Alright Veeky Forums I've found myself running an M-COM game for a group who doesn't realise they're in an M-COM game...

Alright Veeky Forums I've found myself running an M-COM game for a group who doesn't realise they're in an M-COM game. I'll start with storytime, then ask for any suggestions for the oncoming campaign.

>Joint NATO special forces task force, assembled to tackle terrorist threats in Europe
>US AFSOC medic. US Rangers demolitions expert. JTF2 assault specialist.
>Right from the start, things are very wrong. The three of them get a company sized barracks to themselves.
>Barracks next door is empty
>Before they have much time, they're called to an emergency briefing
>Offshore WW2 base turned research platform has gone dark. Terrorist attack suspected.
>Team is to go in, identify threat, and radio for support
>Black helicopter takes them in, gets the hell out as soon as they're off.
>Team is paranoid as hell, drop to cover immediately, all three demand separate perception checks.
>Due to an hilarious run of bad rolls, all three fail. The only thing they actually missed was the body of an SAS officer to the side, but paranoia is running rampant.
>They're sure that ISIS, the IRA, the FLQ and COBRA is going to jump out at them any second
>Nearly trips over SAS body. They quickly check him
>No visible sign of injury, no vitals, eyes wide in terror. Ten pounds of Nope in a 5 pound bag.
>They proceed inside, tactical as possible, Medic in front because he has a combat shotgun.
>Radio room, two dead techs, same MO.

Continued in the next post

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youtube.com/watch?v=qTCw8GQNEj4
youtube.com/watch?v=WOdRt_c8nfY
1d4chan.org/wiki/M-COM
twitter.com/AnonBabble

>Go to the dorms, single SAS officer, a Major, slumped over against the wall. His pistol is on the other side of the room.
>Gun is loaded and chambered, but not fired.
>Grab his security card. Continue to explore.
>They enter the mess hall
>Scientists huddles in corner, all dead. Four SAS in middle of the room, clearly firing in all directions
>Questions abound
>"Room has one door, how could a force get in and surround them?"
>"Why isn't there any blood?"
>"How could they have caught the room by surprise like that?"
>Time to go to the lab.
>Major's card gets them in, they continue to move in an aggressive stack.
>In the labs, looks clear, two more bodies. They check the equipment
>No samples remain, pages have been torn out of the notebooks. They do find a book on aliens in folklore.
>Last room, far side of the lab, contamination tent over the bulkhead.
>It occurs to them finally, that it might be a chemical spill.
>Gas masks and respirators on.
>Walk through tent, gets sprayed with unidentified mist.
>Open the door, they see a single figure on the room.
>Describe a deatheater in the most mundane terms possible. Black trenchcoat, edgy boots, hood. The word "Goth" was thrown around.
>Team doesn't care how edgy he dresses, guns up, "GET ON THE GROUND"

>Lightbulb goes off in JTF2's head
>Everyone has looks of terror on their faces clearly this guy kills when you look at him!
>Closes eyes.
>The other two see the figure slightly turn around, then disappear suddenly.
>JTF2's eyes are still closed
>Bulkhead slams behind them, they turn around too late
>Door is being welded shut from the outside
>Demolitionist checks pack. Satchel charge? Not unless they want an express ticket to the bottom of the sea. Grenades? About as good as shouting at it. Claymores....
>Claymore
>They set it up, take cover behind anything they can
>Door is still being welded shut
>Demolistionist is about to show this guy what American freedom looks like
>Bulkhead is blown clean off its hinges, while they hear an inhuman scream that seems to be emanating from inside their skulls.
>JTF2 has had enough of this, pulls a grenade and motions to the medic to do the same, they both throw into the doorway.
>As soon as they blow, both AFSOC and JTF2 move to clear the lab. Shoot first, think later. Demolitionist is behind them
>Room is empty, no contact.
>Demolitionist is struck with blinding pain, so much so he can't even scream. Falls to his knees in silent agony.
>JTF2 notices, taps the medic, they move in to the room.
>Black figure pointing at Demolitionist, who is still writing in agony.
>No words this time, this guy is eating shotgun
>Rolls are made, crit tables are used, their new friend is blown six meters backwards by the shotgun, the wall is one meter away

>Splat
>Team grabs the only box in the room, what they figure this guy was after.
>Decide it's very much time to leave.
>Run back to the helipad, radio evac
>Medic gives sitrep, is immediately told to shut up and wait as soon as he mentions the box.
>Ended session with them waiting on the pad for their evac because it was late.

