Starship Commandos – Getting it Done

Mjolnir Assault Armour from Halo Nation

Reporting in from the first playtest of Starship Commandos. It went very well. It was mostly story until the last 30 minutes, when the crew met their first xenomorphs. It just so happened one of the team triggered an electro-static discharge of immense proportions that created an EMP and the team faced the xenomorphs during the 30 second re-boot of their power armour.

Oh, and someone dropped a grenade.

So there was a lot of blood, a lot of bad dice rolls, and a lot of fear. In the end, everyone survived. But, boy, it really did get Aliens there for a bit.

There are going to be a fair number of changes to the system. Not how it works, but some of the specifics, like how many dice are rolled and success level target numbers. I’ve also figured out lethality and how it can be dialed up or down.

So, very much a success.

You can read more about Starship Commandos here.

UGS v. Military: Death and Injury

In talking about adapting UGS for military games – which includes both Starship Commandos and A Team of Losers – I mentioned the need for resource management. Another part of resource management that is very important but which I did not mention is ammunition.

"Tactical Air Control" by IMK
“Tactical Air Control” by IMK

In my games so far, there has never been any question of equipment or ammunition – it is always assumed the character has what the character needs or what the player wants the character to have. That doesn’t work for military games. Planning and preparation are important aspects, and part of that is having the proper equipment, so it’s important that players need to make choices, and those choices can lead to negative consequences.

Ammunition is key in this. You do not want to be a soldier who has run out of ammo. Now, in most teams, a teammate will give you a magazine, but that’s a drain on a teammate’s resources, and that might put that teammate at risk. This is one reason trained military don’t spray and pray. Automatic fire suppresses the enemy by making them seek cover, but you pick your shots and make them count.

As Hicks says, short, controlled bursts.

Skydiver by Dean Martin
Skydiver by Dean Martin

Adapting UGS to a military game is more than just a matter of  resource management. The threat of injury is a constant for a soldier in a hostile environment. A military game requires a way for players to be hurt and possibly killed. Now, I am not a fan of killing off characters. Characters are a player’s main tool for agency in the game, and removing that character – even if it means the player can drop in a new character – gives the message that the player’s agency is subordinate to the GM’s, and that is not how I want my games to work.

Further, players are invested in games through their characters. If the players cycle through characters, their investment in the game is weakened. Unless you are playing a light-hearted, beer and pretzels game, you want your players invested, because that makes them take in-game threats seriously, creating tension and excitement.

Given all this, the threat of character death still needs to be there. I cheat in SC and AToL, as right now, PCs can one-shot kill NPCs, but NPCs cannot do the same to PCs. That’s a cheat, and if I can figure out a clean and simple way to expand the rule to PCs, I will. Right now, I think the threat of real damage and possible death will be enough.

These are some of the additions I’ve made to UGS to create a military version, both futuristic and modern.

You can find the earlier article here.

You can find UGS here.

Starship Commandos: An Example Character

In case you were wondering where I was putting my energies since the Nefertiti Overdrive Kickstarter failed to fund, I’m actually working on a quickstart package for Nefertiti Overdrive which I hope will lead to a second and successful Kickstarter. Also, I’m working on Starship Commandos and A Team of Losers, which I’m in the midst of getting ready for testing with my group.

Halo Commando Armour from Halo Nation

Just in case you are interested, you can see an example character below. How does the game work? It’s pretty simple. Here are the basics – the very basics:
1) The players state – in whatever order they prefer – their character’s intentions.
2) In the order of the players’ choosing, the players gather dice provided by their characters’ Qualities and roll those dice. The player may add a bonus from one applicable Element.
3) The result of the roll is compared to the Success Level.
4) If the result of the roll is 6 or lower, one of the Qualities the character used is lowered by one die type and the character receives either Damage (if Physical was used) or Stress (if Mental or Social were used).
5) If the result of the roll is 7 or higher but lower than the Success Level required, one of the Qualities the character used is lowered by one die type, and the GM narrates the failure.
6) If the character succeeds, the player narrates the outcome, which follows from the character’s stated intention.

And the character:

Sgt. Cara Cooper, Designated Marksman

Traits
Mental d12; Physical d10; Social d8

Training
Scout-Sniper d12; Long-Range Reconnaissance d10; Undercover d8; Lived Experience d6

Harness
J25S Long-Range Reconnaissance
Stealth d12; Long-Range Sensors d10; Indirect Fire Support d8

Elements
Quiet Professional +3; Hunter +3; Patient +2

Pivots
Guardian Angel (Cooper won’t let her team go out without her – she needs to protect them), Buy the Farm (She’s always talking about the farm in the country she’s going to buy when she retires), and Never the Innocent (Cooper will not target non-combatants, Ever).

