The Regiment: Colonial Marines

My buddy Ryan Dunleavy wanted to run the Regiment for our Thursday game, and since we're both huge fans of ALIENS, we thought it would be fun to set it in that universe. Here's the result!

http://mightyatom.blogspot.com/2013/01/the-regiment-colonial-marines.html

This is v2.2 of The Regiment, with a couple new rules ideas: death moves, and a "cinematic death" option (like taking a debility in Apocalypse World). They're a good fit for ALIENS, but are not official for the standard Regiment rules yet. We'll see.

UPDATES FOR ARCHIVE PURPOSES:

Version 2.5: http://mightyatom.blogspot.com/2013/02/the-regiment-colonial-marines-25.html

Sweet!

Nice!

A few questions/comments.

1. I take it you intend to publish a WWII themed 2.2 as well?  Even so, I'd love to see a change log of the base mechanical differences.  It looks like healing has changed a bit, and I think VOF text has been consolidated somewhat.  I'm intrigued by the 'second character' advancement option!

2. Will you still be able to publish Aliens-themed stuff once you start selling?  (Like, do the copyright gnolls start getting antsy?)

3. I would love love love a few nods in the direction of more setting-neutral sci-fi.  Colonial marines trying to hold off the surprisingly well armed martian settlers until they can repair their downed dropship would be a blast.  I think a couple more weapons and vehicles would be enough - perhaps something lasery just for lasers' sake.  (Man-portable recon drones, target designation lasers, a few goofy nonlethal options.)

4. Smartguns are awesome.  I love the IFF tag!  (Does the IFF work with xenos, give their thermal invisibility?)

5. As soon as I saw the Dropship, I thought of crash damage!  (Occurs to me a simple way of doing it would be for each vehicle to have a crash weapon that it inflicts on itself - obviously dropships are going to suffer horribly in a crash, while tanks that can barely hit 50 kph are going to fare a little differently.)

Very, very cool!

I will try to play this asap.

Per

Answers!

1. Yeah, some stuff will make it into the standard Regiment. I'll make a changelog when I post an update.

2. Nope. It's just fan work right now, but it'll have to be generic "space marines" if it's part of a for-sale thing.

3. Yeah, I agree.

4. So far yes! That was a relief.

5. Ah, interesting idea.

For what it's worth, the FAA specifies 9g "emergency landing loads" for equipment design. Basically, if it's a crash a human might survive, then the equipment and the safety features have to remain intact (or contained) following a crash. Nothing has to work after a crash, except for the crash-survivable flight data recorder ("black box") and emergence locator transmitter.

For what it's worth, I think it would be cool to frame a drop ship crash in terms of...

When your drop ship goes down, roll +lucky.
*Easy down - on a 10+, crew and passengers take 4 dice incidental fire. Sensitive equipment is on the blink; but, recoverable.
*Rough landing - on a 7-9, crew and passengers take 4 dice direct fire. Sensitive equipment is inop; but, most systems are salvageable to at least some degree.
*Hard crash - on a miss, crew and passengers take 4 dice concentrated fire. Equipment is inop; but, parts might be scavenged.

Playing this with 3 players on Saturday (G+ Hangouts) - I haven't played the Regiment before, so any comforting advice or guidance is most welcome.

Due to the slow medium, I was hoping to convince the players to pick characters before the session, and have PCs and order of battle sorted via messages, so we can jump straight into the action. Kosher?

My advice would be this:

- Imagine and describe what the PCs are seeing and sensing.  Avoid thinking of it like a gridless, top-down strategy game.

- In battle, you never have as clear a picture of the battlefield as you'd like.  Call for Assess a lot.  Even if there's no facehugger hiding in the light fixture, making players ask for information reinforces the idea that - in the heat of things - the time to absorb the environment is a precious commodity, and comes at a cost.

- Don't be afraid to hurt them.  Grit, tough, death moves, bond stress, and the medic's whole playbook only come into play when PCs are taking damage.  The game hits its stride when characters are being chewed up and spit out.

Fuseboy - that's good advice. I'd expand on the last bullet to say that you throw fire at them whenever the potential for harm is fictionally established. Don't wait for them to miss on a move.

When it comes to the order of battle, the GM can do that in prep. The order of battle could be a collaborative thing or the GM can just dictate it -- if the GM has something specific in mind, just dictate it.

Characters' names, looks, moves, stats, etc. can be worked out in advance. But, do bonds at the table.

If you're looking for more, you can check out the WWII Regiment actual play write-ups here: <http://enigmamachinations.wordpress.com/2012/05/29/the-regiment-ap-operation-market-garden-session-1/>

Super helpful, thanks guys. I've read the WW2 writeups, but perhaps I should revisit them.

Paul: "...throw fire at them whenever the potential for harm is fictionally established. Don't wait for them to miss on a move."

Can you give an AP example - or a made-up one?

Per

GM: You jump out of the landing craft onto the beach.  You hear the rattle of machine gun fire, and wads of wet sand are tossed into the air all around you.

PC: I shout at my men, telling them to get up that bloody beach as fast as possible.

GM: Sounds like a rally, to me.

PC: I roll 10, a hit.  [The benefits are noted.]

GM: Okay, as you're shouting.  The machine gun fire rakes your platoon.  Everyone take [rolls 3D6] two stress.  You're all suppressed.

Bingo!

I played a game on Saturday night. It was good fun, even for one player who was not especially enthused at the beginning (I think he was engaged as soon as he got started generating his synthetic, who turned out to be immensely effective and often insubordinate).

The game ran well, although I felt that the large number of tactical moves weren't much needed in an Aliens-style scenario.

Interestingly, they only encountered a single xenomorph warrior: the marines' initial bullishness instantly disappeared when they discovered the situation was rather more complicated than intelligence suggested. After that, they relied on caution interspersed with rapid maneuver to try and keep their human enemies on the back foot, and then managed to seal the xenos into one section of the base with the human foes. They made a rapid raid into that section to secure their objectives - that was where they saw and instantly blew away a warrior. That scared them enough that they were out of there ASAP.

Oh, and one more particularly cruel note. Civilians who weren't on the "to be saved" list just got told "head outside, a transport will be there for you soon". Cold.

Cool! Thanks for trying it out.

I agree that the game is still a notch too far on the complex side. I'm making some streamlining changes based on playing the Aliens version for a few weeks.