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 ) 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.

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.

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.

@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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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:

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.

Sounds good to me and that is per month, correct? Fucking governments pay lousy

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.


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.

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.

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 but arguably more military chops but what would I know.



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.

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 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 and ring him as mission parameters change to give you satelite imaging updates and whatnot

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.

I think that 1000 Karma system would get you exactly where you want to go with those guys.
Although I would add in the free knowledge skills for int/logic which karma gen does not have.

And I would let them Initiate/Submerge with the Karma.

SR3 had Fields of Fire (FoF) it detailed 6^th World military personnel adequately, Special Operations personnel and regular Military. I worked for 3 years IRL with the US Navy SEALS.

You can find it relatively easily online.

And forget about having the PCs spend money for gear, it'll all be issued to them. All top of the line, ignore availability and price tag. Remember, these are the guys who told the Weapons Manufacturers what to build in the first place. Every unit will have a LAW (FoF pg. 39) and someone may be issued a high capacity grenade launcher (FoF pg. 47). For heavy fire missions they may get Military grade Hard Armor(FoF pg. 54) with integrated rebreathers, and Battletac Combat electronics.

Having taken Money out of the Build Points they'll need to spend; frankly, skills @ 5-6 it's more important that everyone have the right basic skills. Automatics, Longarms, Pistols, Unarmed Combat, Etiquette (Military), Diving, Parachuting, Climbing, Running, Swimming, Leadership, Disguise, Survival, Armorer, Demolitions, First Aid, Language (Military Hand Sign), & all at rating 3 MINIUM, Everyone Rigger, Decker, Mage, Heck if you cant train the Shamans Totem Spirit it should have these skills too.

That's why military personnel are considered highly trained. Not of 6+ rating in 1-3 skills.

Karmagen is essentially making your characters with the karma advancement rules to a karma budget rather than BP. I consider them strictly inferior to franks rules, but they have the useful advantage of being printed in a book which tends to increase acceptance. (In runners companion. IMHO the biggest argument against using Karmagen is you have to buy the book, which is a ghastly abomination upon the earth, responsible for much gnashing of teeth and wailing, and then you need to find the magic errata that has never been officially issued, and then you have something that is only marginally playable, and indeed, huge swaths of the book are not playable, ever.)

However, using the rules as printed in the book generates very powerful, diversified characters.

Using Frank's rules will have much the same effect and is, imho, superior and more effectively balanced. I'd consider cranking the budget to 450 BP maybe, but I suspect you'll have some good looking characters at 400 BP as well.

General observation: Special forces guys don't kill people by shooting them, special forces guys kill people by calling in a PGM or VT artillery barrage on their position. With this in mind, I recommend playing fast and loose with how special forces operate in the field 'for reals' because the way they actually operate is intensely boring.

They don't get to create a new character when they get killed.



It depends. The CT teams are doorkickers. They do a lot of shooting people in the face. But yeah, it's like RPGing a SWAT team. SWAT teams operate in ways that doesn't allow a lot of clever stuff. The tactics on how you take down a house are pretty much set, you do it the same every time, you practice having stuff go wrong so when something bad happens you just do the planned response.

The biggest difference is the tactics and teamwork fostered by the special forces. You don't throw experienced soldiers who have never worked together. This is one issue I really miss from the old editions is the Team Karma Pool. It actively encouraged players to work as a team and to put effort into the team.

Even with lower skills you will find generalists who work as a team and compliment each other will do much better than specialists who act as individuals.

Fair point




I find this sort of stuff difficult to deliver as a game. It feels like you'd be better off playing rainbow six co-op, mostly because the cast of thousands who contribute to one of these, and the fact that you'd send more than 4 guys, mean that the PCs role become very vague.... if you do it realistically.

You can just.. not .. though I guess.

Yeah, it probably works better as a team computer FPS if that's what you want to do a lot of. But it would work occasionally in a SR game. The problem with running hypercompetent PCs is that the it's really rare that the players and GM know the material well enough to understand what the PCs should be able to do and how they would do it.

Which is something that's true of movies that focus on SWAT operators, Rangers, Delta badasses, SEALs, etc, etc, etc -- it's seldom a 90 minute film of them doing things by the book, and getting the job done the way they train. They'll often include a scene or two of them kicking ass and taking names the way they do in all their training sessions, but then the movie itself invariably seems to revolve around a "and then something went wrong" situation.

One of those SWAT members goes rogue, a Black Hawk crashes and the Rangers get a new objective, the Delta team arrives in Guatemala expecting to fight guerrillas and instead they get hunted by a savage alien Predator, the SEALs decide to escort a bunch of African civilians cross-country instead of flying home with their original objective...

...so running a long-time campaign of "best of the best" types, you're going to have a tough job figuring out how to keep things challening and make individual characters matter and keep it from constantly being "and them something went wrong" every night. If Hollywood can't handle a 90 minute show of specops guys handling a problem without throwing a major monkeywrench at 'em, it'll be tough to do so for a very long running campaign.

Philosophical point: The problem 'Whatcha gonna do when Murphy turns up and shit goes to hell' games is the players get irritated because they tend to spend a lot of thinking in trying to come up with a good plan.

Now if you throw spec ops handbooks out the window and just make the players do an increasing escalation of retarded shit (Overthrow the government of thailand, here is 10 million dollars, if anyone asks I am going to say I have never heard of you before.) it will probably work and retain that spec ops feel.

Really well trained pros expect Murphy to show up. The problem is usually they are good enough that when Murph does show, he often goes off to bother the other guys because these guys have a backup plan and for a campaign like that, to some people, it can be boring.

