[Alien Hunter X] Planned Classes

So, after having a sit down and fleshing things out a bit more, I've ended up with a large selection of classes. Ultimately, not every team will end up with access to every class (And honestly, i'm considering making a chunk of them 'Choose one or the Other') and I suspect many teams will end up with multiples of the same classes on Missions...

"The Soldier"

A trained military agent, skilled with most weapons and trained in modern warfare tactics. They specialise in improving their own equipment to get the most out of it every mission. They like to keep things by the books - Minimising loss of life and ensuring the safety of civilians.

"The Insurgent"

A human freedom fighter, someone who has lost because of the Invasion and refuses to go quietly into the night. Due to their lack of military training and often their lack of effective small arms, Insurgents have learned how to best ambush the aliens. They're dangerous mavericks who often cause a lot of collateral, especially when alien troop composition calls for something with a little more 'Bang' to take down...

"The Field Researcher"

As much as the Organisation would like to keep their eggheads safely behind walls away from where valuable intelligence can be shot, chewed or mangled, sometimes a researcher needs to head into the field to test new equipment or to gather valuable data that would never survive the journey back to the lab. Field Researchers are less hardy than actual soldiers, but should they manage to make a discovery and get it back to the lab in one piece, the Organisation will benefit greatly.

"The Scientist"

The Scientist isn't exactly fit for combat. However, the Scientist is a genius civilian agent, one who doesn't take leaps of logic so much as boards the express logic flight to its final destination. Whilst wholly unsuited in a firefight, the Scientist excels at gathering information on the Invaders that can be put to good use by inventing dangerous new toys...

"The Technician"

The Technician is a technically minded military agent, one who has been trained to do his often mission critical non combat role under enemy fire. Capable of on-site equipment repairs as well as advanced entrenchment techniques, the Technician is a skilled engineer.

"The Mechanic"

The Mechanic probably misses the days spent in his garage, fixing his (human designed and constructed) personal vehicle. A specialist in vehicles of many kinds, the mechanic knows how to get the most out of a car or a truck, wether that be driving down Invaders on the city streets or rigging that bizzare alien motorbike to drive into the side of a building and detonate.

"The Field Medic"

The Field Medic's skills fall somewhere between soldier and doctor, an agent that has been trained to avoid enemy fire in order to patch up his fallen squadmates. More so than just being a walking first aid kit however, the Field Medic is also a capable combatant and is more than able to provide an area of safety for his injured team-mates.

"The Paramedic"

A civilian Paramedic might not seem like the ideal candidate to have on your squad, but sometimes you don't really get much choice. The Paramedic is fast, able to quickly identify injuries and problems on the field as well as bolt across open ground in order to get behind that cover that his friend just went down behind as bolts of sun-hot plasma fly past him.

"The Armed Civilians"

Armed Civilians are less of a single, solitary civilian fighter and more of a mob of angry people who have been given guns by the Organisation in order to help protect themselves against the Invaders. Whilst they might not have skill on their side, they have numbers by the shoveful, often having more members than the squad they are fighting beside. Theres allways one Civilian who leads the group, but its his friends that make it.

"The Infiltrator"

The Infiltrator is an expert at tactical espionage action, able to take down Invaders with CQC in almost absolute silence as well as sneaking into areas others would be spotted heading into in order to gain valuable intel, steal resources and data or just to kill a specific individual. All in all, theyre "Pretty Good"

And of course, where would X-com be without its Psionic Troopers, hulking Cybernauts and Gene-Spliced Agents of destruction?

I'll talk a little about those guys next update...

Alien Hunter X: The Insurgent

A new class for Alien Hunter X...

The Insurgent

The Insurgent has an entirely different play style to the Soldier, whilst retaining a fairly similar front-line fighter feel to it. Instead of military expertise, the Insurgent fights with cunning and the occasional vicious ambush.

Alien Hunter X: The Soldier (Finalised Sheet)

Yeah, that's right. I'm still alive.

My previous post **Coughsixmonthago** had a preview of the Soldier sheet!

After getting back into wanting to get this done, I finished off the sheet to a level that's ready to be play tested.

The Soldier Playbook

Tonight, i'm going to see about grabbing a bunch of people for some IRC gaming to playtest the current pile of nonsense I have in front of me.

I also tidied up some of the other stuff I've done, which you can find at the following links...

