Special Forces Campaign, A campaign about the best of the best Options

[WyldKnight]

So after watching this trailer

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hhq7-wo11h4&feature=fvw

I'm in the mood to run a campaign not around Shadowrunners but about a team such as SAS, Delta Force, or the Tir Ghosts. With that in mind I know 400 BP isn't nearly enough to express such a skilled operator and have been wondering what kind of crunch could express such a force. That is why I am turning to the far more experienced (read much older (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif) ) players of Dumpshock. So these are my main questions and ideas

Build Restrictions: 450 BP? 500 BP? How much should be given? I was thinking of raising the availability to 20 and then using Restricted Gear for up to 25. Is that fair or should Restricted Gear just be made a moot point since they're allowed up to 20. What about restrictions on how many points are put where? Should I just remove those?

Style: I thought the team would be one part Delta Force one part Green Berets. The team is trained as an anti terrorism unit but they are also inserted into foreign and sometimes hostile territories where they blend in, make contacts within the local population, and complete long duration missions. My players liked the idea but I'm not sure about any unforeseeable problems that may arise.

Theaters of conflict: My idea was that there would be a few interconnected missions dealing with a terrorist group. Rescuing hostages, gathering intel, taking out out a few lieutenants, would give my players a good idea of what they will probably have to do. This would lead to a full blown campaign in the terrorists home country. Which one I am still deciding. Africa always seemed fun, especially if they had to sneak into Asmando or somewhere a little out there like that but the idea of American agents trying to Make it through Hong Kong also amused me because of the challenges they would face. This would then lead to my other idea where the terrorists leaders are hiding in the areas around the Aztlan/Amazonia conflict and using it to cover their tracks. When the team is inserted into the area to hunt them down this would put them in an interesting situation where they could be mistaken for either sides forces but also give them a similar advantage to the people they're hunting. Do you guys have any ideas?

Roles: Combat medics, hackers, and mages are obvious but what about classic roles like the rigger? I would think future riggers would work the same as their modern day counter parts do in that they are far from the conflict which means that role would be run by NPCs. Are there any roles that would be in this style game but not a normal game?

Fire Support: There would be a few missions where they have heavy fire support in the form of Nimrods (or whatever their UCAS counter part would be), offshore artillery, and the occasional gunship. In this case I would assume a target designator would do the job of pointing out what they want dead. Usually they would have a combat drone like a steel lynx but tougher. I would think the military would have access to more hardy drones since they would deal with a lot more heavy weapons fire. Now that i think about it maybe a field rigger wouldn't be a crazy idea. It would just be subscribed to the team hackers comlink and he would send it the occasional order.

Details: Despite all the bad stuff said about War! Should I get it to help with an idea like this? Are there any older edition books I could pick up on PDF that would help with this set up?

Any ideas and comments are greatly appreciated.

[scarius]

you could use something like a predator drone ( wiki page ) but a bit more upto date for shadowrun (cant remember name at the moment) and have it in a overwatch role, just flying around over looking the battle feild, and have the hacker/rigger have it slaved to one of his/her comlinks. this way not only could you have some form of knowing where every one is, but you can also smart-link it and have it "paint" targets. it can also provide some support of its own, because is it armed with missles, and you could give it a machine gun or something so it could do strafing runs with it.

another idea is to have another team head in before hand or have them met some local contacts, who can then provide overwatch and some fire support, from sniper rifles and motars to machine gun nests. have the players set the other team into a position that they want them, so they could provide a wall of fire once they reach a certian point, or they could place the needed shot into the targets head, or drop bombs to soften the area they are about to assualt.

another good idea is to have a read of some books like: house to house, sniper one, 18 hours, masters of chaos, and many others. these will give you a look at some of the stuff that has happened to our men and women who are serving overseas and can also give you an idea of some things that you can put your players up against

thats about all i can think of at the moment, if i can think of more i will post it up.

[KamikazePilot]

From the logistics side the individual soldier dont get much choice as its their commanders and the department of defence aquisitions that specify their gear. So I would probaby sit down and make a list of super awesome gear and let them pick what they want from it. If they are special forces they would have the cash to get almost anything and the availability isnt really and issue as they just order direct from the manufacturer. When it comes to special forces no penny pinching happens after all you dont want your deniable assets failing and sparking an international incident all because you opted to save couple of hundered dollars by ordering a cheaper weapon accessories than the ones they needed?

