X-COM RP THINK TANK (part2)

[MarineAvenger]

Trust me when I say, while all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy, I know more then anyone that school comes first, so if me being GM lets other people join in without taking away from more important things, then I'm game.

I just need a little time to make sure I'm prepared and I have everything planned out. I'd say about five days, a week at the most. In the meantime, I'd like to sure everyone one that list of yours is joining in and cool with me as the GM. Want to know exactly who we've got coming in. As far as specific details, we can spend this time spitballing while I get the officail rules down. For example, is everyone cool with the four-squad thing.

if they are i already have my 4 man squad

 

[DarkGemini24601]

Personally, I think it would be better if we had 1+ characters of our own meshed together, makes them more attached. Otherwise the rp kinda feels chopped up, and 4 person squads is not standard military size. (Always bugged me that EU-EW did this...)

By the way, I always had the head-canon that the XCOM squad we see is the best of the best (Or the commanding officers), and that the XCOM forces are actually much more numerous. At the very least, it might be more interesting if we have actual military-size squads, and MAYBE several (though we wouldn't be rping for all of them, too much work there! Consider the squads without our characters in them just there for the immersion, they don't matter) participating in missions.

In short, either we just have one character each and one actually important squad of whatever size we want...or...we do several (four?) characters and mix them into the main squad or squads involved in the project.

 

[PrismaCube]

Maybe, and hear me out on this I've never played Halo Reach but I've watched some Let's play's and putting that together with DarkGemini's idea. Everybody has one person they roleplay as, serving in a military under X-COM, being a commander. Or if you want to do something else, unique then suggests it. I myself will play Exalt Leader. Someone else can play as the Alien like Grelite did. But ofcourse this is all just an idea, What do the other's thing? I guess Marine would be my Exalt Agent working undercover for X-Com right? Unless you wanted to do your other person.

Then there is one more thing, we should continue planning and start the new RP Season once Sarge has set up the new website, we still new new people. One more thing back to what Sarge said at the beginning. I like the idea, how some of us would maybe be fighting on different front through out the world. All in all there is a ton of stuff we can do here and it's still pretty messed up.

 

[DarkGemini24601]

I'm still skeptical about us not interacting directly...one of the things that made the rps before interesting (despite the occasional weirdness journals caused) is that characters interacted with each other, whether it be Ayame and Anna's friendship, the dream stuff the Psi Operatives did, etc, that made it really good. Separating us or being commanders could be good, I just worry that it will make things more impersonal and less engaging.

Also, there's a new site being made? What?

 

[PrismaCube]

So should we stick to the old style and break less rules? Because I kind of agree with you.

 

[DarkGemini24601]

I'm all for sticking to the old style, though perhaps not strictly journal entries.

However, that doesn't mean we can't innovate, I just think we'll run into problems and confusion if we change the baseline of how we do things.

 

[ZombieSplitter53]

There is a new site domain that this site will direct to going up. It's still in the works, you'll have to ask Sarge when it is ready.

As for the squads, in the interest of combining everyone's ideas and finding a middle ground, what if X-COM missions contain a non-discript number of soldiers depending on the mission, and when you write your story, your focusing on a specific pod. For example, for a downed UFO, based on the size of it, it's condition, and soldier availability, the Commander sends out a squad of a dozen soldiers.

If we decide on controlling a single soldier, then your story will focus on them.

If we decide on control multiple soldiers, for example the original four, then the larger squad would break into three squads of four, and the senerio I give would detail the specific aliens your squad of four will encounter, with what happens to the other eight soldiers being incidental and up to me to figure out

And if you don't want to control four characters, then don't. I can tailor how I present the mission to you based how many people you control, let's say a minimum of one and a max of four, based on your availability. Everyone would still be at the main X-COM HQ, so they could all interact, and if two or three of you say you'll be available for the same mission, I could design one for a mixed group.

