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Post by ironhold on Feb 6, 2024 0:52:30 GMT
Trying to "balance" out the military units in something I'm in the process of developing. Note that both factions have access to the usual fleet of pickup trucks, SUVs, fleet vans, and the like you'd expect to have operating in support roles, plus cargo aircraft and naval vessels.
What would you say each faction most needs?
Thanks.
Faction A: motley mix of high-tech and throwbacks due to uneven technological development and the need to compensate for how expensive some specific items are.
1. True "stealth" fighter jet that is essentially the long-rumored F-19 from the 1980s. The main version of the jet has cannons and air-to-air missiles, but a variant exists where the missile bay has been reduced significantly to allow for "wild weasel" or other ELINT equipment.
2. Twin-engine turboprop multi-role plane that is essentially a fusion of the WWII-era Lightning and Vietnam-era Bronco but with modern tech and sensibilities. It's basically a lower-cost gap-filler.
3. Twin-engine push-prop interceptor plane that is meant to be cheap and simplistic enough for even a reserve unit to quickly and easily maintain and operate at a moment's notice.
4. Heavy-lift helicopter comparable to the Aerospatiale Puma
5. Medium tactical helicopter that is comparable to the UH-1 but has modern electronics and a built-in nose mount for cannons or electronics
6. Star-shaped push-thruster attack helicopter that is broad from up above or down below but practically invisible head-on. Has fixed cannons, and can be armed with air-to-ground and air-to-air munitions
7. Medium tank chassis that is meant to balance bleeding-edge technology with overall robustness. Anti-aircraft, recovery vehicle, and bridge-layer versions exist
8. Halftrack self-propelled howitzer on a modified semi truck chassis.
9. Light tank chassis that is meant to be air-deployable so as to help provide support for airborne infantry forces.
10. Wheeled amphibious transport that is primarily used for infantry but which has ambulance and command modifications.
11. Honest-to-gosh hover tank with a front-facing .50, a rear-facing 7.62, and a turreted missile rack that can be configured to hold 6 anti-tank missiles, 4 anti-air missiles, or 2 ship-killers / bunker-busters.
12. Armed drag-racing boat with front-facing machine guns, torpedoes, a pair of Stinger missiles, and sonar meant to help detect submarines.
Faction B: have long since realized they have no edge in technology and so are going for raw numbers
1. Dagger-shaped air superiority fighter
2. Twin push-prop flying wing bomber
3. Little Bird - style multi-role aircraft
4. heavy tracked chassis that can either be fitted as a tank destroyer or self-propelled artillery piece
5. medium tank that is about 30 years behind the times but is cheap & easy to repair. The same chassis is also used for an anti-aircraft tank, a bridge-layer, and a recovery vehicle
6. what is essentially a Mad Max version of a Chenowth combat buggy, with armor plate in various places and an assortment of weapons in its meager manned turret
7. A manta ray - shaped submersible craft that can't go all that deep but is still armed with a mix of machine guns, torpedoes, and anti-surface rockets.
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Post by the light works on Feb 6, 2024 3:01:21 GMT
my first impression: why is it they have a few bleeding edge designs, and the rest of their front lines are equipment that is basically gunnery practice for them?
with that equipment spread, it's like each faction has two different militaries. and that is an option, if you choose to do that - David Weber's bread and butter was a mercenary company that would hire on to fight wars for backwater worlds, and so his bleeding edge equipment would be mixed in with obsolete equipment scavenged up by the local armies.
if you wanted to have A1, 6, and 11; and B1, and 7 be imported from offworld, with limited supplies, then it won't tip the rest of the battlefield off balance.
you don't have any real deep water combat forces, but you could make that a world driven factor - if there isn't enough contiguous open for a blue water navy, than small gunboats would be the obvious choice. I think I'd make the air superiority fighter be a near orbit capable plane. basically something designed to try to counter the stealth planes. the primary air strategy, as I see it would be for the advanced fighters to try to fly high cover to keep each other off the opposition force's prop jobs.