All the spanner causes a PC to do is 'initiate contingency fire-plan plan bravo, alpha, three, niner' it's not really much of a spanner.

But is that not kind of the point? Sometimes playing Shadowrun the point should be that the legit or illegitimate professional criminals pull off a job and no one ever knows that they were even there.

Mr. Murphy is a highly initiated Magician however, so I wouldn't count him out of having a laugh shooting even the best laid plans to shit.

I just don't see why he has to show up with the orbital drop bears every mission, that's when players throw their hands up and say "Fuck it, you want to GM like that, why should I give a shit about my character in your world ... my Spec Ops guy ignores the mission and starts tearing your exquisitely detailed world (in your head) down around your ears until you nuke him with GM fiat, whose coming with me!"

And screw realism, its some suspension of disbelief I would be after, a fairy tale with cyber and future weapons cloaked in shadow. Spec Ops Shadowrun should be pretty easy to get to "Holy crap, I can't believe we pulled that off!" even if you represent Spec Ops love of planning for Mr. Murphy to show up. Spec Ops should be the guys you call on when you don't want someone else to fail who could do it cheaper and even then that doesn't remove the chance they could fail because of someone else's stupidity, information even in SR4A's Wireless Big Brother world isn't 100% perfect - especially because of the astral and the balkanization it facilitated. Besides, even with the PC Spec Ops uber stats, Players are still players and will pick less optimal choices just because its fun, so no worries on having realistic Spec Ops characters.

Now, if you don't mind, I am going to go watch A-Team again - "I love it when a plan comes together."

Most of the missions would be legwork punctuated with a very visible and loud firefight. The issues always come into the fact that you have 11 terrorists vs. 9. The mission has to be advanced because the General suddenly changed his routine or worse is that an unexpected coup occurred and our heroes are trapped in a war torn government trying to get out. All it takes is a few stupid and unexpected issues to suddenly complicate the missions.

Black Hawk down where the mission began to breakdown when a soldier fell out of the helicopter.

There are other issues such as being seen during the insertion such as happened during Vietnam.

Worse is forces like the SAS Bravo Two Zero where they lost communications and then encountered an enemy force.


Then you have other options such as highly trained elite forces that are mercenaries. They are equipped and funded locally and so lack much of the super special gear one is used to by modern military standards. This was used by Executive Outcomes from South Africa. They did with 300 men what the UN had problems with 15000.

Oh man, please tell me you have links to articles telling those stories of FUBAR and SNAFU in more detail Omenowl

SR tactics need to be much more flexible than RL tactics. Magic is not only the great equilizer, it is also able to change the makeup of the battlefield on short notice. Creative bad guys with augmentation can pull stuff simply impossible today. I would say that working by the book is quite a deadly proposition in 2072, and that attacking in large numbers will only gurantee detection.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OXRi28W-ENY




-k

Aaaaaand I have just found new inspiration for my campaign hahaha.

But really this thread has given me a lot of ideas for how to run this. Now I'm trying to decide between them being one of the elite teams for the UCAS or another organization like the Draco Foundation, Atlanteans, or maybe just make them a Firewatch team. I'll talk to my players and see what they like but each has it's own challenges I would believe.

I'm not sure how you're gonna show this in a RPG anyway. Every member of the team usually has one minute or so to make plans for every three seconds of actual action, with instant knowledge of everything that is happening to his teammates, as well the occasional telepathic tactical discussion between them when he's not sure of what to do.

Do you allow them that much time to make their choices? In my games you don't because I think that really breaks the flow and makes things take much longer then they should.

I was rather thinking of players that start to think at what they will do next as soon as they finished their turn, with nothing else to do than listening to what's happening to the rest of their team (unless they're hit themselves, of course). I'd sure not wait a full minute after I asked a player what action he/she's gonna take. The problem is how fast I can return to him/her to actually ask the question. With say 8 PC or NPC involved in a fight, you can get between 8 and 24 pools to calculate and as much rolls to make (attack - defense - damage), at least on the first initiative pass.

Well Blackhawk Down is of course a book and movie. I recommend the book much more to give the full scope of operation. It has delta force, navy seals and the ranger battalion working in conjunction. You also have the diplomatic channels to get the Malaysians to bring their APCs to raid in the rescue. I liked Mark Bowden's writing style and I read it mostly from the philadelphia Enquirer online. The book is much longer and detailed.

Bravo Two Zero has a book about the incident as well. I heard about this one on the history channel.

Operation Eagle Claw is another special forces failure.

Same with the vietnam recounts being the history channel. Look at some of the actions where Service crosses and Medal of Honors were won.

You also have the loss of several Navy SEALs during the Panama invasion.

I am sure books by Tom Clancy would give you more ideas.

But THE BIGGEST FUBAR in US Special Operations history, with the most Spec Ops personnel injured or killed for a single operation, is Granada.

Here is a pdf relating the events and some of the SNAFUs/FUBARs that occurred.
http://www.history.army.mil/html/books/gre...urgent_fury.pdf

Actually, Panama was truly awful. The mission to prevent Noriega from escaping in his jet was designed by a moronic glory hound, and every attempt to prevent disaster was sabotaged by him.

http://www.specwarnet.net/miscinfo/patilla.htm

Wow that was pretty 'special' - I hope someone got court marshalled?

It is difficult at best. The way RPG combat usually works already has the group working as a perfectly integrated team, for the reasons you state.

Maybe one could permit the group to make suggestions for or actually form the overall plan, then assign them to an individual task that depends on the other teams to do their job. You would basically have a "standard" runner operation that can go wrong on account of others being messed up.

It also helps if your group can refrain from having outgame "telepathic" tactical teamwork discussions.