Alien Menace, Session 4

What happened to Session 3? I missed it. You can see Doug's writeup here.


We started out on Earth.

Long story short, one of the scout teams the company sent out found an alien structure. Instead of avoiding it and calling in a strike team, they went in. They didn't come out.

So we went to a) pick up the car from the airport (aka retrieve the scout craft) and b) to find out what happened to the scout crew.

We landed near the scout craft and moved in - nothing. So we spent a good number of hours checking the craft, checking the sensors, running analysis, etc., especially since we saw nothing but the structure and the craft.

Once the craft was secure, we checked out the structure. It looked grown, not built. So, naturally, we put a burst into its sphincter-like door with the landing craft's 25mm automatic cannon. They blew right through and nothing responded.

We headed in. We explored a twisted, and clearly emptied, structure. Eventually we found one of the scouts - well, we found a boot sole and some dust. After careful examination, we decided the dust was the scout. We also found what seemed like a slug trail. So the watchword was, "'ware slugs!"

All I could think of was that iconic smoking boot picture from Paranoia.



We proceeded along, until we came to another smoking dust pile that used to be a human, and then into a large room. A.B. was the doorkicker by dint of having the heaviest armor (10d worth, hardened!). 20 yards away he saw a huge slug. BLAMBLAMBLAMBLAMBLAM. Full auto burst from the hip, not even looking down the reflex sight. The +2 for 12 rounds canceled little of the -7 for range, but still two rounds hit for 21 and 23 damage. It exploded in a cloud of green stuff. Expanding green stuff.

I yelled, "Run!" and we did. We sealed that door and retreated past the next door and waited.

Eventually, the more science-oriented team members gathered up some samples of the green cloud once it settled, but it cost us a suit of armor. We explored the whole complex, and found it had been stripped. We took samples and headed back.

On the way to the jump point, our scientist spotted a destroyed-sized craft. Luckily we caught it on passive scans, and it didn't hassle or chase us. It was heading to some planet A.B. didn't care about so he stopped listening. We went our separate ways and returned to earth.

Phase 2 of the mission was in Peru, where a village/town was depopulated in what looked to be a similar attack to the green gas/eater swarm we'd run into on Planet B. We headed there and had a preliminary flyover done, as we got ready to go investigate.

That's when the session ended.

***

Overall, I had fun, although I'm more generally interested in shooting than investigating. We did make lots of Ghostbusters jokes, of course.

The lack of a ping feature on the FG system was annoying. The customized "Alien Menace" layout was cool, though, and much appreciated.

The only question now is, do we use our hunters to investigate or do we get more scout-like guys for the scouting missions? It's an open question at this point.

Alien Menace, Session 2: Aliens Draw Blood

Last night we had our second session of Douglas Cole's Alience Menace game.

You can see his writeup here:
GURPS Alien Menace Session 2

Overall, it was tough. Long story short, we advanced in the same vector as we were last time. We checked some sectoids, and as we did so our rear guard Christine spotted some small (SM-4, 18") floating discs. She warned us and then opened up with considerable effect. She's an NPC, and less points than the PCs, but not by much . . . and anyone worth their weight in transporting to another planet(!) must be worth bringing.

We rapidly headed back, having heard nothing ahead of us. We set up an ambush around the corner. One of our guys was just a little too far forward and ended up in a one-on-one or so fight with the discs. He got shot, badly, in the exchange. We eventually dusted the floaters, and then advanced to engage some sectoids we heard. We nailed them but I think we put ourselves into a situation where we can't bring all of our firepower to bear when we need too. That ended up with Colton getting singed in the chest and getting his arm crippled.

The one downside to group movement is our approach from last time - either move as a squad in overwatch, or send one scout ahead - changed. We ended up all moving up into the combat instead of just getting a glance around the corner and sending 40mm grenades to scout for us. That's how we dealt with 4 sectoids without them getting a significant shot off last time, but this time it became a firefight.

Colton blew down one sectoid with grenades and fragments took care of the other. But once we went around the corner some floaters opened up on us. Colton took one out with excellent grenade shooting, while my guy (A.B. Karabus) put some lead downrage to no avail (lots and lots of bad rolling.) Colton got shot back, too, despite Luck and a Tactics-based re-roll. It just wasn't enough and he's down to one arm and has a quarter-sized hole in his Dragonskin armor.

That's where we left it - A.B. prone in front shooting, Colton prone behind and effectively one-armed, one squad member hauling Ethan around, and the rest of the team moving up. Casualties are making the odds of a successful mission a bit lower, so we need to shape up our tactics and our shooting next time if we want to recover our mission MacGuffin.

Fun game.


Mistakes we made:

- advancing around the corner at all without using smoke or other cover.

- leaving only one person on rear guard.

- all going to look at the dead sectoids.

- setting our ambush so that one shooter (Ethan) was able to engage and be engaged by the enemy before anyone else. Had he been back, say, 2 yards, the enemy floaters would have had to drift into multiple sitelines and been torn up before they could blast him. Honestly, with the scrolling map and no way to spin it and look at it from different angles, or lay down sighting cones, it's hard to tell where is good and where is not.