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Post by ironhold on Feb 6, 2024 16:45:52 GMT
my first impression: why is it they have a few bleeding edge designs, and the rest of their front lines are equipment that is basically gunnery practice for them? with that equipment spread, it's like each faction has two different militaries. and that is an option, if you choose to do that - David Weber's bread and butter was a mercenary company that would hire on to fight wars for backwater worlds, and so his bleeding edge equipment would be mixed in with obsolete equipment scavenged up by the local armies. if you wanted to have A1, 6, and 11; and B1, and 7 be imported from offworld, with limited supplies, then it won't tip the rest of the battlefield off balance. you don't have any real deep water combat forces, but you could make that a world driven factor - if there isn't enough contiguous open for a blue water navy, than small gunboats would be the obvious choice. I think I'd make the air superiority fighter be a near orbit capable plane. basically something designed to try to counter the stealth planes. the primary air strategy, as I see it would be for the advanced fighters to try to fly high cover to keep each other off the opposition force's prop jobs. A few years ago I read about a then-current effort to revive the Bronco (including a new production run) in the belief that it would be a low-cost ground attack fighter & helicopter killer which could be handed over to allies, which is part of why I've been wondering about the feasibility of prop-driven aircraft on the modern battlefield. |
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Post by the light works on Feb 6, 2024 23:02:18 GMT
my first impression: why is it they have a few bleeding edge designs, and the rest of their front lines are equipment that is basically gunnery practice for them? with that equipment spread, it's like each faction has two different militaries. and that is an option, if you choose to do that - David Weber's bread and butter was a mercenary company that would hire on to fight wars for backwater worlds, and so his bleeding edge equipment would be mixed in with obsolete equipment scavenged up by the local armies. if you wanted to have A1, 6, and 11; and B1, and 7 be imported from offworld, with limited supplies, then it won't tip the rest of the battlefield off balance. you don't have any real deep water combat forces, but you could make that a world driven factor - if there isn't enough contiguous open for a blue water navy, than small gunboats would be the obvious choice. I think I'd make the air superiority fighter be a near orbit capable plane. basically something designed to try to counter the stealth planes. the primary air strategy, as I see it would be for the advanced fighters to try to fly high cover to keep each other off the opposition force's prop jobs. A few years ago I read about a then-current effort to revive the Bronco (including a new production run) in the belief that it would be a low-cost ground attack fighter & helicopter killer which could be handed over to allies, which is part of why I've been wondering about the feasibility of prop-driven aircraft on the modern battlefield. I recall you talking about that earlier, and I'm sure we mentioned prop driven aircraft have a top speed, based on how fast you can spin the prop, kind of like high bypass turbofans have a top speed based on how fast the fan can spin. similar deal with helicopters - there is only so fast the advancing rotor blade can go, which limits the top speed of the aircraft. that means in a scenario, where jets are readily available, the jets will easily run them down and wipe them out. |
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Post by ironhold on Feb 18, 2024 22:42:17 GMT
Well, for some reason I got to mulling over an old idea the other night.
Back in 2020, I had a dream that was essentially me living another life as a pro wrestler. I was trying to make sense of it, possibly ahead of turning it into a story, and a few details came to mind.
The revision:
A new trend in professional wrestling is "real wrestling", where promotors allow a dangerous amount of in-ring improvisation and hot-shot booking in order to make everything feel as "real" as possible, to the point that some promoters actually *allow* wrestlers to go off-script and win for real. One of the stars of this new trend is Texas-born Dallas Stevenson, known as the "Bluebonnet Warrior" because his logo is an image of bluebonnet flowers painted by a female cousin.
Given how hot Dallas is, Edmonton-based Royal Alliance Wrestling offers him a generous contract on the basis of reputation alone. They figure that anyone involved in "real wrestling" has to be some sort of brute, and they intend to slot him as a major foreign-born heel. This immediately comes to a screeching halt when he arrives at the main training facility. In reality, Dallas is a highly-intelligent, rather charismatic, and somewhat soft-spoken fellow who is openly religious and credits his having studied tap dancing for how light on his feet he is in the ring. Basically, he only signed on to do "real wrestling" because the indie he cut his teeth in got caught cheating himself and others, leading to its dissolution, and he needed *something* to pay the bills while he finished college. He's actually an incredibly safe wrestler, which is why he kept getting bookings as he had a knack for sizing up his opponents and wrestling to their level.
While one faction in management realizes that they have in fact signed a plausible if somewhat unlikely babyface, another faction has their knickers in a twist. They're frustrated by the fact that there's no way to organically position him as a heel, and they rather resent the idea of a charismatic American as possibly being a face. That he soon ends up in a relationship with a woman who works one of the concession stands at the main auditorium they call home fuels both factions.
