[HoE] [HOPLER] Rad Zones, Rad Checks, and the Wasted West

[Steve Crow <crow_steve@hotmail.com>]

While looking through the Doomsayers book again, I came across something 
that seemed a bit puzzling...

When talking about Amarna, page 37, it notes that an errant bomb landed 
outside Coeur d'Alene.  I'm not sure what it meant here by an "errant" bomb: 
  is there some reason that Coeur d'Alene shouldn't have been bombed?

The paragraph in question is a little vague as to if the bomb landed _on_ 
the city, but a little further on it talks about Amarna being built five 
miles near the _ruins_ of the old city, so I kinda get the idea that the 
bomb...well, "ruined" the city.

Okay, with me so far?  Now, we move on to Sybaris.  This is a shanty town 
built 5-6 away from Amarna.  It's apparently a pretty busy place, from the 
description.  A little simple math tells us that Sybaris can't be more than 
11 miles away from the irradiated ruins of Coeur d'Alene.  It could actually 
be at ground zero in Coeur D'Alene itself, but let's assume the folks are 
smart and built it so you've got Coeur d'Alene - Amarna - Sybaris in a more 
or less straight line.

But...according to the basic rulebook, page 103, everyone from 5-30 miles 
has to make a TN 5 Vigor check _every hour_ to avoid radiation poisoning.

So, everyone in Sybaris is making Radiation/Vigor checks, every hour, to 
avoid rad poisoning??

Granted, most of my HoE types have figured how that d10s and 3+ 
Coordinations are real good things to put in to Vigor.  But for the general 
populace, isn't this a little...much?

I'm sure someone could work out the probabilities, but for your average 
brainer, with 2d6-3d8 Vigor, exactly how many cases of Radiation Poisoning 
would be occurring in Sybaris per day?  And why would people be going there 
given these chances?

In general, do people find this 30 mile radius thing a bit...restricting?  
Or should I just take Pinnacle's route, and ignore it, as the whole Sybaris 
thing seems to suggest?

On a related note, has anyone figured out a way to...well, figure out a way 
to speed up or compress Radiation-vigor checks?  Making 24 rolls a game-day 
tends to really put a crimp in _role_ playing, although it does wonders for 
_roll_ playing.  Given a group size of 6 people, that's a big 144 rolls - 
more if I, say, compress time.

Or, by having my current adventure in a relatively small city, but within a 
city that is 28-30 miles away, am I doing the wrong thing, and for extended 
says, I should just set all adventures further out?

---

Steve Crow

"Worm Can Opener Extraordinare"

Check out my website at:  http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Stargate/4991/


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