How to Play (Core Rules)

Warcrabs is a simple wargame designed to be played in the workplace. In the game, you take on the role of an AssHoTech worker, creating and managing one or more crabs, collecting the spoils of victory, and attempting to become the best crabfighter in the building.

This is a true pen-and-paper game. To play, you will need to print a Crab Character Sheet and record the data about your crab on it. But there are no maps, and no figures. The playing field is your own home or office – where a simple desktop can become an arena of courage and death for a few genetically-altered crustaceans. To begin playing, you will need a few common household implements.

A paperweight, or similar small object, to represent your crab. The object must have an obvious “front” and “back” side. A ruler, or better, a tape measure. A pair of six-sided dice (you’ve got a Monopoly set around here somewhere, don’t you?)

Through the course of the game, you will move your crab (paperweight) around the battlefield (desktop) using the ruler/tape measure to determine how far you will be able to move or shoot during each turn.

Engineering Your Crab

So you’re a new worker at AssHoTech, and one of your co-workers has surreptitiously invited you to take part in a crabfighting ring. At this point, you would head to the lab to start splicing genes – or, if you’re not a biotech guy, you would purchase a crab from someone who can engineer them.

To simulate the crab engineering process, Warcrabs uses a point-allocation system to help you decide which attributes your crab should possess. To start creating your crab, whip out a copy of the Crab Character sheet.

Warcrabs have lots of neat traits (they can be trained to smoke, for instance, and they enjoy martial arts movies), but for purposes of combat, only three are really important.

STRENGTH – Determines how much your crab will be able to carry. Once the crab acquires an armored, weapon-laden shell, its Strength score will also affect its speed of movement.

DEXTERITY – Determines how well a crab can shoot and how fast it can move.

ENDURANCE – Determines how much damage a crab can take before it dies.

Each trait is rated on a scale of 1 to 10 (a crab with a Strength 10 is as strong as he can be, and a crab with a Strength of 1 is very weak).

In designing your crab, you have 15 points to distribute among the three traits. So you could create a crab with a Strength of 5, a Dexterity of 5 and an Endurance of 5, or you could try a different combination, such as a strong crab (Strength 8) that isn’t very dextrous (Dexterity 2).

Shells – In nature, hermit crabs don’t grow shells of their own: they live in shells that are abandoned by other animals, moving from one shell to another as they grow larger. One might say that these animals are primitive users of technology.

There’s nothing primitive about the technology use in Warcrabs. Accomplished fighting crabs are fitted out with high-tech, armored shells, featuring a wide array of weapons systems, all created (or miniaturized) by the techies at AssHoTech.

Each crab starts the game with a simple shell of the sort you might find on the beach. Even this basic, low-tech shell provides some armor to protect the crab from attacks from the side, and the rear. The Basic shell provides 10 points of armor, which means it can absorb 10 points of damage.

To find out how much equipment your crab can eventually hold, you need to determine your Optimum Shell Capacity and your Maximum Shell Capacity. Optimum Shell Capacity is the amount of weight your crab will be able to hold without any loss to its speed of movement. Maximum Shell Capacity is absolutely the largest amount of equipment you can cram into a shell. (A maxed-out crab might have a lot of equipment but would essentially be a fortress, unable to move: not a good thing in combat.)

Your crab’s Optimum Shell Capacity is the same as its Strength rating. Your crab’s Maximum Shell Capacity is the same as its Strength plus its Dexterity.

''Example: Death Boy has a strength of 6 and a Dexterity of 4. His Optimum Shell Capacity is 6 and his Maximum Shell Capacity is 10.''

Weight – Weight is a measure of the amount of equipment the crab is carrying right now. This number can never exceed the crab’s Maximum Shell Capacity. Unfortunately, even a Basic shell carries some weight – so mark your weight down as 1.

Armor – As mentioned before, the Basic shell carries 10 points of armor, so mark your Armor number as 10.