And that's generally how things have gone so far, I'm thinking of putting them in charge of their own little M-COM, and having them co-ordinate R&D, missions, equipment, ect while gathering intel on threats. Has anyone else run/played anything similar? I'd love any tips and ideas to make this better.

I hope when you inevitably end up doing aerial interceptions you play one of these songs.

youtube.com/watch?v=qTCw8GQNEj4

youtube.com/watch?v=WOdRt_c8nfY

Anything that isn't the original xcom soundtrack is heresy. So I'll certainly take the latter.

>implying the xenonauts one isn't great as well
I mean the game itself wasn't that great but come on dood that song is like 10/10

I actually didn't mind xenonauts. But the xcom soundtrack is my childhood

Fair enough. I personally found xenonauts to be a pretty watered down version of Xcom with a few neat features in really. It wasn't bad but it wasn't particularly good either.

Either way, I'm looking forward to leading my players to magical doom

I'm sure you'll get plenty of chances to straight wreck your players, but I say go full X-com and let them deploy with vehicles and such. I always wanted to run an X-com style game where the ayys have to face against an IFV.

I'm going M-COM 1d4chan.org/wiki/M-COM

That being said, if they want to kill a dragon with a tank, I'm not stopping it. Rod of steel that bitch up

Ah, so things are gonna be super sekrits ops instead of X-com full on invasion style. In that case I recommend you start looking into CQB tactics and equipment, and send the players some references of what to do in those sorta situations.

Knowing my players, there will probably be an invasion. I'm sure they'll think wizards have gone too long without paying taxes, and need to be brought in line.

Well if they want to take the battles to the streets and fuck with wizards, make them work for it, Guerrilla Wizard Warfare sounds like a fun campaign.

The IRS is the most feared Organization in the world for a reason. The second, secret reason is that they also balance the books of Magic, and some people aren't paying what they owe.

Early game especially they're going to have trouble. Wizards have a lot of stay-hidden spells players will need to work around.

I had planned to keep the magic stuff away from governments to give them as little starting information as possible, and make them work for their intel. I do like the idea of wizards infiltrating the IRS though

I'm not well versed on the magic in the setting, but I say don't just do sneaky invisibility. Lay traps and ambushes for the players, have targets engage then break off and force the players to relocate into a room where they're likely to get ambushed from all sides, have them get harassed by creatures that can just phase through walls, that should keep them on their toes.

I'll probably be stealing from the harry potter books a lot, magical building that's enchanted so when a non-magic person looks at it, they immediately forget they saw it and remember a very important thing they have to do in the opposite direction

They already fought an enemy who could teleport at will, I'll probably keep their foes rather weak but keeping that magical ability, until they find a way to stop them.

Well, I don't know my harry potter well, but I do know there's a few things that make things hellish for people breaching buildings. Flashing lights, loud noises, slippery floors, cramped corridors. Darkness is also a huge problem if their night vision doesn't work either, just remember that if you want to pad out the difficulty a bit.

So, what I'm hearing is, they should be tricked into raiding a late night oiled up rave

A rave would be a good example of hell yeah, the loud music makes it difficult to pass orders, breaking cohesion, the flashing lights are disorienting and makes it more difficult for your eyes to adjust, and the slippery floors and tight corridors make maneuvering a massive pain in the ass.

This evens the playing field for an under equipped foe hiding in the building, which if combined with magic, can really help make a game have challenge without just saying "okay you find a really strong killy death badguy who can kill you all in one hit, don't die." Doors, stairwells, corners and windows should also be places where players should exercise caution, maybe hide some enemies around or in corners to make them play it a bit more cautious.

So, now that I've told you how to fuck the players. Let me give you a few tips on how to give them a fighting chance.

First of all, let them shoot through walls. Most building interiors won't stop any sort of round worth a damn, 12 gauge and 9mm go right through drywall, and rifle rounds will have little issue passing through cinderblock walls. Second, give them access to copious amounts of explosive devices and other neat gadgets, cameras to look under doors, breaching charges that stun, incapacitate or kill anyone or anything on the other side of a door, tear gas, non-lethal grenades that shoot little rubber balls everywhere, taser claymores, thermobaric grenade launcher rounds. The works, if they're an elite military fighting force, let them gear up like one.