- no leg armor and wussy arm armor. I know my feeling isn't universal, but I can't see going into battle again without some better limb armor. I bought a ST 17 so I can ignore some of the downsides of encumbrance. Real life shooters might not wear shin guards and thigh guards but screw it, blaster fire is proving to be an instant limb cripple and turns us from fighters into casualties in one shot.


Rules notes:

- My full-auto approach is working okay. Not great, but good enough. As fights get closer in, it will matter more. I also shot on the move or from the hip and didn't bother to aim, just point.

- We did the my-side your-side movement approach before going for interleaved initiative one 1-second time. I'm not sure it made any difference than how I do DF, which is also my-side your-side but never varies from that.

The VTT was Virtual in tabletopishness and Actual in its frustration. Lots of little stuff:

- the all-powerful mouse wheel is how you zoom, unzoom, and scroll the map. It's also how you turn your icon. We got more used to that but it's trivially easy to mess things up.

- the way modifiers zero out makes it unclear if I've set them correctly until I roll. Not sure why, and it makes for cascading rolls (cumulative modifiers) seem like they'd be tricky.

- the difficulty in customize the window sizes and text sizes makes even the 17" screen I use a bit tight. I'm seriously considering trying it through my HDMI connection to my TV next time, but I'm not sure how the headphones/mic will work if I do, since I use my 12-year-old-and-still-flawless Sennheiser HD280 headphones and the laptop's built-in mic. But I need screen acreage.

- my character sheet has picked up nonsensical skills like HT-based Tactics. Weirdness from the GCA to FG transfer, maybe, but I'm too unsure of the VTT to risk deleting anything.

- I actually rolled a few times and had it not count because I didn't get the dice (or the skill roll) sufficiently over the Chat Window to display the roll to others. Honestly, all rolls should be public by default, with a hidden section for the ones you want to hide. Rolling a 5 on 3d when one die misses the chat box and having that invalidate the whole roll just sucks. We joked about "has to roll on a flat surface" and "dice that fall off the table don't count" stuff, but I've never made someone re-roll the whole 3d when that happens, but it does in this VTT. Annoying.

We're getting more used to Fantasy Grounds but still the interface is a distant second behind face-to-face play.

And a random note - I've never seen Firefly, so choosing Adam Baldwin's character from Full Metal Jacket wasn't a double-play on him playing some dude in Firefly. Animal Mother just got on the list because I decided I wanted to tote an MG and then it just grew from there when I started thinking of fun characters who use MGs in fiction.

More thoughts on my Alien Menace PC

Just some notes-to-self about improving A.B. Karabus after the first session of play.

My character portrait:



- I need more Move. Or Speed. I have Basic Speed 6.5, so 10 points for a 7 would be nice. Or 5 for Basic Move 7, either way. My goal is an encumbered 5+ Move.

- I need to learn Observation. I forgot to take it. I took Cooking, but not Observation. Or Orienteering. Oops.

- I, amusingly, have something like 22 points in melee skills and less than 22 points in ranged weapon skills. That's Karate, Wrestling, and a little Axe/Mace (for a hatchet) and Knife (for a Large Knife). But my idea is that when I need my unarmed/melee armed skills, I need them badly and no one can provide fire support. The skills on the page are probably the best rolls I can get, while my ranged weapon gets Acc 5, +4 with full ROF, etc. to counteract the range penalties. In melee, it's Trained ST 19 vs. whatever the universe can bring.

- If I'm going to shoot on the move, I need to learn CQB for my SAW. Bulk -5 is not conducive to hitting anything.

- I need to modify my quirks a little to reflect actual play.

- I need to write a pithy statement on my helmet. I think I'll mimic one of my players from his X-COM: UFO Defense days and write "Aliens Welcome" on the front. Or maybe "Welcome Aliens." That second one makes me laugh when I read it, so probably "Welcome Aliens."

- I should really line my helmet with tinfoil. You know, just because.

- I do need to note my Acc, Reflex sight, and other mods for shooting.

- I have to sit down and read the Fantasy Grounds FAQs and such. The smoother I can make my end go, the easier it is on the GM.

Alien Menace, Session 1: First Contact (Notes)

Last night I played in Douglas Cole's Alien Menace game.

Doug did a far better job of summarizing the session that I could hope to:

Alien Menace Introductory Session

Basically we met each other, met our employer, saw the "drop ship" and interstellar submarine, and heard audio that beat out even the nest episode of most later Star Trek (at least to me). Then we got dropped off and showed aliens what six highly dedicated troopers can do with careful movement and overlapping fields of fire. Oh, and automatic grenade launcher fire.

Go read his summary, and then come back here and read these notes - they won't make much sense without the summary.


The Game

- Just as a side note, I've been to Changi International. Nice airport. When I arrived on the last flight it was dead - even the customs folks were gone and I just walked right out after passport control (one guy on the late shift). So it was amusing to arrive there.

