ISWAT Rank / Structure

[Chainclaw]

I own GURPS Infinite Worlds, and was thinking of running an ISWAT campaigne where my players old (higher lvl) PCs get recruited to join ISWAT. I ran the idea by them last Friday night, and everyone liked it. A unanimous request from the group was to hold realistic military / police style ranks though...

..I was wondering if there's been an official take on ISWAT's rank system or internal structure. If not I was thinking of this-

PC (Field) Ranks:
E2 Private
E3 Private First Class
E4 Corporal / Specialist
E5 Sergeant
E6 Staff Sergeant
E7 Sergeant First Class

NPC (Command) Ranks:
E8 Master Sergeant
E9 Sergeant Major
E9 Command Sergeant Major
E9 Sergeant Major of ISWAT

A party consists of a Light Infantry Squad consisting of up to nine soldiers (PCs) and one commander (NPC) who's probably either an E5 (Sergeant) or E6 (Staff Sergeant).

I looked at American Military ranks, as I'm an American, and dismissed Navy and Air Force because many of their names (Airman, Seaman) sounded awkward. Also the Marines have ranks like Gunnery Sergeant, which sounded like someone who should carry an actual gun (not applicable for all characters, taking Gods, Supers, Wizards, etc into account). So that left me with the US Army.

However, perhaps some sort of UN rank system would be more appropriate since Infinity (as I understand it) seems to be a UN group.

I'd also looked at police ranks, but from what I saw online (I've never been a cop or soldier) their ranks seem to vary from post to post. Also, I wanted to run a Chaplain as an NPC, and they seem to be exclusive to military groups (no police Chaplains).

If anyone knows anything about an existing ISWAT rank system, or simply has suggestions, I'm all ears.

[tratclif]

I expect the default ISWAT campaign would be "cinematic war story" -- that is, ignore chain-of-command. But, since you want realisitic ranks, using US Army ranks is very plausible, since Homeline's US Army would have the largest special operations forces and thus the largest pool of retired officers to form a general staff for the new ISWAT. Certainly ISWAT's Otto Skorzeny would want some sort of military command structure instead of a police-style rank system.

[ecienavxela]

Sorry to ask this, but what is ISWAT? I'm still reading the Characters book and haven't come across this yet...

[AOTA]

Its an organization in the GURPS Infinite Worlds book. Its also covered some in Basic Set Book two Campaigns.

[Not another shrubbery]

Originally Posted by ecienavxela

Sorry to ask this, but what is ISWAT? I'm still reading the Characters book and haven't come across this yet...

They're mentioned briefly on p162, and in the various backgrounds of the iconic characters.. but are detailed in the Campaigns book. It's a sort of a cross-time special ops force that's part of the Infinite Worlds campaign background.

[Chainclaw]

The difference (as I understand it) between ISWAT and other branches of Infinity is basically power level. ISWAT characters are described as supposedly consisting of Gods, Supers, and the like. Other Infinity branches, are assumedly more "human" level characters.

Since we had been playing Supers, the move to ISWAT worked for us.

I actually ran my first game of it today, doing an academy thing. Used US Army rank system, and that was not only simple but most of the players had a friend or relative in the Army, so they already knew the distinction between ranks. So that was nice.