Since missions of the sort would most likely be of the run and gun variety and special forces are selected on their toughness, both mental and physical as well as skills you should enforce a minimum high standard of both body, strength, willpower and weapon/combat skills.

Some of these may even have mandarory combat drugs treatment or bio/cyber ware implants as standard.

Anything they receive as STANDARD both cyber/bio and gear/foci should not be counted against their BP allocation.
with such standard loadouts they are left with alot of BP for attribs and skills.
since contacts are of no use thats saving them BP too.
depends on what you consider to set the body,strength,willpower,intuition,perception,weapon skills minimums you may increase the BP pool for these.

mission payments arent the same too. they dont necessarily gain money when working for a corp/goverment. They just do their job and have a steady pay with maybe bonuses thrown in here and there. No negotiations etc etc.

So maybe make a Medal System to go with the specialised karma awards that gains them reputation and better benefits or maybe access to a subset of restricted gear not allowed at chargen.

[WyldKnight]

@Scarius
Ya, the nimrod essentially is the predator drone. I like the idea of a second team for them to work with but I think I'm going to save that for certain missions. They won't always have backup. I have been reading a lot of military books to get me in the mindset, I'll look up the ones you mentioned.

@Kamikaze
While it is true that they usually don't have a lot of control over it I would think they are given enough freedom to choose most of their own gear as they are all experienced enough to know what they use best and they are sometimes put in situations where they have to use whatever weapons are at hand.

Do you think 500 BP isn't enough for them to get the right skills, stats, and gear? Actually I thought that a little too since high end (beta/delta) ware, foci, and software can be really expensive. Maybe an extra 250,000 for stuff. At first I thought that was a little high until i realized how easily that could be sucked up by a few powerful buys.

Well chargen buys are meant to sum up everything throughout their career. If they still need stuff after their characters are made I'll consider throwing them some extra karma or cash depending on what the issue is.

The medal system is what I meant by bonus. If they completed those extra things they would receive extra karma. While their characters will be powerful I have removed the initial limits on skills but greatly increased the cost after 6. I saw it mentioned in a thread and I liked the idea. Plus it seems to work perfectly with these elite type characters.

[Omenowl]

I would probably go with 500 BP. This gives plenty for stats, magic, and skills. I would give 500k for each player to choose equipment and cyberware. I would probably limit the gear to 20 and ignore the restricted quality. Any missiles would be mission specific and assigned by you the GM as required, which would exceed 20. Allow them to get betaware.


Also realize that if the are going undercover they may be limited to locally available weapons with few if any modifications. This may knock the availability down by several notches. Also you may wish to require all cyberware, etc to be concealable.

[WyldKnight]

That all sounds good. The extra 500k sounds about right as well so I think I'll go with that. The missiles I didn't think about but yes the occasional Nimrod support will hold a mix of HE and anti vehicle homing missiles. The cyberware I don't mind as much. Depending on the crowd it would make more sense to have a more noticeable prosthetic arm but knowing my group none of them will choose anything obvious.

What about mission ideas? I'm writing them down now but I'm running a little dry.

[Makki]

tell them to discuss and agree on one model per weapon type, commlink etc
they may choose an ares alpha, but then everyone must use it, if he thinks he needs an assault rifle
And I agree with the 500 BP + 500k

you probably have War! already (IMG:style_emoticons/default/rotate.gif)

[WyldKnight]

No, I don't. I heard so much bad buzz about it I wasn't sure about getting it. Thats why I asked if there were any older books from past editions that I should look for.

[CanadianWolverin...]

I think it is worth noting that IMHO, the idea 500K is just what is in the armory, it is not transferable to their own personal shadow bank accounts unless they sell stuff from the armory to the black market, which should be pretty risky or not depending on how much of a pencil pushing bureaucrat their oversight is. Any special gear and slush fund should be what they can steal without oversight noticing. Remember, the Ghosts don't exist and on the books their funding for their unit is listed as "Ornithology Study and Library Grant" or something and thus have their budget be targeted maliciously or unknowingly by a overall tightening budget unless their top brass puts political capital and their careers on the line for them. There is just as much chance if a mission goes sour they can be left out in the cold as the relationship between a Johnson and some Shadowrunners, only its expected that the Special Forces guys may have a better political and logistics support network or not depending on their sponsor nation/corp, basicly their various contacts are legitimized legally most of the time.

