[3:16] Semi-Captain, Lt.-Captain, almost-Captain on deck, sir!
Gregor Hutton:
Oh, the interesting thing I noticed when reading about the characters above was how my view of them as a reader is tinted by what their Flashbacks are.
I've seen this in the games I've run too, where although the Flashbacks are made "in the moment", over many Flashbacks an image of the character emerges.
Ron Edwards:
New worlds to kill ...
With the previous posts in this thread in mind, I prepped a little bit for the next session, which we played last week. Not very much, as you'll see, but targeted, focusing on new issues. First, I moved my point of view up into the ship hierarchy, thinking about how much or better, how little contact it might have with central command, and may have happened at that level prior to play (inspired by what has happened in play). I prepared a little names list to pop onto NPCs as they arrived in play, a technique I developed long ago and formalized in Trollbabe.
More generally, this means that I shifted fully into an establishing mode of play rather than a vignette mode. What gets depicted is no longer off-the-cuff satire, but information that can be built upon; also, retroactively, various vignette or "whatever" information is now incorporated into what might be thought of as setting. The main ones I had in mind were the captured advanced humanoid from the first mission, the military intelligence interrogations (and deal with Deet), and Callahan, the target of the rogue-troopers mission.
In this and several other threads, there seems to be a lot of jostling, grunting, and maybe whining about how the book doesn't help with this stage of play. I say, Fie! Aren't you the guys who filled eighteen spiral-bound notebooks with fantasy setting material back in the day? Didn't you used to prep eighty-eight NPCs and lovingly detailed encounters? Are you really telling me that you don't know how to prepare setting material, and are limited strictly and only by explicit instructions in the book? Fie again. I simply don't believe you can't do this.
For me, certain parts of the book really helped with the process: page 43, Re-incorporation; page 48, It's not about the missions; and the color text on page 77.
I also got to thinking about every planet description: come up with a way to screw them through NFA rolls - communication, armor, damage, whatever - players agreed enthusiastically that the radiation planet, for instance, should have simply required an NFA roll between every encounter to avoiding taking a flat kill, period.
I began the session with a nondescript fellow wandering into the barracks and trying to zap Kowalski with a little gizmo. He turned out to be Fritz, an M.I. guy, trying out something they'd developed by studying the live alien from the first mission. A few hijinks ensued, with Gunther managing to alienate both Kowalski and Fritz, but getting his mitts on the gizmo for himself.
I also spent some time with Gunther in a higher-level briefing that shows how the brass pick planets for assault. Basically, they have this big 3-D virtual graphic floating over the conference table, showing where this sector of space is "controlled" by Terran forces and where it's not. Their logic is basically like a big Othello game, trying to extend or connect areas of control in terms of "this system's going black if we don't stop it," and stuff like that, with no reference whatsoever to what the actual creatures on any actual planet are actually doing. In this case, the star system in question, if pacified, would allow them to connect one "controlled' areas and thus effectively be like turning a whole Othello row into your color. It's bullshit, of course, because it's not like the real creatures in the different systems talk to one another or anything, but the brass take this very seriously.
None of that is any good for a casus belli, especially since the satellite imagery from this system was incredibly preliminary and vague, so they huffed and puffed about that for a while, eventually coming up with the idea that these bugs might have concealed secret weapons. After all, since we don't know what they are exactly, they could be anything or have anything! "We can't risk it!" The point being that all the troopers' assigned missions are pretty much spin.
Here's what the rolls gave us: artificial life-forms (robots, I decided) on the desert planet who ignore wounds. No problem! Images of slender but nigh-indestructible Bedouin-style horsemen leaped to mind. I-Robot of Arabia. I also chose to say that the desert gunks up armor, requiring periodic NFA rolls to keep it from becoming useless.
This mission was marred by something very unusual for our group, which is to say, extremely annoying rules discussions. Not only did several rules-bits elude our understanding, but they also happened to work together in relevant ways, so that if we decided to put X behind us and move on, it crept around and ambushed us when we were coping with Y. Here they are:
- Ignore Wounds - does this merely ignore kills or does it keep the alien's Threat Tokens safe from removal as well? (the former seems trivial; the latter seems horrifically powerful although I like it)
- Movement tactics based on successful kills
- The APC, especially getting in and out, and moving around before or after the rolls in an encounter, and when you move vs. when the APC moves
- The "go first, screw you all" tactic, meaning the first successful roller can cancel everyone else's successes
Although beleaguered by hair-pulling rules consultation and debates, our SIS survived throughout, and the APC limped through desert battles with robot horsemen and bad terrain, with troopers hanging off it or relaxing to eat shitty rations in its shade. The special ability hammered'em hard! I particularly liked the part where the APC was blasted nearly to smithereens and Kowalski got jostled all over the place and couldn't get the gizmo working. There was little doubt that the final encounter was going to take some PC lives.