Primary Equipment (17)
Mk 19 Mod 0 enhanced battle rifle, Effective range is 1,500 m. Wt: 5 kg. Magazine 40 cartridges (40 shots) with removable suppressor (2)
J22 personal protection weapon, Effective range is 90 m. Wt: 1 kg. Magazine 15 cartridges (15 shots) with removable suppressor (2)
J25S Long-Range Reconnaissance Harness (grey), including body armour, helmet with head’s up display and flashlight, load-bearing equipment, tactical radio, hydration system, personal data device, and watch

Accessible (total weight 12)
Bayonet (1); Chemlights, 5 (0.5); Field Pack (1.5); First Aid dressing and pouch (1.5); Flex cuff, package of 25 (0.5); Fragmentation grenades, 4 (2); Identification Tags (Dog Tags); Iodine tablets; Lensatic Compass (0.5); Magazines, weapon 6 (3); Magazines, sidearm 2 (1); Multi-tool (0.5); Notebook and pen

In Field Pack (total weight 15.5)
Ammunition, weapon 150 rounds (2); Ammunition, sidearm 50 rounds (1.5); Canteens, 2 (3); Clothing, two changes (1); Meals, Ready to Eat, 6 days (4.5); Personal hygiene kit; Sleeping Bag (2); Sleeping pad (0.5); Weapon Cleaning Kit (1)

Turning UGS Into a Military Game

I’ve discussed the design philosophy behind UGS, but Starship Commandos and A Team of Losers derive from UGS rather than being UGS straight up. There are different needs for both of these games, though their needs are similar enough that I have developed them almost in tandem.

Both Starship Commandos and A Team of Losers are military games – in SC you are playing marines of the 121 MARSOC (Marines Special Operations Capable) in the year 2164 while in AToL, you are playing operators of an unnamed special operations force deployed to Central Asia – and military games have their own specific needs that UGS rules as written does not cover.

Advancing through the foliage
In the Foliage by Dean Martin

Military games by their very nature pretty much require resource management to be an important facet. Let me be clear, I am talking about military games rather than action games with a military setting. I’m talking Black Hawk Down vs. . . . wait, I can’t think of a good counter-example. Huh.

Anyway, if you talk to most soldiers who have been outside the wire, on patrol or in combat missions, weight and kit are the two mission parameters that seem to dominate their thoughts. In Black Hawk Down there is a great scene as the Rangers are preparing for their mission where Grimes, a desk monkey heading out into the Mog for the first time, is dissuaded from taking the equipment he actually needs – the rear trauma plate for his body armour and his night vision device – because they’re too heavy. Later, we see a Ranger shot in the back, where his trauma plate might have saved his life. Then the Rangers and Delta Force are forced to overnight in strong points, when NVDs would have been really helpful.

SOF by Dean Martin
SOF by Dean Martin

Therefore I need to include equipment and common load-outs for SC and AToL. Along with simple lists, this stuff needs to be explained. What is a Lensatic Compass? What is the difference between a first aid kit and a medical trauma kit? What do I care if I have the gun that weighs 12 kg rather than the one that weighs 2.5?

And once you have equipment, you need to provide limits – a key part of resource management. I’m doing this through weight. The weight and encumbrance rules are pretty simple, but they add a level of complexity I generally like to avoid. Still, to me, resource management is one of the keys for a military game.

There is yet more, but this post is already going long. Stick around if you want to meet a Starship Commandos character.

You can find the discussion of designing UGS here.

You can find the UGS rules here.

Untitled Game System First Draft

Remember how I said I was looking at different games to run for my group? We had a tie between Starship Commandos (Aliens meets REH’s Starship Troopers) and A Team of Losers (the Losers comic and recent A-Team meet the TV series Supernatural). So I’m going to develop a game for each of these. I have the background system (which will be adapted for each campaign) finished, and it’s only 4 pages long.

There’s been no playtesting, so this is totally first draft, version one, uber-rough, but it’s free right now.

You can find the system here.

The game ideas are here.

And my inspiration:

Aliens

Starship Troopers

the Losers

the A-Team

Supernatural

Forward!

While Nefertiti Overdrive didn’t fund, I’m pretty sure I’m not just going to let it lie. I love this game. I love the experience around the table. I want to get this out there to people who got excited over it only to watch it die. So, no promises, but I am definitely exploring ways to pursue a release of Nefertiti Overdrive.

But very soon my home group in Ottawa will be completing the Nefertiti Overdrive campaign and we will be moving on to something else. I hope that this will be something that I might also be able to crowd-fund, but that’s getting a few steps ahead.

Right now, my group is mulling over the three options I offered. Those options only have working titles, and they are all more or less mash-ups, kind of like Nefertiti Overdrive was a mash-up of sword & sandal and wire-fu.

The three options are:

1) The Free Lances: the Black Company meets Shogun – the PCs are the foreign bodyguards of the Necromancer Queen who need to protect her from her husband, returning from the grave and siphoning off her powers.

2) A Team of Losers: the recent A-Team movie and the Losers comics meets Supernatural – the PCs are a spec ops force conducting foreign internal defence in the Central Asian Republic of Albenistan when everything gets all paranormal.

3) Starship Commandos: Heinlein’s Starship Troopers meets Aliens – the PCs are Colonial Rangers, tip of the spear light infantry utilizing the state-of-the-art powered armour known as Harnesses, sent down to the planet of Logan’s Cross which has unexpectedly gone completely dark.

I’ll let you know which one my group picks. You never know, I might have plans for the others games as well.