I like the idea that you should just do a standard 400 BP character but grant them a Positive Quality for free that does not count against the maximum spent on Positive Qualities called something like Special Forces Hell Week or something that gives them the free minimums you think are required to be a Special Forces member where-ever they are from, which vary from nation to nation and corp. I would think of it a bit like how the Elves don't have to spend anything and they have a 3 in charisma, that sort of thing.

And I think it should be revealed at some point that if they are doing their duty for a particular country, it should be revealed by way of them being that damn good at paying attention, that their bosses are renting them out to the highest corp bidder in their local political scene for whatever favours the corps are offering in terms of budget relief or campaign contributions or what have you. Corruption and dystopia, baby. Social welfare, what is that and tax cuts for the most wealthy and propaganda for the rest. And to top it all off, the mission they are tasked with was double/triple booked with shadowrunners and mercenaries, perhaps. Oh look, dystopian future governments using their special forces as their own play things while under funding them, will they be just another ghostly death squad mentioned in hushed tones or be the center of a propaganda campaign as proof "we are the good guys, they are the demons".

I think things like the fictional series Rogue Warrior make great reading for this kind of campaign setting.

Edit: And I definitely think they should have Contacts and Knowledge sets galore, especially multiple languages written and spoken. If that was anything I noticed about things I have read about Special Forces is they love people fluent in multiple languages.

[Cthulhudreams]

Don't give players individual gear lists. Write out some standard lists (like, saw, four - RTO, rifleman, SAW gunner, grenadier) and tell your players they can replace any item with an equivelent item at no cost, reflecting the fact that Spec Ops are more likely than the average dudes to have stuff that a regular infantryman does not have.

This is only for stuff that you can put in the armory or the locker though, have a separate budget for implanted gear. Make them pay for that budget with BPs. I'd give quite a generous BP allowance, or, altenatively, this is a situation that non-errate'd karma gen actually works beautifully for, because it encourages a broad diversity of skills and high attributes which is exactly what you want. Just remove the cap on converting BP -> Cash

[kzt]

Use Franks' house rules for character creation. It allows you to get more skills, as these guys should be very good at doing at least one other role there than shooting, which they should be really damn good at. Then add more points as you see fit.

http://forums.dumpshock.com/index.php?show...mp;#entry707795

[WyldKnight]

I really like those ideas. The 500K was never theres. Like you said all that is from the military budget. They all receive pay for what they do of course but I am not completely sure what that pay should be. Somewhere between 5K-8K I would assume. There's no way it could be more then that.

I can see how that works but on the other hand they would probably be a steep investment in training and gear. Is it really cost effective to toss them aside like that? Isn't that what Shadowrunners are for? I could understand if they were sent on a suicide mission because what had to be done couldn't be done by anyone else but beyond that it seems like a waste of resources. On contacts I was going to allow them to buy a few for various reasons but like you said they would all mostly be legit. This is to represent all the politics that go on in the military. Sometimes to make their CO look bad back room deals will put them in crappy situations. Using the people they've met (CIA operators they befriended while on joint assignments, former CO's, friends that took the corporate route) helps them survive the political battleground and get the stuff they need when pencil pushers want to cut corners. I want this to be more then just shoot em up. These guys will be bad ass but they may get taken down by political maneuvers which leads to getting put down by a bullet.

I see what you're saying. Problem is I'm not sure at all what kind of standards those would be. Beyond body/strength/willpower being at least 5 I have no idea.

I like that. In fact it gives me an idea of them going up against an Ares Firewatch team. Both going for the same item told they have to keep casualties to a minimum. A good way for both sides to test how well the training works and see any gaps in it while upper echelons know it's a test. Is that something along the lines of what your talking about?

Is that fiction? I thought they said it was an autobiography.

EDIT: @Cthulu
That's what I was thinking of actually.

On Karma gen, I've never used it. Whats the difference?

