Help with Alien Wars

[starblaze]

Hi,

 

I was wondering if anyone could help me with some pointers on how to run a Military Science Fiction RPG. I really had fun running Alien Wars last Sunday and would like to do it again. However, I am relatively inexperienced at running a Sci-Fi game, I haven't done anything like this since I played Traveller in the 80's. If someone could show me some links and tell me a little of your experiences in running this kind of campaign it would be greatly appreciated.

 

Thank you

[Ranxerox]

Re: Help with Alien Wars

 

Hi. I run a play by post Alien Wars campaign over at Hero Central. This certainly doesn't make me an expert on the subject of running one but I have at least given the subject some thought.

 

My advice get the players out of their starships as often as possible. Battlecruiser versus battlecruiser combat is only interesting to the person playing the captain, and it is hard to mimic a 3-dimensional dogfight on a flat table top. Therefore your best bet is get your players fighting the xenovores face to ugly face whenever possible.

 

In the early part of the war this means a lot of sabotage and rescue missions as the characters try to save lives while slowing the xenovore advance. Think spacestations, colonized asteroid belts, ice moons and planetside for your adventure locations. The characters should be adhoc groups of the 'best of the best' which have been thrown together and told to get along so that they can fight this new enemy.

 

Campaigns later in the war should be largely planetside as the characters fight to take back planets from the xenoes and eventually push to take the fight to the xenovore homeworld. Most missions will revolve around taking out hard targets and and securing locations. Unlike early war campaigns the characters will all probably belong to a single branch of the service which limits character concepts a bit. To make up for this, they should have access to better hardware and have more opportunities to kick butt.

 

My $0.02

[CourtFool]

Another plug for roleplayingtips.com

 

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Tips On Designing General Sci-Fi Locations

[gamerz123]

Re: Help with Alien Wars

 

Agree with Ranxerox, would add.

 

Characters in later-stage campaigns (such as the module Rescue at Karadonna) tend to be from the same service. That's why I put in as varied character backgrounds as possible. You're dealing with an area that was once occupied, so it's easier to use character histories as sub-plot hooks.

 

I'd give characters access to heavier weapons, but make sure to pace it out and incorporate the occasional rank promotion to help justify access to the hardware. I do believe that the text already states militaries expand their numbers so much that an officer rank (such as colonel) who would never be considered "font-line" during peacetime could be commanding on-the-ground (as the colonels at the start of the war were promoted to general, the majors to colonels, etc....)

 

In early Alien Wars games, you had major supply and production issues and characters are often in the situation where their firepower is significantly reduced for a time or even the rest of the campaign. In the later part of the War, you're looking at massive production capabilities with the main problems being transportation logistics and time.

 

Another topic is campaign lethality. Sending characters on one 'suicide' mission after the other and all of the PCs survive (Most SF TV series which have a war plot) generates a completely different feel from a campaign in which a 'suicide' mission means many or most of the players will have to generate new characters for next week's game (ie. The Dirty Dozen, Saving Private Ryan). Either one works, but it's best to be consistent with it. Note also that the examples I could think off the top of my head of low-lethality are series where high-lethality are one-shot movies. Of course, if you know that a low-lethality campaign is truly coming to an end and the players are all in agreement that the campaign should come to a conclusion, you could always pull a switcheroo and get some great dramatic roleplaying out of it, but do that ONLY if you really know your group and know that they will be okay with it.

 

In addition to the movies above, if you have access to Netflix, a few suggestions: Firefly (Excellent series, but the Pilot and War Stories in Particular. This is THE series to watch if you're going to run a campaign that follows the characters after the end of the Xenovore War.), Babylon 5: Season 2, "GROPOS" (Episode 32 overall, 10th of Season 2), "All Quiet on the Western Front," "The Pianist" (feel of someone in occupied territory), "The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly", "Kelly's Heroes," and of course, "Starship Troopers." "Titan AE" gives a view you don't see often and is appropriate for many situations: humans are on the bottom of things.

[starblaze]

Re: Help with Alien Wars

 

You were the author!?

 

Cool. I really liked running that scenario. I particulary liked the way you handled the pregens. I do however, have one question and one request.

 

The question is will you be writing more modules like this?

AND

Can you please put in a write up of talents on the pregens that don't appear in the Core Rulebook? I don't own either Fantasy Hero or Dark Champions and therefore did not know what certain talents that some of the pregens had such as combat shooting and fearless.

 

Other than that it was definitely worth the $4.

[gamerz123]

Re: Help with Alien Wars

 

You were the author!?

 

Cool. I really liked running that scenario. I particulary liked the way you handled the pregens. I do however, have one question and one request.

 

The question is will you be writing more modules like this?

AND

Can you please put in a write up of talents on the pregens that don't appear in the Core Rulebook? I don't own either Fantasy Hero or Dark Champions and therefore did not know what certain talents that some of the pregens had such as combat shooting and fearless.

 

Other than that it was definitely worth the $4.

 

Hi Starblaze,

 

Thanks for the favorable review.

 

Actually: author, editor, layout, cartography, cover artist, etc.....

 

Darren and I discuss the licensing contract, then Steve reviews the manuscript once it is finished and either suggests or requires changes, unless it's got real issues and needs a complete re-write.

 

I'm hoping to publish about one a month once I really get the hang of it and work kinks out of my process. Various genres, but my personal preference as a GM is Science Fiction, so there will probably be more of those than others.

 

I'll do my best to keep talents and skills to only 5ER and the core genre book for a particular module. (It's one of those things you only realize after someone tells you. )

 

Tom