10-14-2015, 12:36 AM | #1 |
Join Date: Feb 2011
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Building the X-Com inspired campaign
Recently I've been working on putting together a grand campaign and drawing inspiration from Xenonauts and X-Com. If you're my players, consider not reading this thread?
In general terms, we have the invading aliens and the defending humans. Timeline is early 2018 (meaning it will probably still be in the future when the game rolls around. I have a fairly firm mythos in terms of why the aliens are invading subtly as opposed to, say, dropping a rock or a viral swarm or just coming in guns blazing on day one. What I don't have yet is a good background for the human (PC) organization that opposes the aliens. The Players will have two characters; one cast will be soldiers, the other cast will be the upper-echelon (scientists, engineers, commanders). They need to be global in scope, but have limited resources. They need to be seen as the unified face of humanity but have internal factions and strife to deal with. Of course, in time the aliens are going to have more subtle plans than overt attacks or even surgical strikes- and some humans are going to see the value of changing sides... So, my questions are: 1.) What's the best way to run a world-wide strategic game? Has anyone tried anything like this in GURPS before? 2.) How can I build info on my PC organization rules-wise? 3.) Lore-wise, what's a good way to have modern nations and organizations contribute to defend the planet from aliens? 4.) What's a good "first strike" from the alien forces? It needs to be serious encourage the world to go along with #3, it needs to be subtle enough to cover up, and it needs to ideally allow the PCs to come into play. |
10-14-2015, 01:43 AM | #2 |
Join Date: Aug 2015
Location: Kenai, Alaska
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Re: Building the X-Com inspired campaign
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10-14-2015, 07:40 AM | #3 |
Join Date: Feb 2014
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Re: Building the X-Com inspired campaign
Get a copy of GURPS Black Ops. It's 3rd Edition, but a lot of the fluff is similar to X-Com.
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10-14-2015, 09:30 AM | #4 | |
Join Date: Feb 2011
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Re: Building the X-Com inspired campaign
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Sounds good, I'll look for it. |
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10-14-2015, 09:42 AM | #5 |
Join Date: Jun 2006
Location: On the road again...
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Re: Building the X-Com inspired campaign
I've been poking at Boardroom and Curia for a lot of that stuff. Haven't yet done any statistics, but it's not a bad place to start.
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10-14-2015, 12:28 PM | #6 | ||
Join Date: Jan 2012
Location: T'Pol's Ready Room
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Re: Building the X-Com inspired campaign
I was sort of working on a game like this a while back and this is how I was going to do it:
That was what I was planning on... Quote:
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"Ave, Imperator, morituri te salutant." Star Trek: Endeavour - a fanfiction site Frak, Frel, and Other "F" Words - my blog Last edited by Rigil_Kent; 10-14-2015 at 12:32 PM. |
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10-14-2015, 03:44 PM | #7 |
Hero of Democracy
Join Date: Mar 2012
Location: far from the ocean
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Re: Building the X-Com inspired campaign
I've run a game with 'top and bottom' characters (space exploration, management and boots). I liked it. One effect is that players step outside of their characters a little more. Individual characters become flatter, but you get more a of team of mini-GMs. I actually told the players they got one 200 point character and one 150 point character, and gave out rank for free. I think the system worked well.
In modern times, military actions like this get volunteered funds and forces from government entities. Not all governments will be told -- some governments will be left in the dark -- but the only thing those ones are likely to contribute will be jurisdiction. Corporations are less likely to donate, but it should be easy to get them on board in exchange for rights to equipment. Oil companies pay for access to any energy-producing tech that might come up, and so forth. Powerful governments are likely to try and keep control of their own troops, and the forces of the actual organization will be small -- which is probably a good thing for the PC's. When you say 'strategic', do you mean how to determine how the war is going in a simulationist manner? That's ... very dependant on the alien's goals and strategy. As a GM I'd probably ad-hoc it, but you appear to want a system. What are the win conditions for the aliens? for humanity? If they were doing the gun's a-blazing thing I could give you a system but until I know the stakes of the shadow war I can't really tell you. I've designed an subtle alien invasion campaign before, but that featured aliens trying to build alliances with human states so all they had to do was ship in the equipment. The campaign would either end with aliens giving up or launching their invasion -- depending on how well the PC's intercepted their envoys. But if you told us more about their goals, we might be able to give you a system. You say the aliens have reasons for keeping things subtle. Do the humans? Are those inclusive reasons? If a British intelligence agent tells his Chinese counterpart, could the Chinese be persuaded to keep things quiet? Just making sure you have a reason there. If you have a sound reason there, everything should go smoothly. The exact nature of the first attack depends on the alien's goals, of course, but I think something fairly dramatic in north korea can easily be covered up. That depends on the north korean's calling for help, but if things go badly enough I can see it happening. Action in a deserted part of the earth could also work. What's neccessary is to convince leaders that the aliens are real, that they are a threat, and that negotiating with them is a bad idea.