@Kzt
I'll take a look at them, thanks for that.

[scarius]

an idea that i had gotten from a book that i have used in a couple of other games (spy craft, recon) and would work good in this case is:

they are sent into a quite hilly area (i used afghanistan) where there are some sort of ground troops all ready, who are being locked in place by heavy machine gun fire (.50 cal or bigger) and have taken alot of casualitys, the team in choppered into place and have to destory the machine gun nests. turns out that the machine guns are actually anti-air machine guns, and they start to fire upon the choppers that are droping the team off, so taking out a nest on transit can/will occur.

once this was done i gave them a contact and let them call on them if they were in the same area again.

i think that you should give them a few contacts as well, like someone they worked with a couple of times or saved the life of a couple of times, someone who owes them a favour or something

also a couple of other books to look at are: ice station, area 7 and scarecrow ( scarecrow ) or 7 ancient wonders, 6 sacred stones and 5 greatest warriors ( jack west ) they are done by an aussie writer but are based on small teams who get into big trouble

[kzt]

SF guys doing important stuff get the call signs and frequencies of the orbital platforms with the gigawatt lasers and KE weapons.

[WyldKnight]

Good stuff.

Random question. Would it be weird to find a non hermetic mage in the UCAS military?

KZT:

Ya I thought of that on a case by case basis. In those missions I thought close fire support like gunships and Nimrods made more sense. But I planned on there being some real heavy missions where the best weapon to use was a THOR shot.

[kzt]

Random question. Would it be weird to find a non hermetic mage in the UCAS military?

Due to the RAW restrictions about ritual magic it would work better if they were all Hermitics. (or just ignore/modify that) But I think they take what they can get. As long as the guy will play by the military rules he should be fine. A bunch of the mentor spirits are totally inappropriate.

It also would be interesting to use a group that is all mages.

[Udoshi]

When it comes to special forces no penny pinching happens after all you dont want your deniable assets failing and sparking an international incident all because you opted to save couple of hundered dollars by ordering a cheaper weapon accessories than the ones they needed?

This is an interesting point, and it cuts both ways.

In some cases, especially ones with high risks of capture or failure, I'm guessing that special forces gear would be issued gear with a more deniable factor - equipment that can't be traced back to its point of origin, such as weapons and armor of a local manufacture.

Deniable assets after all, are deniable. Not so easy when someone can pick up that fancy ares gauss rifle, look at the manufacturer number, and find out where it was shipped to and who owns it. On the flip side, this would make a good mission for your team to do: You have a piece of gear from an enemy operative; break into a manufactuer, and steal their shipping/financial records to find out just which enemy organization you're dealing with.

[WyldKnight]

With the extra BP one person in my group really wanted to be a combat TM and I'm pretty sure I'll allow it since I never see TMs able to anything outside of the matrix. Think the military would risk a TM in the field like that? I'm looking through Franks rules and so far I like em a lot. Some of this stuff makes a lot more sense then the RAW stuff.

A whole group of mages would just be overkill. Then again sometimes thats the kind of kill you need.

Udoshi that's what I was thinking actually. But at the same time I want these guys to be able to use all the fancy toys they wouldn't usually be able to get. I guess it will just depend on the assignment.

[Jareth Valar]

I really like the idea of a SpecOps campaign, I ran one many years ago and it was allot of fun.

As for older books to look into, Fields of Fire, hands down. Geared for Mercs, but it's no stretch.

I agree with the gear being issued to an extent. You might even take a thought from Stargate SG-1 RPG. They use gear and mission bundles. Each character typically has the "standard" bundle, and is usually given 1 extra Duty bundle (Demolitions, Medic, Communications, etc) and/or 1 Mission bundle (Advisory, Negotiations, Rescue, etc). Personal and Weapons bundles were also available. Usually, the higher the rank, the more choice they have. I've got a couple of links if you are interested. Have to be tweaked a little for SR and to add a Magician bundle, but not hard at all.

Bundle Sheets
Resources (Mission sheets, bundles, etc)
After Mission Debriefing sheet
Basic AF Training (Pure fluff)

Also, depending on you and your groups use of props and stuff for game flavor and feel, there are "Mission Profile" pages and "Mission Debriefing" pages that can be reworked slightly for some interesting additions. Depends on the amount of effort you want to go to and how your group likes that sort of thing. (second link and third)

I used to hand out a "Mission Brief" folder to the table, no mechanics, just pure fluff/legwork info, parameters, goal, etc. My group loved it.

