XCOM: Enemy Unleashed

Game Master JDPhipps

Hm. I'll need to think on that.

@GM - I know we were close to leveling...did we get enough from this last action?

I haven't quite doled out experience yet, I'm planning to do so after this "encounter" with the terrorist leaders. I'm kind of rolling with this being the same span of time and so not only have you not gained experience but you haven't reset your Bennies, either. However, once you do it will definitely have been enough for you to get an Advance.

I forget if situational modifiers apply to the Wild Die. Should I add the +2 from "significant physical force" to both as well? And would Jackalyn's "experience" with this kind of thing add a modifier as well?

I don't know about experience, but all modifiers apply to both dice in Savage Worlds. It's part of why bonuses can be hard to come by, and are very nice to have, and penalties so quickly cause trouble.

So, Sebastian's specialties:

-Terrorism and terrorist organizations (he's been a peacekeeper in one form or another for mot of his life)
-German state secrets (he was special ops)
-Military technology (because why not)

Yeesh. So that's two raises total on the roll to intimidate?

You would have added a +2 from the physical force, but unless I'm missing it you don't have Intimidation as a skill, so that +2 would have cancelled out the normal -2 for not having the skill. As for the roll itself, it does end up a hit and a raise, but he rolled Spirit to resist (he just failed and has no Bennies to spend).

On Sebastian's specialties, these look good for me. I might suggest narrowing the Terrorism one a little bit, as it feels a little broad; maybe just terrorist organizations or terrorists in a particular geographic location. Keep in mind Specialties tangentially related to a topic will still let you roll as a penalty (such as Jacob and Gavril were able to do). German State Secrets is interesting and I think is just specific enough; I'd let that apply to other EU countries if Germany was potentially involved, that kind of thing, so I think it's great. Military Technology seems fine but I don't honestly know if it would come up super often in a game based around aliens. If you want to keep it that's fine, if not maybe something like European Politics or something could fit as well.

European Politics sounds better, yeah.

So the +2 bonus doesn't apply to the Wild Die? Got it.

No, it would apply to the Wild Die as well, but you also take the -2 penalty on the Wild Die for not possessing the skill. Either way, it comes out as a wash was the point I was trying to get across. Any bonus you get to a roll or penalties applies to both die that you roll. It's just that in this scenario that would bring you to a flat d4 and d6.

Are double 1's something extra bad in Savage Worlds?

Snake Eyes are really bad, yeah.

"Critical Failure: The downside is that snake-eyes (double 1s) on one of these rolls is a critical failure. The GM gets to make up something rotten to happen to your character. That’s the price Fate charges for making someone a hero."

Usually, yes, although it's up to the GM to decide exactly what. Usually it's some small but very problematic setback compared to what you were trying to do, like a gun jamming, or leaving yourself open to attack, or accidentally causing more damage to someone you're trying to heal (more likely a temporary Fatigue level than a Wound).

Snake eyes is bad, usually. It wouldn't necessarily result in an accidental amputation, but something with some serious repercussions to what's happening here (like a penalty to further interrogating or anything).

Also, I'm waiting for someone to do something moving forward, I don't have a lot to respond to at the moment.

Just an FYI to the group and our GM regarding Borax being designated squad leader.

I'll issue orders and what not as I think it makes sense from an RP perspective. Mostly, I'll issue orders to move the game along. OOC, I'm not motivated by any desire to control other characters, I am motivated by us working together as a team and coordinating our efforts IC.

Either way, I don't plan on trying to pull rank or take any disciplinary action if people do whatever, unless this is something that players and GM all expect/desire for RP purposes. Otherwise, I'll leave it to the players to RP their characters appropriate to how they think they'd respond to whatever given the circumstances.

If a character does something that totally endangers the mission/lives, Borax would feel obligated to address the situation, but that is more about RP than any OOC desire to control the situation. Our group feels a little rough around the edges from an IC social perspective, but I find that extremely plausible given that none of us had done any missions together.