Hit Points – The crab’s Hit Points show how much damage it can take before being killed. You crab’s Hit Points are the same as its Endurance.

Movement – Your movement number is a measure of how many inches your crab can move in a single turn. A crab’s basic Movement number is the same as his Dexterity number. However, when a crab is carrying too much weight, his movement is slowed. If your Weight is higher than your Optimum Shell Capacity, determine the difference between the two numbers and subtract that number from your Movement.

''Example: Death Boy has an Optimum Shell Capacity of 6 and a Dexterity of 4. When he starts the game, he has only a Basic shell with one point of Weight, so his movement is 4. Later, he acquires 7 Weight points of equipment. Because his shell weighs more than his Optimum Shell Capacity, he determines the difference (1 point) and subtracts that from his Movement. His movement is now at 3, and he can move only 3 inches per turn.  Money'' – You’ll need money to start buying equipment. Folks at AssHoTech make a lot of dough, but to keep the fight fair, crabfighters are only allowed to spend the prize money they’ve won in various crabfights. By long-standing crabfighting custom, all crabfighters are expected to begin with $1.98 in their accounts (a homage to Chuck Barris, perhaps). So write $1.98 in your Money blank for now.

Combat

Turns Combat in Warcrabs is organized in turns. One turn in the game represents one second in real time.

In each turn, a crab is allowed to move, and to take one action (usually firing a weapon or some other attack). The crab with the highest Dexterity gets to move and shoot first. If two crabs have the same Dexterity, the players can roll the dice – the player with the highest number gets to move first.

Rolls If a crab tries to perform a skill that involves one of the three traits, the player should roll two six-sided dice. If the number rolled is the same as the crab’s score in that trait, the crab succeeds in his task. This is called “rolling against” a trait.

In combat, crabs must roll against Dexterity to determine whether they can hit an opponent with a weapon. This is probably the skill crabs will roll against most often.

''Example: Death Boy has a Strength of 6 and a Dexterity of 4. His Opponent, the Crustaceanator, has an Endurance of 3. In combat, the Death Boy tosses a firecracker at the Crustaceanator. He rolls against Dexterity and gets a 5 – meaning that he just missed. However, because the firecracker landed close to the Crustaceanator, th Custaceanator must roll against Endurance or else be stunned for one turn. The Crustaceanator rolls an 8, meaning that he is stunned. Death Boy runs over to Crustaceanator and tries to lift the crab over his head and fling him off the desktop. Death Boy rolls a 4, and the Crustaceanator plunges to his death on the office floor below.''

Modifiers All tasks are not created the same. It’s easy to hit an opponent who is standing right next to you. It’s very hard to hit an opponent who is far away. Thus we have “modifiers” that reflect that difficulty in the game world.

The most important kind of modifier is the “To Hit” modifier. It gets harder to hit a target as the target gets farther away. To determine To Hit modifier for any shot, just measure the distance between the shooter and the target, then compare to the table below:

Range	Distance	Modifier Point Blank	Less than 2”	+2 Short	2” to 6”	+1 Medium	6” to 12”	0 Long 	12” to 18”	-1 Extra Long	18” or more	-2

You’ll find that various weapons also come with built in To Hit Modifiers. For instance, a Bottle Rocket Launcher has a To Hit Modifier of -1 (to reflected the perils of using an unguided rocket system.) However, the MBRLS (Multiple Bottle Rocket Launcher System) fires a swarm of rockets at once, increasing the chance to hit the target. It has a To Hit modifier of +1.

To determine your chance of hitting at a certain range, add all To Hit modifiers to your crab’s dexterity and roll against that number.

Claw-to-Claw Combat: In the beginning, crabs may not have enough money to buy lots of firecrackers, laser pointers and other weapons. They will probably engage in Claw-to-Claw combat, using simple weapons like Pickle Spears. There are no range-based To Hit modifiers for Claw-to-Claw combat. You must be within 1 inch of the target to begin Claw-to-Claw, and if you are using a Claw-to-Claw weapon, you just roll against your Dexterity to hit. If you’re carrying a ranged weapon, you get the +2 modifier for being at Point Blank range. (A good reason not to charge an opponent who is carrying a ranged weapon.)