Some missions, especially behind hostile lines, where, due to insertion method, or other reasons, their gear choices might be OSP only (On Site Procurement). This makes for a potentially intense first few sessions as they HAVE to think their way through things just to get gear.

Just some ideas. Now, Stargate SG-1 might not be a realistic approach but I have used the mission bundles and Briefing/Debriefing sheets in previous games and they worked real well. But, as always, YMMV. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/grinbig.gif)

[Manunancy]

Some disjointed thoughts sparked from the previous posts.

Disposability : sur the characters represent an investment 'their hardware and training are a sunk cost) it it means they're not as disposable as a shadowrunner team. But it doesn"t mean they're safe. A military corp can make a deal with some politico to get the state's bests send into a grinder - they pay for his election and nice villa, he lobbies very hard for a private contract to replace those damn expensive and freshly mauled specforce guys. Also, since they're often not supposed to be where they are, there's not much support if things go south, at least until they're out of dodge and someplace wher support can show up.
Basically, as special force memebers, they're a tool of the military, but ulitmately are under the politico's control. Guess how trustworthy they are. The second it looks like they might make some higher up look bad, he'll throw them to the wolves and scream for their blood...

Missions : most will be reconnaissance (sneak in, sneak out and tell wher the nig hammer should drop), infilitating and destroying key targets (like the anti =air anti-missiles platform that prevents regular bombing, or blowing up a key bridge, a fuel depot....). Cutting loose with the big booms IS fun, but offering only tactical variety will get old.

A more intersting mission would be to have have the PCs sent to stiffen some sort of guerilla. Training them, helping with the strategy, doing a bit of hearth & minds operations - and of course cracking the hard nuts. Doing a bit of A-team or Mc Giver style tinkering can be fun too - things like making a working tank out of three broken ones or mouting a fixed air-defense missile battery on a semi-trailer to provide mobile air cover.

Flesh out the area, the different forces involved (numbers, sort of hardware, the leaders and their objkectives..) and let them play in the sandbox, with the occaisonal reminder from HQ if they have too much dumb ideas. It takes a lot of preparation, but it can be really fun.

[kzt]

TMs have always both broken my suspension of disbelief and also are just only good at a very limited number of things compared to a well designed hacker. Also, can a TM actually operate in EMCON or are they always subject to RDF?

Oh, and this is from What Frank Trollman said in 2006:

Technomancers, as printed, never stop being weak. Ever. The dicepool of the standard "Hacker Adept" will with relatively little Karma and money cap out under the basic game rules at 15 for hacking tests. (That's Skill 6, Improved Ability +3, and a Response 6 Commlink). That's as high as the Hacker Adept can ever get without resorting to improved systems from Unwired which has not been published.

Now the Technomancer is uncapped. Using only the basic rules, her dice pool can go as high as you want to think about. There is literally nothing in the Matrix that could stop a high-end Technomancer (even Sprites ae capped at Rating 8 because higher ratings don't persist long enough to be registered). But wait a minute, how much Karma are we talking? Well... a lot.

A character starts with probably at most 12 Complex Forms. To hack properly you need 18. To match the dicepool of our Hacker Adept we need to raise them all to Rating 9. To do that we need to Submerge ourself three times (42 Karma), actually upgrade Resonance 3 times (72 Karma), and purchase 12 programs from 6 to 9 (288 Karma) and 6 more programs from 0 to 9 (276 Karma). And thats in addition to buying the skill groups up to 6 from 4 like the Hacker Adept has to do (110 Karma). And while we've matched the dicepools, our matrix attributes still blow until we purchase all remaining mental stats up to 6 (probably about 132 Karma).

So yeeah, a Hacker Adept can max out all her Hacking by maximizing two skill groups (110 Karma), upgrading her Commlink (11,000 nuyen.gif), and buying up two points of Magic (21 Karma).

So for a mere 920 Karma a Technomancer who does nothing else in her entire life can match what the Hacker Adept can do on less than 150 Karma and a month's rent. After that, the sky is the fucking limit, the Technomancer is completely uncapped.