At that point, given Chris' interest in the planets and "bugs" themselves, I tossed in a bit of parley. Now, given the rules, this is interesting - we all know as participants that the planet/mission had to end with more combat. If they took up the robot envoy's offer of alliance against the crazed, expansionist, genocidal robot "tribe," that wouldn't mean anything for the actual risk the characters faced in mechanical terms, although they might get some interesting NFA opportunities. But the players latched onto the chance actually to do something morally right with Terran military force like they were seizing redemption itself.
Of course it turned out horrible and operatic, for which I can only credit the other players. Even as Kowalski and Deet decided that the envoy robot's offer of alliance seemed like an excellent idea and succeeded in the necessary rolls, Gunther called in an orbital strike! It all hinged on Tim K stating that Gunther was deliberately sneaking off to do it, too, and my small but apparently crucial call for an NFA roll to accomplish the sneaking. It was a huge plot hinge, because the other two would certainly have dogpiled him or worse to prevent it. He made that roll as well as the one for the strike itself. The final narration involved Kowalski having to be pulled back onto the shuttle, screaming and kicking, trying to convince the envoy robot to come back with them even as it's engulfed in missile-spawned inferno, with its searing glance of fatalistic contempt burning into his soul.
I thought it was interesting that they've butchered any number of living beings but got especially weepy about robots. Chris was right. Even a teeny bit of interaction goes a long way.
Much to Deet's and Kowalski's horror and self-contempt, the squad came home to a hero's welcome for its victory and they even got a parade through the ship's corridors. I really didn't expect Gunther to live much longer after that.
This time, Gunther brought Deet to the higher-up briefing (as he knew Deet was the real brains in the outfit), making his NFA roll to convince the brass he could (they called sergeants "pigs on two feet"). I had decided long ago to give the advanced humanoid the run of the ship, wandering around while no one notices it, and this time it was sitting among all the generals and whatnot at the conference table, its long neck swaying slightly as it watched with interest. Tim K reacted much as he does in nearly all our games, having Gunther whip out his side-arm and plug it between the eyes. Of course, no one had known it was there until it hit the deck (Tim actually hadn't realized the reverse, that the brass didn't know), and to everyone's astonishment, Gunther was now lauded as a hero!
Not that this was anything to be happy about in the long run. The brass decided that Gunther was just the man to lead the assault on the next planet, where several missions had already been sent and never returned. In the Othello strategic game, this planet was the opposite of the last: no imaginable connection to any other "resistance." Of course, in brass-logic, that meant that it was a "pocket of infection" that had to be cleansed. This time, their casus belli was that the vanished soldiers must be prisoners of war, suffering who knows what torture at the hands of the bugs, so this mission would be all about rescue.
I rolled furry artists in the dense atmosphere who can end encounters, and decided they were like big saucers with cat faces on their leading edge, who floated in the dense atmosphere by big wave actions and rippling their fur like cilia. (I borrowed the term "flat cat" from an old Heinlein novel, although my creatures weren't much like his.) They could turn edge-on to attackers and effectively vanish that way. We didn't do any direction interaction with them as with the robots, but for some reason the players liked them and their hippy rock-carving artist deal. I had the final encounter be all about the flat cats trying to protect their most precious carving.
I did decree that the dense atmosphere did something, but I don't remember what. Anyway, although I managed to ravage the players pretty badly with plain old damage, I also got badly hosed by the dice and never managed to get a lock onto a roll-combo in which the ability would be useful. (Aarrrgh, dammit, I just realized something which is probably obvious to anyone reading this. With End Encounter, I could have forced many more NFA-based confrontations with the planet itself. Oh well. Two gears were turning just fine by themselves, but I failed to see how they should mesh.)