At first, the two factions seemingly work out an agreement: he'll be pushed as a face, but they'll keep him as a mid-card wrestler so that he won't be a credible contender for the major titles. In a nod to his being a "real wrestler", his matches will be set up so that at a given point the referee will signal how it should end based on audience reaction. If he's over he'll have a win streak, but if he's not he'll be a stepping-stone.
The closer his win streak gets to the promotion's record, the more desperate the second faction becomes to find someone they can credibly have win over him.
Their ultimate choice is William "Edmonton Kid" Deacon, a promising young rookie who is perhaps even more charismatic. They arrange for him to defeat enough jobbers and local toughs to credibly rise up the rankings, but wrestlers and marks alike both note that Deacon is dangerously inexperienced and is frequently botching moves in a way that could leave him or his opponents injured should something go wrong. By the time a petition begins circulating through the locker room to have Deacon booted from the promotion, the second faction has already set in motion an angle in which Deacon will egg Dallas on for a fight. Dallas' contract is up soon, and they want his final match to be against Deacon at a specific pay-per-view.
...Not realizing that Dallas has already decided to pack it in once his contract is up. He's married the concession girl, and she's now pregnant. Problem is, she's an orphan and so neither of them have any family who can help with childcare or anything else. Royal Alliance has a "Forbidden Door" - style relationship with a major US promotion based in Utah, where Dallas has some extended relatives, so once his contract with Royal Alliance is up the two of them will be passing through that door; this last angle is wholly unnecessary.
Long story short, Deacon is clearly no match for the more experienced Dallas, who has to start wrestling down to Deacon's level to try and protect him. The audience picks up on this, to the point that someone starts chanting for Deacon to just lay down already and much of the audience soon joins in. This just gets Deacon angry, and he ignores the referee's signal to count the lights. Instead, he attempts to bring out his personal "three moves of doom", which Dallas was expecting. Dallas gives the agreed-upon signal indicating that he's about to do his finisher, a tornado kick, but Deacon isn't paying attention and so doesn't properly guard himself. Deacon has to be taken out on a stretcher, Royal Alliance's pit boss *personally* interrupts the show to present the leader of the second faction with a duplicate copy of the petition, and the whole thing is regarded as one of the worst matches in the promotion's history.
The Utah-based promotion recognizes that Dallas did everything within reason during that match and so opens the door for him, but he has to spend time working to convince the audience that he's got what it takes. In contrast, Deacon winds up in Japan as the very same kind of "foreign invader" - type heel that Royal Alliance was wanting to make Dallas into. Royal Alliance itself has to face a hard reality, and that reality includes a series of dismissals and resignations accordingly.
How does this sound now?
Thanks.
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Post by the light works on Feb 19, 2024 1:55:09 GMT
Well, for some reason I got to mulling over an old idea the other night. Back in 2020, I had a dream that was essentially me living another life as a pro wrestler. I was trying to make sense of it, possibly ahead of turning it into a story, and a few details came to mind. The revision: A new trend in professional wrestling is "real wrestling", where promotors allow a dangerous amount of in-ring improvisation and hot-shot booking in order to make everything feel as "real" as possible, to the point that some promoters actually *allow* wrestlers to go off-script and win for real. One of the stars of this new trend is Texas-born Dallas Stevenson, known as the "Bluebonnet Warrior" because his logo is an image of bluebonnet flowers painted by a female cousin. Given how hot Dallas is, Edmonton-based Royal Alliance Wrestling offers him a generous contract on the basis of reputation alone. They figure that anyone involved in "real wrestling" has to be some sort of brute, and they intend to slot him as a major foreign-born heel. This immediately comes to a screeching halt when he arrives at the main training facility. In reality, Dallas is a highly-intelligent, rather charismatic, and somewhat soft-spoken fellow who is openly religious and credits his having studied tap dancing for how light on his feet he is in the ring. Basically, he only signed on to do "real wrestling" because the indie he cut his teeth in got caught cheating himself and others, leading to its dissolution, and he needed *something* to pay the bills while he finished college. He's actually an incredibly safe wrestler, which is why he kept getting bookings as he had a knack for sizing up his opponents and wrestling to their