But you know what? Who gives a fuck? I have never ever seen a game where the players made 1,000 Karma before it was over, so the Technomancer is always going to be playing second fiddle to the Hacker Adept at the only thing she does - Hack. It's sad.

[kzt]

I played SR (for like two sessions) with a guy who's day job was a Pave Low pilot. USAF special operations.

His comment was that in real life he typically had 100 guys working for a month on mission planning and gathering information using recon aircraft and the entire national intelligence system while in the game it was 10 minutes in a bar with a guy he'd never seen before and then maybe a day of three people doing recon if he was lucky.

[CanadianWolverin...]

I really like those ideas. The 500K was never theres. Like you said all that is from the military budget. They all receive pay for what they do of course but I am not completely sure what that pay should be. Somewhere between 5K-8K I would assume. There's no way it could be more then that.

Sounds good to me and that is per month, correct? Fucking governments pay lousy (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif)

I can see how that works but on the other hand they would probably be a steep investment in training and gear. Is it really cost effective to toss them aside like that? Isn't that what Shadowrunners are for? I could understand if they were sent on a suicide mission because what had to be done couldn't be done by anyone else but beyond that it seems like a waste of resources. On contacts I was going to allow them to buy a few for various reasons but like you said they would all mostly be legit. This is to represent all the politics that go on in the military. Sometimes to make their CO look bad back room deals will put them in crappy situations. Using the people they've met (CIA operators they befriended while on joint assignments, former CO's, friends that took the corporate route) helps them survive the political battleground and get the stuff they need when pencil pushers want to cut corners. I want this to be more then just shoot em up. These guys will be bad ass but they may get taken down by political maneuvers which leads to getting put down by a bullet.

Well, I just say never underestimate the stupidity of a pencil pusher trying to save or advance their career politically by sacrificing valuable assets and personnel through poor decision making. That could be anything from vague and confusing Rules of Engagement to using them as some political big wig's personal vendetta hit squad that is every bit as dangerous as proper Anti-Terrorist (AKA: Anti-Special Forces) work just so that pencil pusher can kiss the big wigs ass while he feels all high and mighty that he took out a political dissenter/opponent or just some faction that pissed in his personal life somehow.

I see what you're saying. Problem is I'm not sure at all what kind of standards those would be. Beyond body/strength/willpower being at least 5 I have no idea.

But that is a excellent start. Right there I see you saying "These guys need to have the physical tools to get their hands dirty enough to pass brutal training assessments and not quit when life goes to hell and back." Next think about your guys Specialized focus, don't just think these guys are going to be a blend of what little we know about some of the IRL Special Forces groups and units we are aware of (and if you are the best, would we really be aware of them?), since those various groups operate under some very different goals based on the policies they were created under. Do you see the SR politicos/generals wanting to support their main battle groups or to have these guys building up allies? One group is going to be way more fire power oriented while the other is going have some serious social skills as basic for the whole team (language, negotiations, etiquette, teaching, etc). So, whatever you initially have in mind for these guys in your NPCs that make up the government they are being the fine edge of. Speaking of fine edge, the two weapons groups (Close Combat, Firearms), minimum of rating 4 of those groups would be my guess and since agility relate to that minimum of 4 there too, so that is a minimum 8 before tools or specialization bonus for even those roles on the A-Team that may not even be front line of the ambush, like the hacker, rigger, magician, or face specialists even kick in. And those specialists should be able to afford the 7 rating in whatever they are going for as the specialist on the team without sacrificing in some area a punk off the street looking to make a name for them self wouldn't because they focused so hard on just their natural illegal calling. Call it effective education in something slightly below the wear and tear of the school of hardknocks, sweat instead of blood. As well, I would say even the guys not doing the front of the ambush should be sporting proficient rating 3 skill groups of Athletics, Outdoors, and Stealth with Int being a minimum of 4. Speaking of Intuition, lets talk Reaction and Initiative Passes, I would think Special Forces would want to train to react like a crazy mofo and get it right on the first go, so I would guess a minimum of 4 Reaction and 3 IPs, whether by magic, cyber/bio, or even a shot of combat drugs while under fire or suspecting they will be soon... shooting house, here we come. I would say these dicks probably have a minimum edge as well, probably 3 to land where they are today without being dead to all the various social pit falls of the Shadowrun setting. Also, while we are at it, might as well cover our bases and say a minimum of 3 Logic and 2 Charisma as well, just for flavours sake. But how does that stack up against the Special Forces NPCs in the book? I don't care if our PCs are better than that, but I don't want it to be ridiculous (SR4A pg 283 Red Samuria & Tir Ghosts mins: B:5 A:5 R:5 S:4 C:3 I:3 L:3 W:4 IP: 3) Looks like I am pretty close, even harsher on my mins that what these Special Ops NPCs are getting. Oh well, I am sure with it not counting against any of the 400 BP maximums usually in creation your guys will all be NPC lietenants, if not better after they spend their 200 BP on attributes and so on. I wonder if their parents are/were rich (probably) or just happened to be the cream of the crop, bought into the propaganda and had the killer instinct that got them into the assessment programs for Special Ops ... I am thinking Johnny Rico and his friends in the hilarious Starship Trooper movies.

