Armageddon Special Ops Game Logs

[Xychotic]

First the intro to what this game is. Firstly, the title, "Special Ops," is really the second most unoriginal title I could have come up with. The most unoriginal being to just go with something like "The Chronicles of So-and-so." It's really meant to be a rather simple and straightforward game. Things get hard when your players have one approach they want to take and you set up a situation where that one approach is really not anywhere near the best approach.

The year is 2017, in the Armageddon history, that's pretty much 6 years into WWIII + Cthulhu (for those that aren't already familiar). I like to mix a few sources, so I also added some elements of Conspiracy X and Metal Gear Solid. It's not as weird a casserole as one might imagine.

So, I get a cast composed of an Olympian forge god, an Atlantean maker/magician (yeah, despite that the setting clearly indicates that Atlanteans didn't care for magic, he insisted on using it, more about that later), and a cyborg that is... i guess you could call him a mentally unstable and significantly less wealthy version of Tony Stark. I can tell, slow down. You're going to need to suspend your disbelief using adamant tow cables, believe me, it wasn't easy for me either.

Here's the set up. Everyone is working for a private military contractor that specializes in paranormal personnel. Don't bludgeon me for this, but I only call it The Company. Tempting to go with Weyland-Yutani, but I already have enough cliches going for me right now. No, it's not lost on me that WY actually did go by "The Company." Moving on! They get a contract to kill a couple of relatively powerful Adepts (Mythos-esque priests of substantial magical power) on a deep sea oil rig off the coast of Brazil. I thought to myself, "This is perfect. I have a controlled environment that is still quite plausible. I'll have a healthy supply of enemy soldiers and a pretty solid set of options as to how to approach this mission." I was wrong. If anything, this mission turned out to be an example of two things. 1) Do your damn preparations, GMs. Do your preparations, and be thorough and flexible. 2) Get proper characters ironed out BEFORE starting the game.

Yeah. They tell me they had fun. To me, it was like trying to eat a blueberry pie before letting it set. It looks good on the surface, it smells great, but the moment you get below the golden brown crust, the insides are a complete disaster. It continues from there. It really does.

[Xychotic]

It's been six or so weeks since the clusterf*ck that was the last mission, in-game time. Two of those weeks were spent floating around in a lifeboat in the Atlantic, fighting off dehydration, hunger, and exposure. I could have run that part, but there was a good chance the players would have gotten their characters killed if I allowed them to do things themselves.

Now, the team has been put on non-combat suspension, transferred to a southern Texas joint military base, and told to watch drills and figure out how to not act like a pack of wild boars. Let me tell you, when the sh*t hit the fan, they immediately reverted to wild boar form.

It's a touch metagame, but let me set up the background for the audience. Y'see, the enemy of this WWIII+Cthulhu situation is called the Church of Revelations and their military arm is, drumroll, the Army of Revelations. They're psychotically messed up and evil, not poets. They took over pretty much everything south of the US and are trying to push north but lost momentum. And, well, America kicks @$$. Unbeknownst to everyone, the AoR sent in special elite stealth teams into the military base to deploy/open Gateways to the other dimension they are using as a staging ground. For those of you familiar with StarCraft, it's like opening the Nydus worm in someone's base while they're not paying attention. The AoR has something on the order of 12 platoons each with a big tank ready to deploy through the gateways into the middle of the base.

I also introduced a new character, a half-human half-god son of Odin that also is a Marine Force Recon soldier complete with a full squad of his own. The role of the supernatural teams is like modern tanks, they provide support to the infantry and big enough guns to deal with enemy supernaturals, of which there are many.

That's the situation. I did plenty more preparations this time, but I'm still not quite happy. I am, however, using my newly created cinematic combat rules. I think they are working out, but I'm finding that several things need to be tweaked out quite a bit to make it as smooth as I'd like.

[Xychotic]

So, the team, now composed of an Olympian, an Aesir half breed, a reincarnated Atlantean, and a bionics prodigy, has been assigned a mission in South China. Remember, the year is 2017 and the 2nd Army of Revelations played merry havoc in the vast majority of Asia.

Well, the mission is to enter, get past the occupied territory to an encampment, rescue a Japanese person and a British person and bring them back out safely. The warning is that both the local insurgents and the present AoR are hostile and the CoR has been setting loose crazy amounts of corrupt energy and infecting local wildlife in an alternate strategy focused more on the supernatural.

Well, for the first part, they made it just fine through the city that was a problem. They stopped a rape. They blasted through a checkpoint. They were quite impressive.

After escaping the city, they pressed northward. Unfortunately, due to some bad role-playing, I had to cut it short. The plan was to have an attack by a pack of Taint-infected dogs and the chinese guardian lion statues in the shrine the team used for a break would come alive and help them out. It didn't work out.

They later made it to their destination and played merry havoc with the enemy. I had the Olympian shot by a minigun. After they emerged victorious, they got into a fight with some greater shaitan. I use one to rip of the Olympian's arm. That was very satisfying. By the end of things, the team survived but, to be honest, I'm glad this game is over.

[lynnnalee]

It looks good on the surface, it smells great, but the moment you get below the golden brown crust, the insides are a complete disaster.....






___________________________________________
We cease loving ourselves if no one loves us
Cheap WOW Gold