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Be helpful, not pedantic Worlds Beyond Earth -- my blog Check out the PbP forum! If you don't see a game you'd like, ask me about making one! |
10-14-2015, 04:23 PM | #8 | ||||||
Join Date: Jan 2006
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Re: Building the X-Com inspired campaign
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10-14-2015, 10:29 PM | #9 |
Join Date: Feb 2011
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Re: Building the X-Com inspired campaign
That's a good point about the strategic simulation. What I'm looking for is a way to turn PC actions into some kind of large-scale results. As far a simulationist/abstract/ad-hoc approach, I'm mainly looking for a comfortable compromise that lets me focus on the PC action in detail and quickly determine actions occurring at remove. I'm kind of curious how others have approached geopolitics as something that PCs can influence.
So... some information about the aliens. Again, if I know you in person, major spoilers... Let's see. First off, they are dimention-jumping life from a distant alternate earth - let's call it Alpha. In their home timeline, native life developed the ability to manipulate certain components of dark energy, which in game terms is effectively mana ("ambient dark matter level," replaces mana level). A few million years ago, the sentient Alphans encountered several different high-tech crosstime civilizations, all of which attempted to subjugate them (biological low-energy subatomic reactions being remarkable even in an infinite universe). The Alphans eventually overcame and subjugated the other civilizations, and adapted their own culture to focus on defending themselves from potential future threats by controlling or destroying developing species. The cosmos, in this setting, consists of a matrix of compartmentalized universes. Imagine that each universe is a bubble in a mound of foam, (of course, its a 9-d bubble with infinite internal dimensions floating in a 14-d foam, but this will do for now...) and that universes form and split and even merge over multiple millennia, resulting in a slow flow amongst the bubble universe. Interdimentional travel consists of moving between adjacent bubbles by making use of parts of dark energy and dark matter. Jump forward to a mere 250 thousand of years ago. Alphans (and members of their subjugated species) made early visits to our Earth- and let's just call it Earth for ease of reference- and saw a primitive sapient/sentient tool user with culture. They estimated that this species could discover dimension-crossing technologies, so they set about refining the potential threat into a useful tool. They made small changes (getting rid of excess body hair, a slight enhancement to symbolic thinking, and an integration of dark-energy catalyzing genes so they could control and power Alphan technology), resulting in the creation of modern humans at about the same time Neanderthal appeared. However, shortly after establishing modern human breeding populations, a long period of low dark-matter (mana) levels set in on Earth, preventing travel between the earth and Alpha. This was not unprecedented- but Alphans expected to return to Earth and find it mostly as they left it. Their time horizons are... broad. In the latter half of the 20th century, DM started reaching critical levels allowing brief or remote contact to earth - visions, visitations, dreams, impressions... even hallucinations, caused by attempts to examine earth remotely from Alpha. In 1993, gradually-increasing Dark Matter levels allowed for a small apparition of some kind (The Beowulf Incident). This highly-controvertial event was widely considered a hoax. So, in the present day of 2017, the big incident happens. The first stable return of Alphans to Earth, and it obviously caused some problems. The Alphans' goals are to, if possible, eliminate modern human culture and reduce them to thralls. Happy, comfortable thralls, true. Nonetheless, all human culture would be erased and they would live as subservient members of the Alphan hedgemony. We'd probably be useful as high-endurance scouts and wanderers, because we have fairly minimal life support requirements relative to other slave species, we're accurate throwers, and we are good at improvising. Our technical aptitude is a surprise, but a welcome one that Alphans plan to integrate into our fate. Our Dark-energy manipulating genes are poorly exercised- they've been inactive during the long low-energy period consisting of our entire history- but that's just a tactical advantage they will rectify after the war. However, they do not need us, nor do they need Earth. We're useful, and Earth is not terribly common among the uninhabited/uninhabitable parallels, but if a war with humanity goes poorly, they may consider drastic measures. Finally: They want to keep the war quiet because they have limited resources and crossing the border is still difficult. A full-on attack now would weaken them and strengthen us (by uniting us and sacrificing the element of suprise,) forcing them to result to more expedient measures. They'd rather drive earth to surrender by using surgical strikes, then pervert human society over carefully-controlled centuries. On the other hand, they want to stop humans quickly because they are unsure as to how fast humans are advancing and fear that we might leap forward again. The humans are keeping it secret because a panic would definitely damage human civilization, and starting out, they don't know ANY of this. All they know is that there's some definite truth to alien invasion rumors. The best-case endgame for humans is going to end with us keeping our independence but finding a way to co-exist; there's no way we could overcome the aliens alone. Last edited by PTTG; 10-21-2015 at 06:40 PM. |
10-15-2015, 02:40 AM | #10 |
Join Date: Aug 2015
Location: Kenai, Alaska
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Re: Building the X-Com inspired campaign
Just out of curiosity what magic system do you plan to use for the aliens?
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mass combat, organisations, world building |
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