I like that. In fact it gives me an idea of them going up against an Ares Firewatch team. Both going for the same item told they have to keep casualties to a minimum. A good way for both sides to test how well the training works and see any gaps in it while upper echelons know it's a test. Is that something along the lines of what your talking about?

Yeah, someone in their bureaucracy or a politician wants to impress the real power slingers, the local uber Corp. Meanwhile, their guys are already on the job. Oops, double booking and pride is on the line. Holy crap, could you imagine if the your PCs had the leadership, negotiation, charisma and logic to convince the Ares Firewatch to work with them, selling them on the idea that they would get all the glory for their Corp, since that is what their political masters wanted anyways? Earn Contacts or a black mark to be given no quarter in any future paths crossing in Ares Firewatch's private database, check.

But no, that isn't what I was talking about, I was talking about smaller dogs trying to get their piece of the action, the Mercs and Shadowrunners. I meant more along the lines of other interests looking to profit off the target zone, which most likely haven't the slightest clue about your Special Ops moving in to accomplish a mission. Hell, what if the Mercs and/or Shadowrunner(s) are the mission? Pretend for a second these are just some other paranoid or psychotic specialists making their way in the world the only way they know how, they just don't have the official stamp of approval like your guys do. Or maybe your political masters are corrupt and the Mercs are considered legit because your bosses thought "Blackwater" was a good option to assist your mission because their lobbyist are convincing con artists but the Mercs are trigger happy fucks treating the mission critical area as their own Safari Hunt with people viewed as the animals, maybe former Special Ops and Shadowrunners are the Mercs, assholes drummed out of more professional organizations because of drugs or psychotic/sadistic behaviour or lack of respect for the chain of command or slept with the wrong daughter/son and got recruited by the Merc outfit as cheap labour.

Is that fiction? I thought they said it was an autobiography.

Well, with the help of sometimes ghost writer, he wrote a bunch of fictional hurrah bullshit stories as well as his paranoid or maybe not autobiographies. There is even a PC/console game, IIRC, no idea how fun or not it may be but I remember watching the trailer. He is basicly a wannabe Tom Clancy with more swearing when it comes to entertainment (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif) but arguably more military chops but what would I know.

also a couple of other books to look at are: ice station, area 7 and scarecrow ( scarecrow ) or 7 ancient wonders, 6 sacred stones and 5 greatest warriors ( jack west ) they are done by an aussie writer but are based on small teams who get into big trouble

OMG, how could I forget to recommend Matthew Reilly books, he is only one of my very favourite writers, the style of his books is like reading my favourite action packed films in book form with themes of Special Ops, Conspiracy Theories, Mysticism, and Science Fiction all rolled into a fantastic read. Highly recommended and I am genuinely surprised someone hasn't struck a deal with him yet to write a script for a movie or use one of his characters in a game, especially The Contest (I think some of the offers he did get were too low balling it and not guaranteeing him any part in the creative process to produce the level of quality assurance he desires in his products, Tom Clancy slaps his name on just about anything by rough comparison). Thank you so much Scarius for bringing these ones up.

[KamikazePilot]

Some disjointed thoughts sparked from the previous posts.