level. While one faction in management realizes that they have in fact signed a plausible if somewhat unlikely babyface, another faction has their knickers in a twist. They're frustrated by the fact that there's no way to organically position him as a heel, and they rather resent the idea of a charismatic American as possibly being a face. That he soon ends up in a relationship with a woman who works one of the concession stands at the main auditorium they call home fuels both factions. At first, the two factions seemingly work out an agreement: he'll be pushed as a face, but they'll keep him as a mid-card wrestler so that he won't be a credible contender for the major titles. In a nod to his being a "real wrestler", his matches will be set up so that at a given point the referee will signal how it should end based on audience reaction. If he's over he'll have a win streak, but if he's not he'll be a stepping-stone. The closer his win streak gets to the promotion's record, the more desperate the second faction becomes to find someone they can credibly have win over him. Their ultimate choice is William "Edmonton Kid" Deacon, a promising young rookie who is perhaps even more charismatic. They arrange for him to defeat enough jobbers and local toughs to credibly rise up the rankings, but wrestlers and marks alike both note that Deacon is dangerously inexperienced and is frequently botching moves in a way that could leave him or his opponents injured should something go wrong. By the time a petition begins circulating through the locker room to have Deacon booted from the promotion, the second faction has already set in motion an angle in which Deacon will egg Dallas on for a fight. Dallas' contract is up soon, and they want his final match to be against Deacon at a specific pay-per-view. ...Not realizing that Dallas has already decided to pack it in once his contract is up. He's married the concession girl, and she's now pregnant. Problem is, she's an orphan and so neither of them have any family who can help with childcare or anything else. Royal Alliance has a "Forbidden Door" - style relationship with a major US promotion based in Utah, where Dallas has some extended relatives, so once his contract with Royal Alliance is up the two of them will be passing through that door; this last angle is wholly unnecessary. Long story short, Deacon is clearly no match for the more experienced Dallas, who has to start wrestling down to Deacon's level to try and protect him. The audience picks up on this, to the point that someone starts chanting for Deacon to just lay down already and much of the audience soon joins in. This just gets Deacon angry, and he ignores the referee's signal to count the lights. Instead, he attempts to bring out his personal "three moves of doom", which Dallas was expecting. Dallas gives the agreed-upon signal indicating that he's about to do his finisher, a tornado kick, but Deacon isn't paying attention and so doesn't properly guard himself. Deacon has to be taken out on a stretcher, Royal Alliance's pit boss *personally* interrupts the show to present the leader of the second faction with a duplicate copy of the petition, and the whole thing is regarded as one of the worst matches in the promotion's history. The Utah-based promotion recognizes that Dallas did everything within reason during that match and so opens the door for him, but he has to spend time working to convince the audience that he's got what it takes. In contrast, Deacon winds up in Japan as the very same kind of "foreign invader" - type heel that Royal Alliance was wanting to make Dallas into. Royal Alliance itself has to face a hard reality, and that reality includes a series of dismissals and resignations accordingly. How does this sound now? sounds like a niche story. sadly, in our current sportstertainment environment, having an upstart MMA/wrestling hybrid show that works like that, is not entirely implausible. in a rational workd, it would get shut down as soon as accidents started happening. Thanks. |
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Post by the light works on Feb 22, 2024 4:31:26 GMT
a thought I had tonight at dinner.
there used to be a company called "table topics that published a monthly laminated 4 page folio that they would distribute to restaurants in the area, that had some local interest stories, some advertising, and some trivia questions. they stopped publishing during the pandemic. it occurred to me that a local newspaper could print placemats, that had sort of the same deal. possibly a current story and a trivia bit on one side, and then a second story and a different trivia bit on the other, plus ads; and deliver them to local restaurants as a weekly thing. they could use copy from the current edition, which would mean it would really only need layout, printing, cutting, and distribution, so theoretically it could be produced fairly cheaply, and either fully funded by ad revenue, or sold to restaurants at prices competitive with plain paper placemats. might be a way to drum up more business for the newspaper.