Mission Selection

Basic Moves

I... I think that without any long term plans for the moment that's all a player needs for the game, since it is a cribbing of the Powered by the Apocalypse system.

Now I just need to work out some sample invaders and I basically have all I need to...

Alien Hunter X: The Soldier Class Sneak Preview

Heres a little look at the start of the basic class "The Soldier."

The Soldier

Unlike most Powered by the Apocalypse games, theres no planned limitations on how many people can play any particular class. The soldier is your average X-Com Rookie!

Alien Hunter X: Missions

One thing that has always stuck in my mind when I've been thinking about AHX: I want a way to replicate the mission select options from the newer X-com games.

For those of you who havn't played, it roughly boils down to the following concepts:

Alien Abductions - Where the aliens are attempting to kidnap people and you have to kill/capture them
Terror Missions - Where the aliens are causing widespread destruction and mayhem in a small town in order to prove how useless the organization is at stopping them (to try and cut funding).
Landed UFO - Where the aliens are conducting some sort of mission of their own and the Organisation has snuck up on them.
Crashed UFO - Where the aliens were going to conduct some sort of mission of their own and The Organisation snuck up on them with high yield rockets fired from fighter craft.
Base Assault - The Organisation raids an Alien Base.
Base Defence - The Organisation's base is raided!
Target Escort/Extraction - An invididual of high importance needs to be Transported/Collected for The Organisation's purposes.
Asset Recovery - An object/supplies important to The Organisation need to be recovered.
Bomb Disposal - The aliens have planted a bomb in a built up settlement - you must disable it.
Covert Mission - A covert operative has infiltrated an opposing organisation and must now be extracted

So, in light of this - At the beginning of the game session, the players should work together to answer the following:

The Organisation have discovered alien activity... (Choose One)
The Invaders have landed troops in a town and are abducting them for unknown purposes
The Invaders have landed troops in a capital city and are wreaking bloody havoc
The Invaders have landed a ship for an unknown purpose - We should capitalise on the opportunity
Our fighters have splashed an enemy ship - We should capitalise on the opportunity
We've discovered an Invader stronghold - We cannot allow it to grow unimpeded
A high profile civilian is believed to be in danger and we need to make sure they don't get attacked
An important civilian is in hiding during an Invader attack - We must extract them immediately.
Civilians have reported strange sightings in their local area. We should investigate.

The operation takes place in...
The local civilian response to The Organisation is...
The Operations name is...

Once The Squad has decided on which troops they are taking and which equipment, the Alien Commander should answer the following:

But when they got there, there was an unexpected complication... (Choose One)
A new type of Invader was present and it was incredibly dangerous
A new type of Invader was present and it was capable of hiding itself
A new type of Invader was present and it had a strange power
The Invaders had planted a bomb at the mission site and it was soon to go off
The Invaders were merely feinting and had an entirely different reason for their activity

So for example, the players might choose:
The Organisation has discovered alien activity... The Invaders have landed a ship for an unknown purpose - We should capitalise on the opportunity
The Operation takes place in London
The local response to The Organisation is Desperate
The Operation's name is Merciful Pelican

So yeah!

Alien Hunter X: Lethality

Now that I've shown some of the basic moves, maybe its time to talk a little about what my plans are for making AHX different from Dungeon World.

Lethality
In dungeon world, you get assigned a number of Hitpoints based on your class and your constitution - just like from any of the Dungeons and Dragons games or works inspired by them. X-com has allways been noted for how easily the soldiers you control die and i'm keen to make sure that's something that sticks around but making the game more suitable for roleplay.

I decided to go with something more akin to World of Darkness.

Wounds are graded from 'Light' to 'Mortal'. Each of these grades has a number of boxes beside them.
When you take one of those wounds, you fill boxes until you have filled a box in the appropriate grade. If you cant fill a box, you move onto the next most serious grade and mark a box.
When you've taken a mortal wound, roll to Cheat Death.

So an uninjured soldier would look like this...

Light Wound        [ ] [ ]
Medium Wound   [ ] [ ]
Heavy Wound      [ ]
Mortal Wound      [ ]

But a soldier who had taken a single Medium Wound, followed by a Heavy Wound would look like this...

