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Old 02-16-2019, 11:49 AM   #1
WaterAndWindSpirit
 
Join Date: Oct 2014
Default Campaign trackers, and mission storyline

Hello everyone!

So I want a campaign where, due to a cognitive block on the part of most of the population, paranormal events are explained away. There is a conspiracy trying to take over the world, of which most high ranking members and plenty of grunts come from another world with low TL but where magic is normal, and they can't (yet) make the trip back. Another conspiracy tries to defeat the first, and tries to help the people as much as they can.

I want to create a few separate trackers for the campaign, to see how the overall war effort is going.

The "War Assets" tracker, which tracks the funding and human resources of the evil conspiracy. It starts high and can temporarily knocked back down through "heist" missions (heist being the term used by GTA for multi stage mission with a massive end payout) or supply missions (kinda like XCOM 2 raids on ADVENT convoys), but it will always rise back up over time. The higher the tracker is, the more trained the enemy is, and the better toys they have. It's mostly a BAD tracker, but it also makes the "Subversion" and "Project Gatekeeper" trackers go up faster.

The "Popular Support" tracker, which serves the same function but for the good guys. Starts low, always ticks down, can be brought up by Heists and Supply missions. The higher the "Popular Support" tracker is, the more resources can be requisitionned, and the faster randomly chosen research projects (TL 8+1^ gear) can be unlocked.

The "Subversion" tracker represents how much covert influence the evil conspiracy has over the world's governments. A high subversion tracker means the police force will get more selective about whom they will pursue, and the various intelligence agencies will actively conspire against the PC and ignore the bad guys, and a full "Subversion" tracker means that they basically overtook the governments and it's game over for the heroes. "Subversion" raises slowly over time, and there are "spikes" that raise the Subversion tracker that can be canceled through Heists.

The "Project Gatekeeper" tracker represents the research data to make the jump back to the magic filled but low tech by the evil conspiracy. A full "Project Gatekeeper" tracker means they have made the jump, did some "nuclear intimidation" on the population and basically have free reign over the resources of another world, as well as plenty of political leverage through empty but appealing promises to the governments of our worlds, thus permanently maxing out the "War Assets" tracker and creating some unavoidable "Subversion" points at a constant rate. It's not an instant game over, but should "Project Gatekeeper" ever max out, it's a race against the clock to max out the "Operation Final Justice" tracker before the "Subversion" tracker gets maxed out. It periodically raises unless research facilities are sabotaged in Heist missions.

The "Operation Final Justice" tracker represents intelligence gathered on the conspiracy high leader, and various kind of sabotage to ensure they have no way out, and can only be filled by Heist style missions. Once filled, it unlocks "Operation Final Justice", the last heist of the campaign, involving a targeted assassination of the conspiracy leader. If "Operation Final Justice" is a success, the campaign is won. If it's a failure, several points are taken off the tracker, representing new defensive preparations that need to be overcome.

So I want Heists and Supply raids to be randomly available, rolling for each tracker (Say a Supply raid is available every 3D weeks, with a 1 week window and a 1D/2 days duration, reducing War Assets and improving Popular Support, and Supply Heist that happen less often but have a bigger payout, a short window of opportunity and a longer duration, Subversion Heists reduce War Assets and improve Popular Support by less than a Supply Heist, but happen every 2D months and the window of opportunity is 3D days and the durationg 1D weeks, that kind of decisions) separately so that there has to be a choice to prioritize which tracker the PCs find more important (Do I do a Supply raid that reduces the War Assets but increases Popular Support, knowing that if I do that it's gonna be hard to fit in the time for a Heist to prevent Subversion but gives much less Popular Support, or do I go for the immediate Subversion cancellation? There's a long Operation Final Justice Heist available *right now*, but the roll for Project Gatekeeper is coming in right after the last opportunity to start of the Final Justice Heist, can I afford the potential raise of the Project Gatekeeper tracker if it means cranking up Operation Final Justice faster?).

Anyone could help m come up with the formulas for such trackers? Thanks!
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