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.

Just a quickie... (Ooh Err?)

Thought I might share today's project, a Military Badge for a fictional military group, the Constantinus Military College. I'm currently waiting for a quote from an badge embroidering group about how much it'll cost me to have a limited run produced.

I'm honestly fairly chuffed about the design, its a solid, distinct and borderline professional looking piece!

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 Label

Just a quick update to let people know that I've now given all my Alien Hunter X posts their own label to make them easier to find.

Its a small project, so i'm probably going to be able to finish it.

Probably.

Next Up: Missions

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.