You can even attack with your bare claws, which are good for snapping off an oppoenent’s limbs (they will grow back.) A bare-claw attack will do a single point of damage if it hits.

Armor – The armored shell definitely adds a wrinkle to crab combat. To inflict damage and kill your opponent, you have to hit the “meaty” part of the crab – but that can be quite difficult.

Attacks from behind -- Crabs are almost invulnerable from behind. Any attack from behind a crab, if it hits, will damage only crab’s shell. You’ll have to blast all the way through the crab’s shell to get to the crab itself. For game purposes, ‘behind” the crab is anywhere within the 180-degree zone opposite the crab’s front side.

Attacks from the side – For game purposes, you are attacking from the side if you are anywhere in the zone zone that extends from 90 degrees to 45 degrees from the crab’s front side. If you are attacking from the side, you have a fifty-fifty chance of hitting crabmeat. If you fire from the side and hit, roll one die. If you roll a 1, 2 or 3, the damage will be applied to your opponent’s shell. If you roll a 4, 5 or 6, the damage will be applied to the crab itself.

Attacks from the front – If you are within 45 degrees of the front side of your opponent, you strike crabmeat every time you hit that opponent.

Using Common Sense -- Now, you could get out a protractor every time you launch an attack, but it’s usually pretty easy to tell a 45-degree angle just by eyeballing it. This game is supposed to be quick and easy, so it may be best to take a sporting attitude and guess at the angles, pulling out a protractor only when there is a heated argument. It’s up to you.

Explosives – Explosives are fun. In most wargames, explosives are also very complicated, necessitating a lot of tables dealing with blast radius and so forth. In Warcrabs, there are just three explosives rules.

If fire or toss an explosive at an opponent and miss your roll by only one point, the explosive lands close enough to shell-shock your opponent. That opponent must roll against endurance or be stunned for an entire turn. If you use an explosive in Claw-to-Claw combat (usually a kamikaze move by a crab on the verge of death), both crabs in the combat take the full damage of the explosion to their crabmeat – in other words, they lose Hit Points, not armor. If you are hit by an explosive, you must move your crab one inch farther away from the opponent who fired that explosive. This simulates the blast effect. In other words, if an opponent 10 inches away hits you with a Bottle Rocket, you must move your crab so that you are now 11 inches away from him.

Falls and jumping – Because crabfighting is often done on desktops, there is the real possibility that your crab will be blasted or thrown off the side of the desk. The rules for blast effects are listed above.

A crab can throw another crab if the other crab is stunned, and if he passes a Strength check. To find out how far, in inches, a crab can throw another crab, subtract the throwing crab’s weight from his Strength.

A crab takes one point of damage for every foot he falls (falls less than one foot do no damage). Also, a crab who falls must roll against Endurance, or be stunned for one turn. Most desks are about three feet above the ground.

Crabs can continue fighting after a crab is thrown or falls off a desk or other surface. However, the crab shooting from above has a +1 modifier to hit (in addition to other modifiers) and the crab shooting from below has a -1 modifier to hit.

A crab, standing flat-footed, can jump upward a number of inches equal to his Movement score. If a crab is moving and jumping, the lateral movement and the upward movement cannot exceed his Movement score. Example: Death Boy has a Movement score of 4, so he can move 2 inches and jump upward 2 inches in a single turn.

Cover -- Obviously, hiding behind stuff is a good way to avoid being hit. A crab who is behind a substantial object (coffee cup, inbox, etc), and is out of the line of sight of his opponent, is considered shielded from attacks by most weapons (for the exceptions, read individual weapon descriptions in the Equipment section). Crumpled paper, tissue paper, or old candy wrappers can act as a one-time shield against flamethrower attacks (the first blast strikes the paper; by the next turn, the paper is effectively gone.)