Friday Rucht Hour: The Threats of Alpha Wolf Pack

Last week, we got to peek at the Alpha Wolf Pack character sheet. This week, I thought I'd let you guys peek at one of the threats of the World of 2359:

Worms

Worms are formally known as temporal entities or T.E.s. This species of alien life appears to be actively hostile to the human race. It is believed that they possess some form of intelligence, though it is unknown to what degree this is the case. Social scientists point out that Worms appear to have no culture, construct no artifacts, and use no tools. At the same time, they appear to understand human language and are known for targeting key systems on ships and bases.

Worms were first discovered around the planet of Gorgon, one of two habitable planets in the Barnard’s Star system. They were discovered approximately one Terran year after the first science stations were founded on the surface of the planet. The first encounters with the Worms were exceedingly deadly. The entire science team that was planet side during the assault died, save one.

The site of the attack was a science station, known as EO6. It is now considered to be a no-go zone for all Terran personnel. Amongst the Wolf Pack Squadrons, the infamous science station is known as the “Ghost Pit” and has gained an almost legendary status in space lore.

Worms are often terrifying for those who encounter them, due to their strange ability to bypass the laws of time and space. Watching these beings travel back and forth through time, pass through solid objects, and occupy two places at once often proves disconcerting for those observing them. 

Worms take a variety of forms, but the most common is that of giant maggots which flow through space as if it were water. Their hooked mouths constantly open and close, continually chewing. Most advanced forms of Worms appear to be giant maggots with multiple limbs, though each of these limbs appears to be comprises of smaller Worms. Finally, there are the “sliders” which appear to be humanoid beings composed of swarming Worms that continually roil in space. 

So, there's some of the fluff. Let's look at some of the rules involves with Worms. The Worms get a number of special abilities. We call these Stunts in Alpha Wolf Pack. Player characters get Stunts as well. The Director also gets a number of story abilities called Incidents. They are a limited resource that he can play on characters and on the units they control. The reason Incidents are separate from Stunts are because they allow the Director to radically alter the story, setting, or part of a unit not just give his bad guys extra abilities. Here's an example of some incidents for Worms specifically. 

I’m Already Dead!

One or more a unit’s men has seen themselves dead. Pass a Leadership skill test or your unit gains the Horrified condition. Your unit has gained the horrified condition. This means that, to take action, you must pass a Leadership test first. If you take on a Crucible, you may eliminate this condition.

Separated in Time

A commander or her unit (or both) disappear into the past for a time. This may mean that they miss a scene or a round of Tactical Combat. While they are back in time, they are able to interact with the people and events there for a short period.

Schism

A time schism occurs, possibly slicing people in half or damaging equipment. Unit takes damage 3d6+6. Proper use of an Authority Skill in a one-off scene lowers the damage to 2d6+4. An outstanding roll or roleplaying can reduce the damage as well. Both a successful roll and good roleplaying bring the damage down to 1d6+2.

Man Out of Time

A single soldier slips out of time, but returns! He is shocked and horrified at what he saw. A dramatic scene might pull some more information out of him!

Loop Around

The platoon encounters an already damaged enemy (half Stress). When it is killed, it later appears in the game at full health, only to disappear when half of its Stress is done to it in damage.

Loop Forwards

Cause a damaged enemy to disappear - it may reappear anywhere or at anytime later.

Future Man
A character from the past appears amongst one of the Wolf Pack units. The group as limited time to interact with him before he disappears into the past again. Until then, the unit can protect the man just like an asset. They use crowd control to move the past-character and must protect him as well. 

Remember, to activate this ability, the Director must spend one of his incidents to do so. What's fun about this is that different threats will have different lists of incidents, making each one distinctive in tone and flavor. We'll get more into Crucibles and Incidents next time! 

Friday Rucht Hour: Dramatic Scenes in Alpha Wolf Pack

Social Skills in RPGs
Often, RPGs run into a social skills problem. And that is the cognitive dissonance of dice rolling vs. roleplaying. Here's an example. A player character walks up to a non-player character and tries to convince them of something. The player delivers a fantastic, convincing speech...and then rolls poorly on the dice. How does the GM resolve this? Well, there are a billion and one ways, which GMs have used over the years to combat this - everything from just waiving the die roll to calling it a success; to calling it a success, but perhaps not a spectacular success because of the poor dice roll.

But it still creates this sense cognitive dissonance, because basically, to make it work, we have to break the rules.