You know what, I think you are doing the antagonists wrong. You're making them a little too OP. Next time, you'll be wondering why they just pulled the fire alarm and blew up the building with all your magical traps.

Establish a point value. Unless they are hitting their main enemy base, most places will only have a few defenses added in because it costs a lot of time and resources to add the good ones, and there's a chance they'll trigger their own.

At the same time, the Magical Enemies should be willing to run. They might be able to hold off several Special Forces dudes, but a SWAT team all the noise attracts can level half a city block, with the rest of the police force leveling what's left with what they have in their cars.

I'm playing with the idea of having the enemies be extreme specialists. They killed the first one with a single (albeit critical) shotgun blast. But the fact of the matter is, wizards won't be wearing kevlar. It won't take a lot of gunfire to kill them, and they'll be completely unprepared for modern tactics.

On the reverse side, a spellbook is a hell of a multitool, there are a lot of situations where magic can be used to great effect. Welding a door shut with a fire spell, frying circuit breakers with lightning, and teleportation are all clear cut advantages.

I'm hoping for combat to be quick and brutal, but for the players to be able to win a fight before they start it by thinking things through.

See, if this is just a bunch of not so friendly wizards, the PCs are gonna have a massive advantage, being tier 0 operators with the best equipment, which is why I brought up how OP should have the wizards fuck with the players instead of engaging the players head to head.

out of curiosity OP, what system are you running this with?

Only war, it's the only game most of my players have experience with, so I ran with it instead of having them learn a new system.

Huh, that's an interesting system to run a Harry Potter game in.

It's been challenging to do some things, I've had to rework a lot of the spells into weapons just to stop wizards from exploding into demons.

Still better then trying to train my group to do a whole new system though,

Well it should help capture the feel of "Brutal, gritty and quick combat" especially since I imagine most wizards won't have any armor.

When's the next game going to be? I'd like to hear the story of how it goes if I'm still around.

Probably tonight within the next couple horus, advantage of such a small group means we can jump up fairly regularly. If you've got suggestions I'll try to throw them in.

Well, I already gave my input, so it's just a matter of seeing how and if you implement them.

Reasonable way of handling the players.

bumping and hoping for story time.

bump

one last bump, hoping for OP to regale us with stories in the morning.

>Medic in front
yup, that's Xcom.
more like, that's xkum babby!

the air combat is nice though. anything that gives players more agency instead of dice rolling to determine events is always better in my book.

What system would you guys run an X-COM (not M-COM) game in?

God knows. Only War isn't the worst choice imaginable. Maybe GUPRS for the hell of it?

I'd probably go with GURPS or some other system that does modern combat well.

Id use savage worlds, start PCs off as extras and have them earn proper Wildcard features as they gain promotions - that means to start off they are incapacitated on 1st wound, have only # of players of bennies, and no wild die. Good luck trying not to die! But, it being savage worlds, some WOULD make it through.

Unisystem Classic. GURPS may be able to do modern/tactical combat better but Unisystem has a built-in flavor that leans toward survival/horror.

Either Strike! or GURPS, depending on modern or classic.

What the fuck is M-COM? Is it like that SCP faggotry?

It's about being an X-com style operative who goes up against wizards n shit, mostly based around the harry potter universe from what I can tell.

Ha, the M stands for Magical. I thought it was Monsters. Like cryptids and shit.

Well being a bunch of operators who have to go up against cryptid monsters would also be a really fun campaign in my opinion.

>A few missions into a campaign
>players are dropped into the center of a forest
>told to search around because there might be shit out there
>pilot flies off and says "I wouldn't worry about it guys"
>"You smell a faint hint of rotting flesh in the distance..."

I don't even play tabletop but I'd try a campaign like that where operatives are deployed against sasquatchs, wendigos, skinwalkers, hillbillies and satanists cultists.

Then do it man, go grab some friends and run a game about goin innawoods with your SKS and operating on skinwalkers.

Something that bothers me about an X-COM style tabletop campaign: how do you do geoscape phase? How would economy work? Research? Interception?