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Post by ironhold on Feb 22, 2024 17:19:00 GMT
a thought I had tonight at dinner. there used to be a company called "table topics that published a monthly laminated 4 page folio that they would distribute to restaurants in the area, that had some local interest stories, some advertising, and some trivia questions. they stopped publishing during the pandemic. it occurred to me that a local newspaper could print placemats, that had sort of the same deal. possibly a current story and a trivia bit on one side, and then a second story and a different trivia bit on the other, plus ads; and deliver them to local restaurants as a weekly thing. they could use copy from the current edition, which would mean it would really only need layout, printing, cutting, and distribution, so theoretically it could be produced fairly cheaply, and either fully funded by ad revenue, or sold to restaurants at prices competitive with plain paper placemats. might be a way to drum up more business for the newspaper. Thing is, a lot of your smaller local-level newspapers don't have their own presses and so hire time out from someone who does. We're one of the ones that don't. We had a press at one time, but at some unknown point the decision was made to sell the equipment and lay off the workers. I've been with the paper since December 2008, and even then we were hiring time out. I think we're on our third third-party printer now since I've been there. |
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Post by the light works on Feb 22, 2024 18:09:48 GMT
a thought I had tonight at dinner. there used to be a company called "table topics that published a monthly laminated 4 page folio that they would distribute to restaurants in the area, that had some local interest stories, some advertising, and some trivia questions. they stopped publishing during the pandemic. it occurred to me that a local newspaper could print placemats, that had sort of the same deal. possibly a current story and a trivia bit on one side, and then a second story and a different trivia bit on the other, plus ads; and deliver them to local restaurants as a weekly thing. they could use copy from the current edition, which would mean it would really only need layout, printing, cutting, and distribution, so theoretically it could be produced fairly cheaply, and either fully funded by ad revenue, or sold to restaurants at prices competitive with plain paper placemats. might be a way to drum up more business for the newspaper. Thing is, a lot of your smaller local-level newspapers don't have their own presses and so hire time out from someone who does. We're one of the ones that don't. We had a press at one time, but at some unknown point the decision was made to sell the equipment and lay off the workers. I've been with the paper since December 2008, and even then we were hiring time out. I think we're on our third third-party printer now since I've been there. still, if you laid the placemats out to be a full page print, you should be able to still get the same per-page price, it's the cutting that is a wild card. I'm guessing a press isn't cost effective for a weekly paper to own, but if you print 1000 papers at a run, and have 6 placemats per sheet, you could do 6000 placemats a week, and only print one more page. my new improved county paper averages, I think 9 pages a week, plus flitter. of course, the idea is the easy part. finding restaurants that either use placemats and are interested in switching, or are willing to start using placemats would be a task in and of itself. but if it worked, you'd be exposing more people to the newspaper without giving away free papers. |
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Post by wvengineer on Feb 23, 2024 13:11:07 GMT
I'm not sure the common place mat size. However tablet size paper (11x17) is common and printers for that are very common. Most office grade copier systems can handle that size. That way, it is done in house and doesn't require overly specialized equipment. Heck, that is something that someone could setup in their garage.
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Post by the light works on Feb 23, 2024 13:42:08 GMT
I'm not sure the common place mat size. However tablet size paper (11x17) is common and printers for that are very common. Most office grade copier systems can handle that size. That way, it is done in house and doesn't require overly specialized equipment. Heck, that is something that someone could setup in their garage. I'm guessing that costs more per page than newsprint, though. depending on the costs involved with cutting it. got the weekly paper yesterday, and it's a broadsheet format, and I think 6 placemats per page would be about right. |
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Post by ironhold on Feb 23, 2024 16:09:52 GMT
OK. I recently picked up the manual for the new G. I. Joe tabletop role-playing game, and even though I'm disappointed by some elements of the game & manual I'm still trying to come up with adventures for a possible campaign.
As part of it, I have an idea for a recurring original NPC I can use to help nudge the party along as appropriate. I'm trying to make him heroic, but not ridiculously so.
Lt. Ransack
Officially, Lt. Ransack is a security systems and infiltration expert. If the Joe team needs to test out a security system, or they need someone / something "extracted" with extreme subtlety, he's the guy they call.
In reality, he's a [censored] klepto who routinely terrifies and confounds friend & foe alike.
On his first assignment with the Joe team, he was asked to test the base's new security systems. General Hawk still can't figure out how Lt. Ransack was able to lift Hawk's favorite lighter despite Hawk having inadvertently left it in his level 5 - secured office.