That all sounds to be pretty much what I'd expect and be fine with, Borax. Sounds good to me--including the bit on our group being a little rough IC at the moment and that making sense. Sooner or later we'll have our bonding, but any good ensemble like this will have its bit of working things out.

That was sort of my intention, yeah.

All I'm waiting for right now is a post from Gavril and/or Jackalyn so I have something to actually respond to.

Apologies--this one slipped under while I was checking for games to update yesterday, and today I'm looking to be busy for quite some time. Hopefully by tonight I'll have time to post in.

Torturing this victim contaminates the "control" hostage. We don't even know if victim 1 has all the information we need, and flaying someone tends to just BEG for them to die of shock, particularly if they're heavily injured already.

Torturing the first guy, it was pretty easy to justify not stopping you as it just happening too fast, and deciding to just take the results as they are. Now it's premeditated, everyone here is complicit in the torture as well.

Any chance you can post that IC? or has the moment past with Gavril and Jack already posting?

I guess it has. I wasn't expecting Gavril to post.

To be perfectly honest, I thought that Jackalyn was going to carve that skin off of her own arm at first instead of attacking the other hostage. She was rolling up her sleeve and asking for whiskey, that was just sort of the assumption I made. Still, this outcome works as well.

Yeah, I'm confused, whose arm is she cutting?

That was what I was originally going for, but I decided that it was more IC for Jackalyn to ho after the second hostage. I figured that out too late after I posted, so I didn't get to change it. Sorry.

Uh, we just circumvented the issue of torturing the second witness--both in terms of morality and in terms of "contamination." The idea behind my post was that we still let Jackalyn go in to face "her" prisoner--since her going back empty-handed would completely undermine what she's done so far--without actually having to cause harm to the other man. That second prisoner is unharmed and unaware of what's gone on so far--leaving him untouched and ready for questioning.

As a note, presumably the rest of the team isn't 100% aware of what just went down, although putting two and two together would be pretty easy in this case. All in all, it provided an RP opportunity, some character showcasing/development, and let Jackalyn maintain an air of serious threat and danger without utterly compromising our moral ground.

Not a problem, Jackalyn. I can definitely see how your character would definitely feel more inclined to actually skin the hostage than fake it using herself. Still, I think our solution here works perfectly well, all the same. Gavril losing a little skin on his arm isn't even what I'd call a wound, so nothing serious.

Yeah. At first, I was toying with the idea that because of her loyalty trait, Jackalyn wouldn't actually carry out a threat on someone's family, but then I realized that because of recent events, she would've been brought back to the desert mentally, and reverted back to that state of giving absolutely no f%@#s for anything but making those bastards pay.

I'm sure that argument was all in character, but just a friendly reminder to make sure such things do just stay in character. I'm not saying that bit of back and forth isn't allowed or anything--quite the contrary, it makes the group seem more real and dynamic--I just don't want it to boil over into OOC conflicts and such. I trust you all to keep a cool head, but I just wanted to throw that out there.

It's mostly that Rosa is a police officer, and a medic on top of that, as opposed to a soldier. Most of the group does it's job by taking the lives of the enemy. Rosa's job, first and foremost, is to save lives. She was only sticking around to try to keep anyone from getting killed if it fell to torture (which she was trying really hard not to think to hard about), but now that's it's gotten to the very real chance of a prisoner dying and there not being anything she can do about it, she's hit the end of her tolerance.

That's perfectly fine. I think that exchange makes perfect sense in-character, and I don't want to discourage that. Another game I'm in recently had a player asked to leave because such things boiled over into OOC interactions; I don't think that'll happen here, but I'd rather toss out this message beforehand just in case. I liked this exchange you guys had and I want to encourage them, as long as they stay where they're intended. We are all here to have fun, after all.

I'm good OOC. They're just fictional characters, after all. It's just out of character for Rosa to stay quiet at this point.