Maybe by working on a week system, where you roll a dice per week, and you add +1 per week to the result to determine if aaaays will attack.
So that the first week, there's an operation on 6+, 5+ the second week, 4+ the third, etc...

Economy would be simple, just give the group a group bank account for them to decide what to spend on stuff.

Research would probably be "GM Sets a number of weeks for this research to be done which can be increased by bringing back artifacts/random chance"

Interception is more tricky, the most absolute basic way would be having the GM roll a couple times to determine the outcome. Other ways include running a different system that allows air combat vs asymmetrical foes and resolve it like that.

There's also coercion of cities to consider and failure to detect

You can probably tie that to the results of the operation to encourage the players to not get too atached to their character.

OP here, one of our members went partying and we found him in far too drunk a state to play the game. So storytime is postponed.

A little bit of info on how I plan to do the grander part;

There will be three factions, M-COM, the good wizards, and the bad wizards. Good wizards will generally stun or otherwise enchant humans they come across, but still consider themselves above mortal men. As such they have no problems stealing from, assaulting, or otherwise harming people without going lethal if it's convenient, they may be willing to work with M-COM on a case by case basis, but the players will have to make the first move.

The evil wizards, on the other hand, think they're hot shit. They'll kill every witness to keep magic secret from mortals, and to show off how edgy they are to the good guy wizards. May work with M-COM if they offer to submit the world to their rule.

Each faction runs one mission per session, depending on the scale and actions of all parties, M-COM may or may not hear about it. If they do, they can choose to intercept.

Research will go on a weekly basis (X weeks until done, but players don't know the number), but can be sped up by gathering relevant intel, artifacts, and prisoners to interrogate.

In the end, I want the group to dabble in whatever parts of the operation they find interesting, while they can delegate the rest.

>In the end, I want the group to dabble in whatever parts of the operation they find interesting, while they can delegate the rest.
That sounds good. I never liked how the only active group in Stargate seems to be SG-1.

Why are the wizards so pissed, and what kind of magic would they use to wreak havoc on big cities?
Do they have nuke-equivalent spells?
Is Avada Kedavra the only consistently lethal spell there is?
I don't know shit about HP.

It's never developped, but it's mentioned that there are several spells that can cause destruction on a major scale. Enough to ravage an entire street and rip the sewers open.

Minor update form OP, one of my party members mentioned they killed an "alien" yesterday. This is going to hit him like a train.

Bump for potential story time.

bump for moar

I need more.

I guess that was all.

op gives us hopes and dreams, then crushes them right before our eyes.

I didn't realize how bad I wanted this until yesterday and now we're getting blue balled on our M-COM.

I want more COMs. C-COM for cryptids, X-COM for ayys, M-COM for magical stuff...

E-Com for eldritch shit, but honestly you could probably play Delta Green and you'd be good.

Isn't Delta Green closer to X-Files?

It was intended for people wanting to be some operator motherfuckers in Call of Cthulhu. But the thing about generic eldritch horror games like that is that--because let's face it, they don't all follow HP Lovecraft that closely, and it's very easy to re-skin them for any other kind of monster- or sanity-related horror--it's easy to make them fit for things like X-Files if you want to.

I'd rather have something like X-COM, armed investigation.
X-Files, it's been years since I saw it, but I remember them walking around and talking a lot and not shooting a lot.

>filename
>old af greentext
You have to go back, Mr. Redditor. Downboated!

Delta Green is way more combat-oriented than CoC, but it can be used for investigation as well.

It's not as combat-oriented as some other CoC entries (Achtung!Cthulhu, for example) because those take place during actual open wars. DG takes place in a shadow war being waged by semi-independent semi-sleeper cells.

>2011
>old as fuck
not that guy but come on

and he probably just ganked the image off of google

>not that guy but
Fun fact : anyone someone says that, he's lying.

This guy is right, I just did a quick google search for the image.

Holy shit ISIS I know you're idiots but at least shoop your guys in a decent way.

MS Paint is the foundation upon with which our eternal Caliphate will be built!

Miss Paint is the true goddess!

Something with lifepath character generation to represent the recruits' previous special operations experience and increase the impact of their deaths. My players can't help but think up a backstory for someone whose whole career they've followed.

Don't forget there's untrained magic too. Harry manifested random shit happening before he even knew about wizards, and Hagrid was able to perform a bit of magic despite being a dropout.