On his first field assignment, he slipped into a Cobra headquarters facility, followed a Cobra officer into her quarters, put her into a sleeper hold until she passed out, restrained her with her own collection of designer belts, wrapped her in a decorative rug that he tightened with electrical cords, and literally walked right out of the base with her over his shoulder before handing her over for interrogation.
His "crowning" achievement consists of slipping into a different Cobra headquarters facility, stealing the operator's manual for a H.I.S.S. IFV; sitting in a lounge area casually reading it; slipping back into the base's motor pool; stealing the keys to one such H.I.S.S.; loading the infantry bay with an assortment of computer disks, munitions, operator's manuals, enough name-brand foodstuffs & corresponding paperwork from the mess hall to prove that a major food conglomerate had been infiltrated, an entire filing cabinet full of sensitive information, a Cobra tech sergeant, the driver of that H.I.S.S., a flatulent penguin they were keeping as a "pet", and several boxes of assorted Cobra-issue uniforms & clothing; setting timed explosive charges as a diversion, and then casually driving the H.I.S.S. out of the base alongside the other units deployed to investigate the explosions.
The photo of him and "Stinky" splitting a can of anchovies in celebration still hangs in his office.
Even more confounding is that Lt. Ransack is devoutly religious and has been authorized by his religious organization to conduct field-level worship services as appropriate. To date, no one has asked him his thoughts on the Ten Commandments.
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Post by the light works on Feb 24, 2024 0:40:13 GMT
OK. I recently picked up the manual for the new G. I. Joe tabletop role-playing game, and even though I'm disappointed by some elements of the game & manual I'm still trying to come up with adventures for a possible campaign. As part of it, I have an idea for a recurring original NPC I can use to help nudge the party along as appropriate. I'm trying to make him heroic, but not ridiculously so. Lt. RansackOfficially, Lt. Ransack is a security systems and infiltration expert. If the Joe team needs to test out a security system, or they need someone / something "extracted" with extreme subtlety, he's the guy they call. In reality, he's a [censored] klepto who routinely terrifies and confounds friend & foe alike. On his first assignment with the Joe team, he was asked to test the base's new security systems. General Hawk still can't figure out how Lt. Ransack was able to lift Hawk's favorite lighter despite Hawk having inadvertently left it in his level 5 - secured office. On his first field assignment, he slipped into a Cobra headquarters facility, followed a Cobra officer into her quarters, put her into a sleeper hold until she passed out, restrained her with her own collection of designer belts, wrapped her in a decorative rug that he tightened with electrical cords, and literally walked right out of the base with her over his shoulder before handing her over for interrogation. His "crowning" achievement consists of slipping into a different Cobra headquarters facility, stealing the operator's manual for a H.I.S.S. IFV; sitting in a lounge area casually reading it; slipping back into the base's motor pool; stealing the keys to one such H.I.S.S.; loading the infantry bay with an assortment of computer disks, munitions, operator's manuals, enough name-brand foodstuffs & corresponding paperwork from the mess hall to prove that a major food conglomerate had been infiltrated, an entire filing cabinet full of sensitive information, a Cobra tech sergeant, the driver of that H.I.S.S., a flatulent penguin they were keeping as a "pet", and several boxes of assorted Cobra-issue uniforms & clothing; setting timed explosive charges as a diversion, and then casually driving the H.I.S.S. out of the base alongside the other units deployed to investigate the explosions. The photo of him and "Stinky" splitting a can of anchovies in celebration still hangs in his office. Even more confounding is that Lt. Ransack is devoutly religious and has been authorized by his religious organization to conduct field-level worship services as appropriate. To date, no one has asked him his thoughts on the Ten Commandments. personally, I'd make his kleptomania a lot less strategic. I mean, the favorite lighter is great. stealing an officer out of a COBRA base is a bit of a giveaway for the players. if you need him to nudge the players in a direction, have sensitive intelligence be found in the otherwise random stuff he steals. you know, picks a random COBRA officer's pocket, and ends up with his password notebook. |
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Post by ironhold on Feb 24, 2024 18:06:33 GMT