Our Solution
One thing we discovered in our old game of Rogue Trader was the great power of rolling first and then role-playing accordingly. When playing RT, many of the situations we ran into were so complex, so broad, and so diverse that it was actually far more efficient to roll the dice up front.

Thereafter, we would roleplay the different scenes out and angle them accordingly. Thus, in a particular scene, you might know ahead of time that your character was going to fail, and would roleplay your character towards that failure. At the same time, the GM could roleplay non-player characters to be more or less sympathetic towards a PC according to the roll.

The reason this was very powerful for us as an experience was because roleplaying failure became fun. If you knew ahead of time that you were going to fail an interrogation, you could make your character fail in a way that would fit your character, rather than be dictated how they failed by the GM.

That's what we've tried to do with Alpha Wolf Pack.

The Alpha Wolf Pack Method
In a dramatic scene, the Director or a player frames the scene. The Director calls the difficulty range of the task the that players are trying to accomplish. A simple difficulty would be 1 per player at the table. So, five players would face a difficulty of, say, 5 - 7 for a simple goal. Difficulties are always a range of numbers. The goal at hand has to be something big. It has to be big enough that all of the PCs need to be involved. This isn't something that can be handled by a single dice roll. For example, the issue might be trying to figure out who the traitor is in your camp; or re-distributing supplies to the platoon after a supply drop was torched; or treating two-thousand save civilians after a battle.

Once the Director has declared the difficulty range, each player claims a stake. They basically state how many successes they think they can get with their dice rolls. For example, let's say the difficulty is 8 - 10 for 5 players. Mik might claim a stake of 2, meaning he thinks he can get 2 successes. Chris, on the other hand, might only claim a stake of 1. This would mean the other players at the table would have to claim at least 5 total to even hope of succeeding.

Then, the group rolls off. Those who make their stake contribute that many successes to the total. Those that fail, contribute none of their successes to the goal. Then, the Director totals up the number of successes gained by all of the PCs. If they meet the difficulty, the goal is successful. If not, the goal was not successful.

Let's say that you really wanted to succeed, but you didn't. Here's where the Virtues come in. If you fail a roll, you can invoke a Virtue to get an extra die on your roll. But remember, if you invoke your Virtues too much, they can max out an become an obsession. If you fail the roll, despite invoking your Virtues, the Virtue you used drops to -1 less than it was when you started the scene. It drops, of course, because this represents your character becoming demoralized.

The Important Part - Roleplaying!
After this is done, then everyone roleplays their success or failure. Each player gets to frame their own scene incorporating other characters if they want. And here's something that sweetens the deal - good roleplaying from the group gains the platoon points of momentum. No roleplaying at all, or seriously weak roleplaying means that the group gains no points of momentum at all. Decent roleplaying gains them 1 point of momentum. Great roleplaying gains them 2 points of momentum. Why is momentum important? When it comes to combat, the group's momentum score is compared to the enemy. If it exceeds it, the party gains benefits on the field of battle.

All right, that's all for now in Alpha Wolf Pack. Next up, I'll be talking about minis and Warmachine. Then, we'll go back to more talk about AWP.

Friday Rucht Hour: Who is Alpha Wolf Pack?

So, we talked about getting our feet off of the ground, starting up our own RPG. Right now, as of this writing, I am working up the character generation chapter of the book and ironing it out. Also, I've just came up with our casualty system and I'm pretty jazzed about it. It's one of the more unique ways I've seen to come up with the question of: "Are you dead or not?"

Anyhow, last post I had, we talked about where this idea came from and the big goals for this project. Now, let's talk about the player characters in our RPG. What will the players be doing in this game?

The players will be taking on the role of members of the Wolf Pack Squadron, the elite fighting force in the universe as we know it.

In the year 2359, the United Planetary Nations is the most powerful political entity on the planet Earth. Because the UPN controls the value of the world currency and the world minimum wage, it wields tremendous economic power. It also possesses UPN Peacekeeping troops which are authorized to occupy and police other nations on terran soil if necessary to ensure peace and order are maintained at all times.

Discord on Earth is ever-present and constant. As Earth's resources dwindle, nations fight against each other in small, periodic skirmishes which must be watched and dealt with before tensions ignite a fourth World War.

Fortunately, the large and ever-present Peacekeeper forces around the globe help staunch these hostilities. But there is an elite faction of Peacekeepers, who are called to an even higher duty - the Wolf Pack Squadron.