So if one of you controls or character, one of you controls two, and one of you controls four, and you want to write a mission together, I could design a mission for you in which the person with four people has two of them sent out, and the other two get one each, and you form a squad of four for that mission.

On the other hand, if you guys just want to go with the old one character each, I'm cool with that too, as sometimes simplicity is the best option. I am here to please.

 

[Sarge]

I wont be coming in, but I would love to read about someone including Israel as a country.

Also do i need to make some sort of world map?

Could use something like this

 

[DarkGemini24601]

I like those suggestions ZS. It would make sense that a commander would deploy varied amounts of troops and the like for different missions. Though to truly figure out how we do characters, I must ask you the important question:

What do we do about character death?

If we have just one character each, the only way to keep people involved would be to create a new character/role/whatever when you die.

We could have multiple we have backups, but there are issues with that, such as but not limited to:

• Better quality characters dying and leaving the rper with a less-interesting person.
• Lesser quality characters dying while better ones remain and making it feel a bit cheap.
• And so on.

If no one dies that's a bit weird in of itself...its hard to figure out how to handle character death since we don't have the RNG to determine this anymore, nor the number of people it would take to keep a rp running if people quit/signed up again after they died, which isn't really how this should be run anyway.

TL;DR: We need to figure out how to manage character death in this roleplay, as it is related to how we set up characters.

(Note to self Gemini...proofread before you post, that would be helpful, thank you.)

 

[Frostlich1228]

I like those suggestions ZS. It would make sense that a commander would deploy varied amounts of troops and the like for different missions. Though to truly figure out how we do characters, I must ask you the important question:

What do we do about character death?

If we have just one character each, the only way to keep people involved would be to create a new character/role/whatever when you die.

We cduld have multiple we have backups, but there are issues with that, such as but not limited to:

• Better quality characters dying and leaving the rper with a less-interesting person.
• Lesser quality characters dying while better ones remain and making it feel a bit cheap.
• And so on.

If no one dies that's a bit weird in of itself...its hard to figure out how to handle character death since we don't have the rng to determine this anymore, nor the number of people it would take to keep a rp running if people quit/signed up again after they died, which isn't really how this should be run anyway.

TL;DR: We need to figure out how to manage character death in this roleplay, as it is related to how we set up characters.

I think the RPers should decide when their characters die, or maybe we can use a Random number Generator that goes up in likelihood of death the harder the mission is.

Also I Think we should have Two Characters each to work with, four seems a bit too overwhelming.

 

[ZombieSplitter53]

I think the RPers should decide when their characters die, or maybe we can use a Random number Generator that goes up in likelihood of death the harder the mission is.

Also I Think we should have Two Characters each to work with, four seems a bit too overwhelming.

I would think we would follow the rule of a tv show or movie when it deals with stories like this: we're following these characters because they probably aren't going to die. That's what Star Trek "Red Shirts" are for. And if for any reason you want to Tasha Yar your character and kill them off, start introducing the character that will take their place when they go. Kinda like in Final Fantasy V when they introduced Galuf's granddaughter shortly before he sacrificed himself (sorry for the spoilers for anyone who hasn't played this 20 something year old game), and she took his place. That's pretty much what happens in D&D when you screw up and lose your character and don't want to start all over again. Kinda like during my first game of Mafia when my character killed a Made Man in the first twenty minutes and had to disappear, I started using his cousins who happened to have the same stats.

I also think four might be bit much. Two sounds good, but we could stretch to three if you think you have the time for it. Just warning you, it isn't easy. Trust me, I did it in season three with Ayame, Alexia, and Jessica, and it is time consuming.

 

[DarkGemini24601]

*nods*

By the way, I have noticed that we have two people that signed up but aren't really getting to participate in the discussion, though if they're busy that's fine, we can just give them an idea of what we've discussed the next time they show up and they can give us their two cents about what they like/dislike.