personally, I'd make his kleptomania a lot less strategic. I mean, the favorite lighter is great. stealing an officer out of a COBRA base is a bit of a giveaway for the players. if you need him to nudge the players in a direction, have sensitive intelligence be found in the otherwise random stuff he steals. you know, picks a random COBRA officer's pocket, and ends up with his password notebook. In real life, there have been commandos good enough to actually do as I described, slip behind enemy lines to capture soldiers - including the occasional officer - for interrogation. So it's plausible he's that good. The mission the players will be on will be a "stealth" - type mission in which they're tasked with sneaking into a suspected weapons test facility and acquiring what information and prototypes they can get. I want him to seem like a living legend to the players, such that they think if he's involved then they're going to do an Ocean's 11 and get excited about the job. In reality this will be me trying to train them on the idea that you don't always need to "murder hobo" your way through a campaign and that there can actually be negative consequences if you do. |
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Post by ironhold on Feb 26, 2024 0:03:11 GMT
Mission ideas I've been considering:
1. A high-profile terrorist-for-hire has been spotted in a country that the US isn't on friendly terms with. This has added an extra layer of difficulty, such that even Lt. Ransack questions his ability to get in, snag the guy, and get out on his own. The party's mission is to wait in a specific location that will serve as the extraction point, keeping a very careful eye out in case they've been made. This will test the party's patience and ability to follow orders, as if they take off on their own or get sloppy then *everyone* will be in a bad way, but if they follow orders and quietly "deal with" the patrol that might potentially find them, there's a good chance they can all go home without otherwise firing a shot.
2. Intel has reason to believe that a particular Cobra facility is being used as a weapons test center. The party, as a whole, must sneak in alongside him to gather whatever information they can. If any prototypes are discovered, the party is to procure whatever documentation they have, and possibly even a prototype. There *will* in fact be at least one "new" vehicle being tested of a kind that someone in the party will be able to successfully operate (for example, if the party includes a tank driver, it'll be a tracked vehicle), and I'll try to make it one that everyone can pile on as they shoot their way out.
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Post by the light works on Feb 26, 2024 2:45:16 GMT
Mission ideas I've been considering: 1. A high-profile terrorist-for-hire has been spotted in a country that the US isn't on friendly terms with. This has added an extra layer of difficulty, such that even Lt. Ransack questions his ability to get in, snag the guy, and get out on his own. The party's mission is to wait in a specific location that will serve as the extraction point, keeping a very careful eye out in case they've been made. This will test the party's patience and ability to follow orders, as if they take off on their own or get sloppy then *everyone* will be in a bad way, but if they follow orders and quietly "deal with" the patrol that might potentially find them, there's a good chance they can all go home without otherwise firing a shot. 2. Intel has reason to believe that a particular Cobra facility is being used as a weapons test center. The party, as a whole, must sneak in alongside him to gather whatever information they can. If any prototypes are discovered, the party is to procure whatever documentation they have, and possibly even a prototype. There *will* in fact be at least one "new" vehicle being tested of a kind that someone in the party will be able to successfully operate (for example, if the party includes a tank driver, it'll be a tracked vehicle), and I'll try to make it one that everyone can pile on as they shoot their way out. those seem like reasonable premises. |
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Post by ironhold on Feb 27, 2024 3:27:28 GMT
Got so very, very frustrated with the character creation system in the official manual and broke out some home-brew character creation materials I created to supplement the Battletech tabletop role-playing game's "life path" system in order to compare the two.
What I wound up with ->
"I used to be such a sweet sweet thing until they got a hold of me..."
Captain Ransack's father was a chaplain in the military, and given that Captain Ransack appeared to be as studious as his father it was believed that the chaplaincy was in the cards for him. Instead, when he was a youth he was brutally attacked by people who weren't fond of the family's minority Christian faith and didn't like the fact that he asked them a question they couldn't answer. He fought for his life, and this woke up something inside of him that perhaps should have remained asleep.
Even he had to admit that he was never the same afterword, and that he couldn't be the gentle man of faith his father was. This led to his being sent to a military school in the hopes that his newfound aggression could be channeled into something productive, and it worked a little too well. While he easily came in near the top of his class academically, he was also a constant suspect in a series of pranks and other humiliating incidents that brought down student after student who started drama with him. But since nothing could be proven, he had a clean enough record to get into a relatively prestigious college and its ROTC (Reserve Officer Training Corps) program.