As a general rule, I don't take anything that happens IC personal. If people start taking pot shots with OOC comments, then I tend to feel the need to confront that head on.

IC, Borax's MO is to call it like he sees it, but he'll definitely undergo some internal changes given the departure of Kristophe. I tend to think of him as having to be more results oriented given the gravity of the situation and the IC burden of leadership, making the "hard choices" as it were.

As I mentioned IC, Borax wanted Rosa there to make sure that no one was killed. So by her walking out, that gives Borax the excuse to stop the torture. For the record, Borax does not believe Gavril is going to kill the man or allow the man to be killed, but admittedly Borax does not know Gavril very well.

I think this game is will stretch/expand the limits of my roleplay. There's half a dozen themes at work here and all kinds of moral issues to explore.

Where do you all want to go from here? You have some leads you could try to follow up on--see if you can find anything about these Americans they spoke with, tinker with the radio to see what you can find, try and find Edwards on base if possible--or you can call it a day and try to break Malik tomorrow. I just need to know what way you're going, as certain things may or may not happen depending.

Was going to give a day or two and then IC a group discussion on it.

Hey, by the way everyone, our GM has given me the go-ahead to drop a line here that I've opened recruitment for a new game I'm going to run. It's a mashup of a couple settings in the Savage Worlds system, and I'd love to see anyone from here poke in with interest!

War Diaries Recruitment

Hey all, it's come to my attention that Sebastian's player was unfortunately banned from the Paizo boards. He's active elsewhere and I've asked him if he plans to make another account or if he's not planning to return; if he isn't, I'll probably see if I can find someone else to join us.

I dunno if people will see this at all, but I've noticed that both myself and some other players in games I'm running have lost their dots on... pretty much every game they're in. I'm not sure why it happened, but I recommend checking all the games you're in and potentially shooting a message to your players if you don't hear from them at all. I figured I'd throw this out there to make people aware if they missed this or something like that.

Ah. I was wondering why I hadn't seen dots but then found updates in the thread.

Sorry to hear about Sebastian. Hopefully he was misunderstood and can get reinstated.

I spoke with him on another board, he said he'd like to continue but is going to take a break here for a while at the least. He said he'll likely be back in a month or so with a new account. He's mentioned before that him and some of the mods don't get along on a personal basis, and evidently he was banned for being involved in a conversation that might have potentially become heated. He sent one of the mods an email to see if they could compromise and have him just post in PbP, but nothing solid yet. We'll see how it goes.

Waiting on you guys here.

Hey guys, this upcoming week is my last week of my senior year of college, so I'm gonna be... busy. I have a ton of stuff I need to get done this week and not a lot of time to really do it, so my activity on the boards may take somewhat of a hit. I'm going to prioritize posting in games I'm running as they kind of need me to move forward (as opposed to someone being able to bot me otherwise), but it's likely my posting will drop some. I will do my best to keep regular updates this week, but I'm already falling a little behind at the moment. Also, games I've recently started will get a bit of priority since they are less stable in terms of momentum, but I'm gonna hopefully be able to keep them all moving as much as possible. Just wanted to give you all a heads up, so no one's in the dark if I'm not around for a little while. The next week is finals, but I have more free time as I only have one test. I have other things, but nothing really scheduled which I'll need to worry about.

No problem on my end.

I'll be chosing Level Headed for my advance.

Regarding any gear requisition, here's the list so the GM can approve or deny:

Now that I look at it I might have gone too far... but keep in mind this is Jacob asking for it, might as well try to get a tank. And speaking of tanks, I don't think it would be a bad idea trying to get
an APC. Iraqi forces have the american M113 and M1117, the british Spartan (I'd rather fight naked and unarmed before riding a slimey APC.

I believe that's all.

First things first, I still don't have Advances from everyone. If you're not sure what most benefits you at this point or just want some ideas let me know, but otherwise I would like to hear from you all as soon as possible on this stuff. I know Jacob is taking Level Headed and Rosa is taking Rock and Roll, but haven't heard from anyone else.

