice when making shoot actions. However, if the voodoo boost shows a 1, the weapon glitches and the hero suffers wounded(+1).

EXTRA: Commando boost

Booster dice can also be used in CQB. A hero who finishes a cautious move engaged with an enemy may use any remaining bonus actions to add booster dice to their CQB roll.

Note that I'm offering this up as a general bonus to all heroes. They don't need a "commando boost" upgrade to use this option.