There are three other people, Zain Shah, meaningofbread, BMPixy that could possible be interested since they returned after the graypocalypse, so we can PM them the question if we want, but other than that I think our cap is ten people at the moment, considering the only other return person besides Sarge himself of course said that they were too busy. (Total of people signed up is at 7 so far, of course.)

 

[DarkGemini24601]

I do think that the five of us (Myself, Zombie, Prisma, Marine, and Frost) are going to be the main participants in setting this up though, as we're the most active. (Or the most talkative, if you want to look at it like that )

 

[MarineAvenger]

Ok reading through all the post I think I have come up with a solution to all our problems about the squads

1.In military terminology, a squad is a small military unit led by a non-commissioned officer (NCO) that is subordinate to an infantry platoon. In most armies, a squad consists of eight to fourteen soldiers, and may be further subdivided into fireteams. Looking on this info I say we have one large squad that is divided up into 2 or 3 fireteams. We can decide who is who.

2. Death should be decided by the RPer and if the Rper so chooses can make a whole new rookie to join the squad.

3. First character should have some combat experience, second and forward little to none.

4. Taken from Prisma's idea we do a sort of Halo: Reach approach and have characters transported in when they are needed, people not directly in the fight will be stationed near a command post several miles away and can be interchanged as needed. (We need a sniper send out the rocketeer and send in sniper. Transportation will be Black Hawk Stealth Chopper on mission)

5. If so desired we should come up with an arsenal of real life weapons for the beginning before we get laser stuff and power armor.

6. RPer will have only one character at a time but decide what happens to misc characters in the background.

Anything else to add or improvise?

 

[MarineAvenger]

Also Prisma I love your idea and I wanna say being a mole in XCOM for EXALT would fit my character really well I say lets go for it.

 

[ZombieSplitter53]

That sounds like a good compromise that covers most of what we've covered. As long as everyone gets an opportunity to Rp with each other, I'm happy. I've got a bit to do in terms of working on the aliens, so I'm gonna be dropping out of the discussion for a hour or two. In addition to finalizing this issue, everyone think about whether there are any aliens from previous games you'd like me to include, or if we should just stick with those in EW.

 

[DarkGemini24601]

1. I like it.
2. Sure.
3. Hm...maybe, maybe not.
4. I think this is pretty interesting, completely on board with the general idea, the details mostly.
5. I don't see anything wrong with this if it's not too complicated, as not everyone's a military buff.
6. I would say 1-3 soldiers at a time, though 1 is recommended for those with less time, 2 for more, and 3 for the brave.

Figuring out the commanding officer will either be after combat experience or whoever's the senior/most experienced person.

 

[DarkGemini24601]

I'm not sure how we want to handle classes, I sorta like the long war ones to an extent but the vanilla ones are more familiar.
For certain we want to move away from "abilities on level up" since that's no longer relevant. Things like smokes, flashbangs, and stuff probably are available to everyone.

 

[MarineAvenger]

1. I like it.
2. Sure.
3. Hm...maybe, maybe not.
4. I think this is pretty interesting, completely on board with the general idea, the details mostly.
5. I don't see anything wrong with this if it's not too complicated, as not everyone's a military buff.
6. I would say 1-3 soldiers at a time, though 1 is recommended for those with less time, 2 for more, and 3 for the brave.

Figuring out the commanding officer will either be after combat experience or whoever's the senior/most experienced person.

Or we could play russian roulette to find out who hahaha

 

[MarineAvenger]

That sounds like a good compromise that covers most of what we've covered. As long as everyone gets an opportunity to Rp with each other, I'm happy. I've got a bit to do in terms of working on the aliens, so I'm gonna be dropping out of the discussion for a hour or two. In addition to finalizing this issue, everyone think about whether there are any aliens from previous games you'd like me to include, or if we should just stick with those in EW.

Honestly idk how to think about that new aliens would be cool just lets give it some time do originals for now if we get an idea we can brainstorm it