After the last encounter, the players had no intention of leaving the planet until some business was concluded. Deet led a little mutiny in order to execute Gunther. We learned an important lesson: Flashbacks matter a lot. Boy, you really have to work at killing another player-character, don't you? Everyone survived with their hatreds turned up even hotter.
This mission did mark the fall of Gunther's rising star, though. Afterwards, given his use of a Weakness and various rolls, he was actually demoted ("What, no POWs?!") and basically, none of the characters are happy with their lives or with each other. Tensions are quite high and murder is on everyone's mind. We're loving it. I'm betting that people will start reserving Flashbacks for confrontations with one another instead of with the aliens, and that sounds like fun too.
And yes, the personality profiles are starting to look extremely clear. It's great how each Trait only has a mechanical effect when it's invented, but afterwards, the current combination of Traits acts as inspiration for future actions and decisions. It's as if the Trait rules actually have two steps: (1) crisis, Flashback, revelation about a Trait, significant in-story impact; then (2) portrait of the Trait in its combination with other Traits, consequences of each one's use (e.g. rank, but also less tangible things as acted upon by the GM and other players), and the cumulative, ever-changing effect this portrait has on subsequent actions and Trait inventions. Or to put it most clearly, there is no mechanical reason for Chris to use or even to stay consistent with Deet's Weakness "can't kill kids," but the fact is, he and everyone else simply want to. The simplest version would be to avoid killing kids later (and for that to be useful for a given situation on-mission), but it's also just as powerful if in fact in some situation he did kill children - for instance, in the choice Chris might make about identifying the next Trait.
H'mm ... I wonder, is it possible, that later in play, given long-running characters such as we have here, that Flashbacks might even be logically situated in previous missions that we've actually played? Nifty!
One thing that has never been too clear to me is, who else is on a given mission. So far I've tweaked things such that Gunther has always been in charge, but that's becoming quite artificial. Is there some default concept for what rank typically commands a mission, how many troops there are, and so on? Is it normal or usual for the commanding officer of a mission to be an NPC? It may be that I simply missed this material in the book. However, it's OK if the answer is "make it up yourself," and if that's so, then I need to do that too. Also, as a related point, I'm never sure that I'm playing/managing all the other guys on a mission properly. Basically, I just use'em to illustrate hazards, the hard way, and also to provide some running commentary that either reflects tensions among the player-characters or adds some editorializing or plays up the basic ignorance of the Terran grunt. A couple of them have been given names by the players, like the techie guy, Sparks.
One plan I have for next week is actually to design the ship, using the excellent principles outlined in the game Extreme Vengeance. It's not really a map so much as a sketchy arrows-based diagram for "if you're here, what's nearby, and where can you get" use during play.
Hey, you know what other rule we've been completely ignoring out of ignorance and poor text-leadership on my part? Forcing Weakness, which in my defense is hidden 'way in the back of the book. I think it's about time to point that out to everyone else.
Best, Ron
Gregor Hutton:
Thanks Ron! Here are some answers.
- Ignore Wounds - does this merely ignore kills or does it keep the alien's Threat Tokens safe from removal as well? (the former seems trivial; the latter seems horrifically powerful although I like it)
I think my intention was the latter. I'm OK with the former since the PCs defeat the encounter but don't get kills for it, but I'm sure I meant for it to be about hard to defeat opponents. It's a sister ability to Regeneration (where the PCs do get to keep the kills caused). This is one where I'd like to have added a few more words to the description (and I will when I fix some things in the text at a future point):
Ignore Wounds
A resolute species, these aliens can ignore grievous wounds and continue fighting. The GM spends a Threat Token and any kills caused in the current combat round are ignored, and the Threat Tokens are not removed. Successful PCs do not add any kills to their total as the beasts keep attacking them and do not die."
My intention is that by sacrificing a single Threat Token the GM does not allow any other Threat Tokens to be removed this round. So, a combat could (in theory) be all about that final Threat Token in the encounter, but let it ride when he sees only one PC being successful in a round. I figured there would be a bit of cat and mouse as players switched to doing NFA things rather than confronting such a Threat using FA en masse.
- Movement tactics based on successful kills
Kill then move. If you act before the aliens you can move. If the aliens act before you then they can move you. If you act on the same number you can't move relative to each other (or cancel each other). PCs can only move other PCs if they are "opponents", which rarely might happen.