He easily breezed through a theology degree, but to everyone's confusion put in for the infantry. By this time, he had polished his stealth and sleight-of-hand abilities to where he was functionally a ghost in the field, which quickly got him seconded to special forces. Problem was, no one knew what to do with him, and by the time he'd turned counting coup against friend & foe alike into an art form several higher-level officers had motive to wash their hands of him, so he got shipped off to a fictional European nation to work with NATO.
Officially, he and several misfits were there as advisors so they could share their "unique" skills with the local military; in reality, they were running various covert and black missions from that country. The nation finally got the heebie-jeebies and politely asked for their absence, but due to a fluke he was the last man in-country when a Communist uprising took place. As he had more direct combat experience than that nation's combined soldiery, it fell to him to spearhead the response, which he put down hard before ferreting out the ringleaders and leading local law enforcement in capturing them.
Cue Cobra realizing that their stooges had failed miserably and deciding to handle matters themselves.
By the time Action Force mobilized to get a response in place, he'd already pivoted the military and law enforcement accordingly, personally leading a series of hit-and-fade missions to keep Cobra off-balance. It was in this process that he met and got close with a female helicopter pilot, a scientist who had served in the nation's reserves to pay for college and was forcibly called back up because she had a pilot's license. That they found romance in the middle of a firefight made for great PR, and by the time Cobra had been forced out they were the darlings of the nation.
The pair have since married and have a child. He's been officially invited to stay in the country, and even offered honorary citizenship. In addition to directly advising the nation's military, he also works with G. I. Joe and Action Force as needs be, including taking the field on occasion whenever his services are directly called upon.
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Post by ironhold on Mar 8, 2024 17:16:22 GMT
Running gag I came up with to possibly set the character apart -
In real life, there are countries in Central Europe where you can purchase shelf-stable packages of rye bread slices that have been specially sealed for longer-term storage.
Thinking of having it be that he discovered these shortly after arriving in country, has been buying them in bulk, and always magically manages to pull a package out of *somewhere* (usually alongside a small container of apple spread) no matter what circumstances he's in so that he has a field-expedient meal always on hand.
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Post by the light works on Mar 8, 2024 18:52:34 GMT
Running gag I came up with to possibly set the character apart - In real life, there are countries in Central Europe where you can purchase shelf-stable packages of rye bread slices that have been specially sealed for longer-term storage. Thinking of having it be that he discovered these shortly after arriving in country, has been buying them in bulk, and always magically manages to pull a package out of *somewhere* (usually alongside a small container of apple spread) no matter what circumstances he's in so that he has a field-expedient meal always on hand. it's as good a quirk as any. |
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Post by ironhold on Mar 31, 2024 21:32:46 GMT
Possible "mission" (re: game session) ideas ->
1. Cobra turned a key Italian intelligence official, and it's all hands on deck as the team has to run damage control. The party, under the command of a British infantry sergeant, must sneak into a fictional North African nation and recover an Italian operative who was spying on Cobra's activities there. Cobra's closing in on her, so time is of the essence.
2. An information broker who generally hangs out in Vienna has been spotted up in the Tyrol region, and it's doubtful that he's there for the scheduled amateur weightlifting competition. Captain Bergmeyer and his wife will shake the tree a bit by going up there on an ostensible vacation, and the party will go in undercover in relation to the competition to see what falls out.
3. Cobra is field-testing a new self-propelled artillery track that's got a longer range than anything either G. I. Joe or Action Force currently has. The party's primary mission is to steal one of these vehicles and bring it back for study, but if they can't then anything they can do to sabotage the project will help.
4. Cobra is not known to have any actual warships or aircraft carriers under their command, but some of the operations they've been engaging in of late could only be launched if they had significant naval support. High command up in Brussels suspects that this means Cobra has at least one cargo ship or oil tanker they've converted into some sort of combat vehicle, and so the party will be tasked with helping to investigate several ships that have become suspect.
5. A scientist working for the Communist nation of Borovia has gone missing, and there is reason to believe that he is attempting to defect to the West. Captain Bergmeyer will personally take the lead in attempting to locate him, but once he makes contact the party *must* extract both of them immediately and through the most subtle means they can muster. This mission is off the books, so if anyone is caught or killed they'll be disavowed.
6. Frusenland. This Nordic nation is as cold and heartless as a divorce attorney on Columbian snow, but several companies believed to be front operations for Cobra have been attempting to buy real estate in a particular region. Why?
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