Light Wound        [X] [X]
Medium Wound   [X] [X]
Heavy Wound      [X]
Mortal Wound      [ ]

If the same soldier had taken a Heavy Wound, followed by a Medium wound, however...

Light Wound        [X] [X]
Medium Wound   [X] [X]
Heavy Wound      [X]
Mortal Wound      [X]

He's going to have a bad time.
The reason I went with this is to represent that a Light wound means nothing if you then get a hole put in your chest, but if you start with a hole in your chest, even a light wound can push you over the edge.

Different classes will get different numbers of check boxes. Levelled up troops may gain additional checkboxes.

Armour gives one-use health boxes, up to the threshold of damage they can survive. Someone in a Tactical Vest may gain a single Light Wound box, which does nothing against a Plasma Cannon handing out Heavy Wounds, whereas a suit of Power Armour may offer 5 boxes of protection against anything as powerful as that Plasma Cannon.

Wynn Wednesday: Attack of the continued RPG Ideas...

"Alien Hunter X"

Short, mission based 'Whoever is available' gaming where Aliens are invading earth and its up to a small non-copyright infringing anti-alien military group to fend them off. Fairly high PC turnover because the aliens either have more high tech gear or are genetically superior to humanity.

Mission Failure/Partial/Sucsess grants bonuses on post game research rolls, which add 'Prestige Classes' like Cybernetics (BELLATOR IN MACHINA MOTHERFUCKER) or DNA Manipulation, better equipment and advanced tactics to the basic character classes.

The nature of the aliens would be a 'Discover during play' style dealie with the players basically choosing their own enemies and the ST working out research projects for each alien type.

Since each mission would be a single session, it doesn't matter who turns up to the game,  but previous players who's characters havn't died get to use their previous character sheets alongside green rookies. Just like X-Com

Dungeon World crossed with X-Com, basically.

I Aintn't Ded: Some X-Com Stuff

So yeah. Everything has kind of been up in arms for the last  few months. Dead sorry about that, i'll make sure it doesn't happen too often in the future.

On the plus side, New Job with Better Pay (tm) and hours that mean I can actually wargame now.

Hurrah!

Here's what i've been working on recently:

U-Sen

Toying with U-Sen as a name rather than X-Com. Uchujin (Outer Space-Man) Sento (Combat)... I suspect it might be  right, but if not please let me know!

A Muton Leader!

He is... really, really dark skinned. I think he turned out well in a super alien-ish kind of way but i'm not used to painting things quite so dark!

All models are Ground Zero Games!

Gray Aliens - Finished! (07/11/2012)

So I finally finished painting my grey alien models... hurrah!

Took god damn long enough. I've been pretty stressed and been searching for quick and easy ways to keep myself occupied rather then painting. But i've been bitten by the bug again so now we're back in action.

So bitten even that last night and this morning, I sat and painted the whole set of Greys that i have!
Allright, its only 27 models but its the most i've painted in one sitting since I started collecting 15mm. don't judge me!

So, the Grey Aliens are from Rebel Minis, who make up a third of my models at the minute and were my first 15mm company I purchased from. I bought a single pack of These Guys ($10.95, or £6.84 for 22 models) to function as Sectoids for my wanting to play X-com tabletop style. The models are actually pretty good

10 of the Left, 8 of the Middle, 2 of the pictured leader and 2 of the other leader

You can also see there in a background one of Rebel Mini's Terror Mites  ($8.99, or £5.61 for 5 models) terrorising a passing car. The Terror Mites come 5 to a pack rather then in the more common 21 like the rest of the Rebel Mini bags. The Terror Mites are big compared to the Greys, and were bought to act like X-com Reapers.

Lookit that sexy mofo

I'm really chuffed I got all of these guys painted finally. It means that tonight when I get some marines painted, I actually have enough models to play a small game of Tomorrow's War X-com stylee!

Also, this was something that chuffed me:

Terror Mission!

 

That car. I bought a pack of 10 cars for £1 in a local shop down the back of where I live. The actual cars are hideous fucking things, with the bottom/windows being made out of one block of black plastic and then a tiny sliver of the top being made out of hideously coloured tin.

So I improved it. The wheels still need painting and theres a bunch more that need painting a variety of colours... but I'm happy with the scale!

 

So yeah, those guys are done. GROUP PHOTO YOU GUYS

 

ENEMY WELL KNOWN