Jacob, you already have a Kevlar Vest. Other than that, you can requisition all of that equipment. Slugs deal 2d10 damage as stated in the SW Core Book, and nonlethal shells do the same damage but cause fatigue. The shotgun carries 8 total shells. As for an ACP, that's what you'll be heading out in. Are there stats for those kinds of explosives in the book? If not, I'll cook up rules for them.

I don't know how I forgot the Kevlar Vest... it even appears in my picture!

I have checked and indeed Slugs appear, as Claymores do. Claymores, though, appear only in the Special Weapons table with 3d6 damage and a note reading "Treat as cannister"... which I don't fully understand but I trust your native understanding of English to guide me when the time comes.
As for the "bigger" explosives, I couldn't find stats or rules. I would understand our allies not having them for the sake of easying your job. Hell, I could jury rig McGyver style some grenades and flammable stuff using my MgGyver edge and use grenade stats. In any case, up to you Jon.

So, only thing left for me would be amount of shells I can get of each kind and I'm set.

My apologies, I completely forgot/missed that we had an Advance. Gavril will also be picking up the Rock and Roll Edge--he's got some assault capabilities, and he's fearsome in close combat, but as the team's resident machine gunner I figure he should shore up his ability to do that well.

Still waiting on Borax and Jackalyn, if I don't hear from them soon I'll just move us ahead for the time being. I'll send them another PM. I tried to get in contact with Sebastian but I don't believe he's going to try and come back, so I'll probably seek out a replacement. I'll look through the games I'm already running and if I don't get any interest I'll open up Recruitment again.

Jacob: I have no idea what 'treat as canister' means either, honestly. We'll say Claymores have a cone template since they're meant to be directional mines. C4 will just explode in a burst, but ignores some Toughness from buildings since it's meant to be able to level them. It's not a big deal.

Sorry, I'll take a look. Would welcome any suggestions on build options.

Borax, you have a couple decent options. Rock and Roll will make it so when you don't move you don't take penalties on your rolls when you fire fully automatic, meaning you could make three rolls (plus a single wild die) every turn with Shooting as opposed to one if you wanted to. Of course, you're taking Command edges and so some of those might be useful as well. I don't remember all of the ones you qualify for but some of them boost Toughness and also add another +1 to Unshake, which is helpful. Alternately, you could go for something like Combat Reflexes that gives you a +2 to Unshake, which even if you don't take it now it always a good option down the road.

I might personally advocate for Rock and Roll, although that depends more on if you see Borax being a full-on assault character or taking more of a role as a tactical leader in exchange for perhaps doing a little less damage. Not to say you can't eventually do both, but at this point you sort of have to choose.

Echoing what Jon said, Rock&Roll would improve your damage and Combat Reflexes is foolproof, you can never go wrong imrpoving your defenses.

Another couple edges that always work are Quick and Level Headed. The former makes sure that you don't go last unless Jon feels specially lucky while the latter double downs on that and gives you an extra chance to get a Joker. Only downside is you need Smarts d8 to get the latter, so it would be something you build around for your next advances.

Brave and Nerves of Steel would be appropiate given the "fearless" description you have (sorry for peeking, forgive this old crazy Irishman) and once again are ways to make sure you don't get easily disabled.

Reharding your Command Edge, you could pick Command Presence to improve the area or Inspire to improve the bonus to +2. The other edges, while useful, require higher ranks or Smarts d8. That said, when we get to Veteran rank, Leader of Men improves our Wild Die to d10... nothing to sneeze at.

To finish this rather long post, you could always improve your Abilities or Skills, remember you can improve only one Ability per rank and these are not cumulative (If you don't improve one while Novice, you can't improve two when Seasoned and so on). As I said, Smarts d8 open a few routes and it would allow you to upgrade Notice as well as other non-maxed skill the following advances instead of improving Notice above the associated ability die.

Jon: Perfect! Then I need only amounts of each ammo, boom thingy to update my profile.