Working Under Cover
I've been considering a pulp staple: covering the bad guy (or the good guy for that matter.) I'm thinking in particular about being able to whip out a small discreet pistol and threatening to blow some gorilla's brains out if he twitches. The problem being that small discreet pistols often do shit damage and big gorilla's often have a lot of hit points or endurance. So the plucky woman reporter grabs a hammerless .32 revolver from her clutch and covers Mickey 'the Rhino.' The revolver does 2d6 damage and as Rhino has 12 hit points he takes the shot and wrings the plucky woman reporter's neck. What can I say? He's a bastard. Players are often guilty of making similar choices (instead of roleplaying an aversion to being plugged.) Covering someone is a great way to set up a tense scene. But to do so you have to have a chance to come out on top and a chance to get screwed over and a few in between results. There is some justification in Traveller and o