Disposability : sur the characters represent an investment 'their hardware and training are a sunk cost) it it means they're not as disposable as a shadowrunner team. But it doesn"t mean they're safe. A military corp can make a deal with some politico to get the state's bests send into a grinder - they pay for his election and nice villa, he lobbies very hard for a private contract to replace those damn expensive and freshly mauled specforce guys. Also, since they're often not supposed to be where they are, there's not much support if things go south, at least until they're out of dodge and someplace wher support can show up.
Basically, as special force memebers, they're a tool of the military, but ulitmately are under the politico's control. Guess how trustworthy they are. The second it looks like they might make some higher up look bad, he'll throw them to the wolves and scream for their blood...

Missions : most will be reconnaissance (sneak in, sneak out and tell wher the nig hammer should drop), infilitating and destroying key targets (like the anti =air anti-missiles platform that prevents regular bombing, or blowing up a key bridge, a fuel depot....). Cutting loose with the big booms IS fun, but offering only tactical variety will get old.

A more intersting mission would be to have have the PCs sent to stiffen some sort of guerilla. Training them, helping with the strategy, doing a bit of hearth & minds operations - and of course cracking the hard nuts. Doing a bit of A-team or Mc Giver style tinkering can be fun too - things like making a working tank out of three broken ones or mouting a fixed air-defense missile battery on a semi-trailer to provide mobile air cover.

Flesh out the area, the different forces involved (numbers, sort of hardware, the leaders and their objkectives..) and let them play in the sandbox, with the occaisonal reminder from HQ if they have too much dumb ideas. It takes a lot of preparation, but it can be really fun.

Deniable or not they are assets used for all sorts of purposes. Majority politically driven but this assumes Government Special Forces. Since this being SR and we also have corps special forces you can add alot more backstabbing, alot more deniability (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) and alot more mission options.

Even as government you have alot more than recon,demo, infiltration and assasinations.
As long as there are people there will be secrets. People like to hide secrets. So a spec ops team can be on par with a spy on foreign soil just with better firepower,manpower and logistics support.
To stop some politician messing with the boys on the ground you can get the group to dedicate certain amount of their BP and put them into a group/team BP pool and use those to buy/train things like Commanders and Logistics Officers. treat these as Contacts for all purposes. So high loyalty commander would mean he wont abort your mission when the politician gets a brain fart and leave you stranded. he would more likely put his career on the line and find a way to get you guys back when shit hits the fan.
Connections would mean both internal and external. Maybe even have 2 connection ratings to show how well you want the commander connected with say local militia (external) even if he may not be well liked in his local network of commanders (internal).

The logistics officer can come in play to maybe curb the powerlay of getting EVERY cool gear under the sun just because they are special forces.
Loyalty for him may mean he is willing to give you the good stuff even if he shouldnt (use the rating to reduce the availability rating on gear and/or bonus dice for aquisition rolls).
Connection would mean the range of gear he can get you (you would most likely want this as high as possible) With previously mentioned 'Bundles' the higher his connection rating the better gear inside those bundles.

Almost all typical jobs runners get on the streets can be done in a SF setting, its just the outcome is more hazardous for all parties involved.

High Profile VIP escort. oh yea majority of Special Forces at one point in time in their career were most likely dressed in a penguin suit and run VIP bodyguard mission for foreign visiting dignitaries or own president/politicians on foreign visits.

Kidnapping for purposes of forced extradition of political criminals or just for pure 'interrogation'. Even kidnapping just so the Face can impersonate said victim and gain access to foreign facility either as a sabotage or espionage mission.

The legwork in may standard missions may be now given as a mission brief and again Intelligence Officer as contact where the Loyalty is how willing he is to give you ALL the info needed even if its above your pay grade and Connection being how accurate that information is and how much more can be gathered in future time.
You may have this dude on speed dial (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) and ring him as mission parameters change to give you satelite imaging updates and whatnot (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

[pbangarth]

If you are going to have magicians and/or TMs in the group, then their experience should be reflected in their having Initiated/Submerged. These are major ways for such characters to stand out from the crowd. Allowing for that is more readily built into the karmagen system than the BP system, but you could do some sort of conversion, say 2:1.