- The APC, especially getting in and out, and moving around before or after the rolls in an encounter, and when you move vs. when the APC moves
The APC is part of the driver, it moves and fires on his turn. Anyone else can get out on their own turn (before or after it moves, depending on how they rolled). I didn't write it in, but I figured that to get back into the APC you'd have to fictionally be there at the door or whatever, and mechanically at the same range.
- The "go first, screw you all" tactic, meaning the first successful roller can cancel everyone else's successes
I saw this used tactically by PCs this weekend against my aliens. When I was going to cripple most of the party the best (or second-best) PC would sacrifice their success for cancelling everyone else and the aliens.
Three points to note with cancelling: (i) you don't succeed on your own stuff and then cancel everyone else -- you actually make yourself and everyone after you fail, (ii) three rounds of cancelling (or no kills) leads to the encounter ending formally as a stand-off. When you're backed against a wall this can be a good way to end an encounter. (iii) Ties can't cancel each other, so if the aliens or two opposing PCs roll the same number cancelling isn't an option.
Oh, the thing that the book never revisits after Character Generation is Reputation. I wondered if people might organically change them based on their Flashbacks or (as I think has more commonly happened) your Rep just becomes lensed by subsequent Flashbacks. Oh, you're _that sort_ of pig.
Lance D. Allen:
Some of this may be "No shit, Lance." but I'll try to give you an idea of how "real life" works in respect to who's in charge.
We'll start with Battalion Level. A battalion usually has its own sector of responsibility, and reports to the brigade. Brigade, mostly, keeps it's nose out of the Battalions' business except to tell them what their missions are.
Battalion takes the mission allocated to it by brigade and subdivides it further into main efforts, supporting efforts and reinforcing efforts. It then sets one of it's subordinate companies as the main effort, and gives them their mission. Same deal for reinforcing and supporting efforts. This typically means that the main effort gets priority on any extras, such as fire support, surveillance, etc. In 3:16, this could be simulated by giving bonuses or penalties to NFA rolls to call in E-Vac or Orbital Bombardment, etc. Or not. Whatever.
Company is where the ground fighting really happens. Your BN CDR is typically not going to actually see any combat, unless he's too stupid to stay where he can C&C the battle, or if the enemy overruns his command post. The company commander will usually be behind his line platoons with a headquarters element, but he's very likely to be able to see the combat with his own eyes, giving him direct command and control over his platoons.
Platoon leaders are typically your actual battle-leaders. They're firing their own weapons on a moderately regular basis. They're the ones shouting orders into radios and sending up reports to the company commander.
Squad leaders, your Sergeants, are the ones who are making the split-second decisions. These guys are being shot at, firing their own weapons continuously, pulling their wounded back and pushing their troopers forward. They make the hard decisions in the moment, where even the PLs have comparative leisure to analyze the overall situation.
So what this means in terms of "who else is out there" is this: If you're a Squad leader, expect that the other squads in your platoon will be moving in the same area, engaging the same targets and hitting the same objective as you. If you're a platoon leader, you may be the company main effort, and the other (typically 2) platoons will be supporting or reinforcing you, or you'll being filling one of those roles for someone else.
If you're the company commander, You're going to be having (typically)3 platoons moving in your AO that you're in command of. You maneuver them as units, not as individual men. To your left and right, you'll have other companies that you'll be in supporting/main/reinforcing relationships with, much like your subordinate platoons, but for the most part, you don't think about them unless they fail to do what they're supposed to do. If they're doing their jobs, then you can focus entirely on your company.
If you're the BC, you're not likely even on the planet. You're probably sitting in your cushy commander's chair, watching movements on the map, yelling at your staffers for reports, and making command decisions. It's not your job to coordinate your companies, it's your decision to make decisions based on the evolving situation. Able Company is getting hammered? Send in Bravo to save their asses. Brigade has just sent you a change in priority target? Able's the main effort, but Charlie's closer, so now Charlie is the main effort.
Now, that's the way the U.S. Army works, translated into how it might work with the 3:16. Obviously for this particular setting you're going to have to toss in some twisted dysfunction (as opposed to the more normal dysfunction that happens in any large group of people) like Protocol Alpha, interrogations and suicide missions. But this may help as a basis. If you want actual numbers, I can hammer that out for ya too, but 3:16 isn't typically about solid numbers.
Callan S.:
Heh, have people been tossing in/adding twisted dysfunctions, or...?
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page
[*] Previous page