PvP

One of the more worrisome events to come out of Session 20 was Alex declaring his intent to shoot David the next time he saw him.  I won't go into whether or not this is justified, but it makes me think about how I would have to adjudicate a player-on-player engagement.

Player-vs-player battles are never good; somebody is going to end up very unhappy, possibly two or more somebodies.  Given that NPCs in A Time of War follow more less that same construction rules as PC's, they seem to make fairly good proxies for approximating how a PvP encounter would go down.  Specifically, the probable engagement range of the battle and the weapons used would provide an edge to whoever's skills were most effective at that range and with those weapons.

In this circumstance, Alex has considerably high small arms skill than David does, plus access to superior armor.  Their defensive attributes (BOD and WIL) are similar, although David has the Toughness Trait.  If David can force the combat to melee range, the advantage becomes his (with Martial Arts +8).  Even so, I believe the action would be decided by the first one of them to score a hit; both of them have access to weapons that will begin dealing serious penalties on the first impact, and that will likely quickly skew the victim into losing more quickly.

There are certain cultural barriers to killing off other player's characters for roleplaying reasons, and Bert explicitly asked about those to the table at Session 20.  The consensus (which notably did not include Henry, who missed that session) was that it was acceptable in the last session of a campaign, which is particularly pertinent in this instance, as Session 21 is indeed the last session of Ten Years on Terra.  It is not clear to me exactly when and how Bert envisions this confrontation taking place, and if it will happen before, after, or during the SDS facility attack that forms the basis of Session 21.  I may have to wait and see.