- We christened the Oliver Industries island "Danger Island." Doug keeps referring to it by its code name, Morning-some-or-other island. Not us. Aren't players mean?

- Naturally when food was offered A.B. loaded up on steamed veggies, brown rice, and steamed chicken. Clean food, no drinks. Once we finally arrived at Danger Island, he wanted to see the gym (training plus a rehab facility) and lifted, because it was leg day.

- A leader with Born War Leader 4, Tactics, and Combat Reflexes? We roll 1d+7 for initiative on Partial Surprise situations. +8 if I'm smarter (IQ 11, so it's only likely vs. robots.) I see some bad guys being caught flat-footed.

- Doug has A.B. down as hitting with 7 out of 12 shots - it was 5. Still, with 5d+10 penetrating (we're using armor as dice)

- Armor as Dice means either the GM rolls your damage, or tells you the armor. Kind of meta-disappointing.

- My choice of a LMG variant a lot of ammo was solid. ROF 12 is tough with a 25-shot magazine, kinda low with a 100-shot magazine. It doesn't shoot well on the move (my last move was shooting on the run with it and missed entirely) but when crouching and aiming it did well (5 hits out of 12). Suppression effects might kick in, too.

- I like using the Speed/Range table for rapid fire, too, and I'll use that in my games in all likelihood.

- we had a lot of interface teething, which slowed us down.

The Interface

Oh, Fantasy Grounds, how you love the all-powerful mouse wheel. That button controls so much that it caused us nightmares.

- The map - you can't drag it to see more or less, just point at the right spot and scroll. Since we all had control of the tokens, this would also spin facing on our guys. And other people's guys.

- Dynamic lightning/dynamic fields of view are really needed, too.

= it needs snap to grid, with a lockdown of hexside to hexside (important for GURPS.)

- the interface is beautiful, but the chat window had tiny text, and it was often too easy to miss it when dragging and dropping dice. It wouldn't automatically add up dice, either, so you'd shoot for 5d+10 and have to roll, then right click and hit "=" to see what it equaled.

- the support for dragging GURPS weapons and skills into the chat box was nice, but keeping the sheet, the chat box, and the map in view at once wasn't practical, so I'd have been faster with a paper sheet in front of me.

- there are non-d6 polyhedral dice that you can't hide when you don't need them.

- the lack of video meant I was clicking back to Google Hangouts and then to FG to play.

- let's say little of the time Doug deleted the map by accident and how it came up without any Fog of War (or any enemies). It didn't make him happy as funny as it was for the rest of us.

- my record sheet picked up some oddities in translation, too - like how I had 1 point in HT-based Guns/Rifle and HT-based Tactics. What?

All in all, it's a pretty interface but man it got in the way much of the time.

Some of it will get better as we learn the system, but man, I was expecting less headaches and less serious damage from hitting the wrong key.

The GM

Doug is a pretty good GM.

I gave Doug some GMing advice, which he foolishly asked for. It boiled down to:

- don't tell us any details we can't observe with our character's abilities. Just tell us to hold on a second and then advance the bad guys (if any) or just pretend to be doing that.

- don't fill us in ahead on stuff that doesn't matter now.

- rolling hidden dice without us knowing why conceals when you are really rolling. Do that.

- the GM is always right, and when GMing for a crowd of four regular GMs, you can be assured we won't complain for a second. At least not during play.

Who will face the Alien Menace?

Tonight is the inaugural session of Douglas Cole's Alien Menace game.

My character is A. B. Karabus, from Passaic, NJ. He's 6'4", 260 pounds, and carries a squad-support sized version of the teams 6.8mm weaponry, because he has ST 17. He's also the team leader, became someone needs to be and he's got Born War Leader 4.

Why ST 17? Because I couldn't afford a 20. Don't ask such silly questions! He's got Bad Temper, too.

He's loosely based on a certain A-Team member, the Swede from Heartbreak Ridge, Animal Mother from Full Metal Jacket, Salvador and Brick from Borderlands 2, Lieutenant Breckenridge from the John Mackie book series "The Rat Bastards", a small homage to Roadblock from the old G.I. Joe toys, and a real life acquaintance of mine who is over 6', over 260, and has six-pack abs. I'm not that much of a mountain of meat, but I tend to have a hey-diddle-diddle-straight-up-the-middle approach to problems. Snipe it or stomp it, done.


(Click here for an animated gif of him in action!)

To be honest, I have approaching zero experience with gunplay in GURPS 4th edition. 1st-3rd, yeah. 4th, almost none. I played a session of GURPS 4th reviving my old Armageddon character, Bota Khan, but he's no fair comparison to gunplay at reasonable skill levels. In Armageddon he was a master of weaponry (by dint of long play) and lavishly equipped with super-tech weaponry. In GURPS he had Guns-24 or 25 or so and a recoilless weapon with ridiculous damage. It's not an experience I could really draw on. So I am really looking forward to figuring out the best way to defeat the Alien Menace with the heaviest MG I can carry.