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Old 01-01-2017, 11:05 AM   #51
Kalzazz
 
Join Date: Feb 2009
Default Re: Octopus Carnival - GURPS Content Posts

Your right, there it is, my bad
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Old 01-03-2017, 05:45 AM   #52
Bira
 
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Default Re: Octopus Carnival - GURPS Content Posts

My first post in 2017 is something a little different from the usual: a detailed post-mortem on a campaign I ran that ended in 2016. It was called X-COM: Noises in the Dark.
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Old 01-03-2017, 09:50 AM   #53
Kalzazz
 
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No mass carnage of PCs?

I loved X-Com hugely, and one of the things that was most vivid is the brutal battle of attrition at times combat, and deciding what unit you would send through the door first knowing he would probably die a horrid death

Well, also remembering that laser pistols couldn't break power armor so I used them on the rare occasions I used armor to avoid death by mind control

The fact high end armor required Elerium 115 and hiring new soldiers didn't made for a brutal calculus
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Old 01-03-2017, 12:51 PM   #54
Bira
 
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The pre-game decision that would have led to mass PC carnage would be choosing Mr. Smiley as Commander. His recruiting philosophy would have lead to 150-point PCs against the same enemies, which would not go well even with NPC squad members acting as a "redshirt buffer".

It also helped that they made sound tactical decisions at the right times - the missions had several potential TPK spots in them.
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Old 01-03-2017, 12:53 PM   #55
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Default Re: Octopus Carnival - GURPS Content Posts

Quote:
Originally Posted by Kalzazz View Post
No mass carnage of PCs?
We lucked out on the missions, it's true (I was playing Kendall). I like to think we also used good tactics, but we definitely lucked out.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Kalzazz
I loved X-Com hugely, and one of the things that was most vivid is the brutal battle of attrition at times combat, and deciding what unit you would send through the door first knowing he would probably die a horrid death

Well, also remembering that laser pistols couldn't break power armor so I used them on the rare occasions I used armor to avoid death by mind control
Fortunately for us, the aliens in Bira's game hadn't started using the really heavy stuff yet. They were bad enough - one creature had a melee attack that got through the trauma plates in a modern kevlar vest, and left Kendall pretty badly bruised - but they definitely hadn't started using serious armor-penetrating ordnance yet. I imagine they would have soon.
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Old 01-03-2017, 12:58 PM   #56
Bira
 
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The enemies at that last close-quarters firefight in Dubai had blaster pistols, so you definitely lucked out on that one. Our poor Russian NPC squad members took most of the fire on that one and were into single-digit negative HP by the end.

The White Masks, AKA Elite Puppets, also had armor that your rifles couldn't penetrate except on a very lucky damage roll, along with high-cyclic burst ETC firearms. You wisely decided not to engage in a protracted firefight with them.
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Old 01-03-2017, 01:44 PM   #57
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The redshirt buffer is a classic X-Com tactic

What sort of guns skill were you looking at? I have a hard time imagining X-Com combat in GURPS, where in the same mission soldiers can both 1 shot an enemy 10 screens away they can't even see and miss an enemy in an adjacent square
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Old 01-03-2017, 01:49 PM   #58
Kelly Pedersen
 
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By the end of it, I had Guns (Longarms and Pistols) in the 12 range, but Kendall was never supposed to be a great gunman - he was the tech specialist, and if you had to put him into one of the X-COM classes, he'd be a Support. I was buying up my Throwing, and if the game had gone on longer, I was planning on asking for some nifty grenade types to toss about.
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Old 01-03-2017, 01:50 PM   #59
Bira
 
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The Commanders referenced two classic X-COM tactics: Mr. Fox was the "have a core of super badass soldiers and sack anyone who doesn't make the cut" guy, and Mr. Smiley was the "redshirt buffer" guy.

Our PCs had gun skills in the 12 to 18 range, tough only Minette approached the higher end. The 12 was Kendall's, with the others hovering around the 14 mark. IIRC, Valenkov had a 20, but no one ever ended up playing him. Someone would choose him as a PC in a re-recruitment round and would proceed to drop from the game soon after the group's composition was canonized in the IC thread. So he ended up being an NPC most of the time.
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Old 01-04-2017, 06:07 PM   #60
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Today I finally complete my series of Pathfinder Iconic conversions! Check out Ezren the Wizard.
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