The Wolf Pack Squadron are Peacekeepers who are given special training and sent into space, where they continue the work of the United Planetary Nations. Whether it be on the Moon, the Colonies, Barnard's Star or the Alpha Centauri systems, the WPS responds when the need arises. Earth is no exception. When special forces are needed on terran soil, the Wolf Pack is there.

The Wolf Pack's elite status comes as a result of their rigorous training. Not only are Wolf Pack members soldiers and police all-in-one, but they are also trained as astronauts and space engineers. Most Wolf Pack members possess advanced degrees and speak multiple languages.

Each Wolf Pack has a alphanumeric designation. There is a Beta, Charlie, Delta, and Echo Wolf Pack - all the way to Zulu. The lead Wolf Pack Squadron is known as Alpha Wolf Pack. The foremost military unit on Earth, Alpha Wolf Pack is made up of men and women who have previously served in another Wolf Pack but have distinguished themselves through their service. Thus, the Alpha Wolf Pack always contains some of the most experienced and hardened personnel the Peacekeepers have to offer.

Next up, we'll actually get down to the nitty-gritty and let you peek at our game system! 

Friday Rucht Hour: Alpha Wolf Pack

So, by now, you've heard the big news. We are going for the gold. Making our own RPG.

The question is, why? Well, some of this is serendipity. Mik is very active with the Minions of the Monster Master, of course, and they had been kicking around ideas for a Kickstarter project. I piped in and said that I had a idea, and we went for it.

I'm sure that if you've played RPGs for as long as I have then you have probably messed around with making your own RPG system before. Most indie systems or homebrews that I see out there are usually designed around a setting. Makes sense, right? The creators are trying to tell a story through their RPG and their setting and system is how they do it. But what got me really excited about this idea wasn't just the fact that we had a killer setting. But the fact that this was the first time I had sat down and designed a system in order to actually solve a few long-standing quandaries of mine.

Solving Long Standing Problems through an RPG

I love military science fiction. And one of the key elements of military sci-fi is the human drama of not just protecting your own life, but the life of the people around you. Your comrades and the people under your command are counting on you. These narrative elements help make a story epic, because you are not just dealing with a single character, but a cast of characters. And that cast of characters are dealing with the highest stakes possible. Their own survival.

However, most table top RPG systems out there focus on a single character, controlled by a single player, not a commander of soldiers. (Notable exceptions not withstanding.)

So, there you have it. I set out to design a system that solves these two dilemmas. One - can you design a system where a character is a military commander? Where you are in control of not just a single character, but a unit of troops? And, two - can you design a system that has the same feel of a classic, military-style fiction game?

Well, we think we have.

Now. Where to Set It?

While I was working on solving these particular dilemmas, I was also thinking about where to set my game. Far-flung future? Transhuman space? Instead of re-inventing the wheel, I thought about using a game setting that I knew had real teeth: the World of Alpha Wolf Pack.

I had created the Alpha Wolf Pack setting for a series of mini-campaigns we did about 10 years ago with the Minions of the Monster Master. The core idea behind it was that it was a setting where the player characters were colonial space-marines, fighting on space-stations and other planets. To make it distinctive, however, I made the setting one that was in the gritty near-future instead of a space opera set in the far-future. I wanted it to have understandable, speculative science.

I had the conflicts take place mainly in our own solar system. The idea was that, in order to be epic and amazing, you don't have to go to some far-flung alien world. That which is epic and extraordinary is right in our own cosmic backyard. Imagine a battle on a moon of Saturn, with Saturn and her rings filling up your horizon. Imagine a battle aboard a station floating over Jupiter's Great Red Spot, a storm the size of three Earths. Imagine a conflict on Mars as a massive dust storm approaches, threatening to wipe you and your opponent off of its surface.

As big as three Earths.

However, to incorporate some more of the frontier spirit and bring in more fantastical elements, we eventually opened up the campaign to other star systems. In the setting, as it currently sits, humanity has reached Barnard's Star and Alpha Centauri. But that's it. The idea behind this is to make the uncovering of two whole solar systems a big deal, because it really would be. We still don't know all of the ins and outs of our own planet Earth and we've lived on it for tens of thousands of years. Just finding a single new and alien world would provide us with multiple lifetimes of questions, opportunities for exploration, and new insights. Finally, it also gives the setting that frontier feel. It's a setting where we are taking our first tentative steps into a larger universe.

Next up, I'll talk about the men and women of Alpha Wolf Pack. Sign up now! Service brings honor to you and peace to our universe! Service guarantees citizenship!