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Maquise
2013-02-08, 10:35 AM
I've been playing a lot of X-Com: Enemy Unknown, I think it could make a good RPG, after a few changes. Rather than a direct import of the game's missions, I would imagine that missions would look more like an episode of Stargate: SG-1 or Atlantis. It would of course be darker, mainly by featuring the game's fatality levels. All that said, are there any systems which would work for a good X-Com RPG?

Jack of Spades
2013-02-08, 10:40 AM
I've been playing a lot of X-Com: Enemy Unknown, I think it could make a good RPG, after a few changes. Rather than a direct import of the game's missions, I would imagine that missions would look more like an episode of Stargate: SG-1 or Atlantis. It would of course be darker, mainly by featuring the game's fatality levels. All that said, are there any systems which would work for a good X-Com RPG?

The main problem I could see appearing would be trying to make an RPG rather than a board game. Not very much precedent for the soldiers doing anything other than training and fighting. Not much reason for them to do so either.

XCOM would make a pretty awesome board game though. Quick, someone go tell 2K to make it happen.

Clawhound
2013-02-08, 10:44 AM
Now that you know the key, lethality, you can pretty much hack any RPG out there.

Myself, I would lean towards a point-buy system. The old Chill system would work. Your characters are very survivable, until they aren't.

Kaerou
2013-02-08, 12:21 PM
ICE Spacemaster/Rolemaster has exactly the level of deadly you want.

http://ironcrown.com/spacemaster/

Its a very complex system though.

Surrealistik
2013-02-08, 12:23 PM
I've been working very intermittently on an RPG system for X-Com based off of the 4e DnD ruleset. D20 Modern works reasonably well either in E6 format, or with capped HP.

BRC
2013-02-08, 12:32 PM
An X-COM RPG would suck.
An X-COM INSPIRED RPG would be awesome. Focus less on the battles, and more on the idea of alien infiltration. You could have Investigators, who hunt down alien Infiltrators, Troopers who take the frontlines in the fight, Combat Engineers who deploy experimental technology, Xenoscientists who are capable of using and adapting alien technology, and maybe even Psionics. Dark Heresy might be a good inspiration/Place to start.

Enemies could be an alien-worshipping Cult (Perhaps encouraged by a little bit of mind control), to Alien Infiltrators (Thin-Men), to Squads of Mutons, to Chryssalid-induced Zombie scenarios.

Amaril
2013-02-08, 01:25 PM
I agree, a direct adaptation of XCOM alone would make for very combat-heavy and monotonous play. On the other hand, as BRC suggests, an RPG incorporating more creative license and inspiration from the game rather than direct adaptation could be fantastic.

Some ideas for character archetypes (mostly copied from other people's suggestions):

Central Officers, who handle the strategic co-ordination and high-level management of the project.

Xenoscientists, who focus on the research and adaptation of alien technology and biology.

Combat Officers, who lead squads on the front lines.

Pilots, who fly the interceptors.

Psionicists--in addition to combat, psionics specialists could undertake special investigation missions involving world leaders being mind-controlled and stuff.

Investigators, who do counter-espionage against alien infiltration.

Done right, this could be absolutely fantastic.

BRC
2013-02-08, 01:35 PM
Pilots would make bad character archetypes, unless you have an entire team of them, in which case the entire game would be shooting down UFOs.

Otherwise you get the pilot shooting down a UFO, then sitting there while everybody else does stuff. Same with why central officers should Be NPCs.

Well, maybe. There is a lot of investigation you can do over a phone, and they could serve as a supporting role in Combat, piloting a SHIV, sending in supply drops or deploying special equipment. If there is a firefight in an urban area a Central Officer could requisition security cameras.

Desk Officers would need a special ruleset. Maybe they have some value representing rank, budget, patience of superior officers, and favors they can call in to get things done.

Maquise
2013-02-08, 01:37 PM
Like I said, the game would likely use SG-1 as a point of reference. I was think of such missions as stopping cultists, and other such things, though I would like to keep the players in a single team, or such. Having players as central officers would be feasible if you gave them the right abilities, but the problem is they would be very safe, and not in any real danger. One of the things I would like is the sense that all players are in equal peril.

Amaril
2013-02-08, 01:40 PM
Yeah, the ideas for players controlling pilots and central officers may have been ill-considered, I was just brainstorming there. But I do think it could be interesting to have some distinction between the project members who handle the large-scale strategy and the ones who bust alien heads on the front lines.

BRC
2013-02-08, 01:49 PM
Like I said, the game would likely use SG-1 as a point of reference. I was think of such missions as stopping cultists, and other such things, though I would like to keep the players in a single team, or such. Having players as central officers would be feasible if you gave them the right abilities, but the problem is they would be very safe, and not in any real danger. One of the things I would like is the sense that all players are in equal peril.
Eh, making sure all players are in equal peril would be tricky anyway. The Sniper in the building is going to be safe while the investigator following a Thin Man is in danger.

Besides, imagine being a Desk Officer, sitting there helplessly while your team is ripped apart by chryssalids, unable to act because you called in one favor too many earlier.

It's a risky idea. It might be better to have the field agents with stats indicating their ability to get stuff out of the bureaucracy

Hiro Protagonest
2013-02-08, 01:52 PM
Just remember that Talons and tasers already exist. As do tactical flashlights and night vision. A throwable 360o light source like the original game's electro-flares would also be rather easy to design and manufacture, if they don't already exist.

valadil
2013-02-08, 03:17 PM
Played in an X-Com GURPS game a while back. It played fine. Now that I'm playing X-Com (and am thoroughly addicted), I mostly stand by that statement. The game didn't last long enough for much research to happen, so we never really got gear upgrades. In retrospect those aspects were lacking, but they're also pretty easily corrected.

Hiro Protagonest
2013-02-08, 03:47 PM
Alright guys, first things first.

If you're referring to Firaxis' 2k game, call it XCOM.

If you're referring to the old '94 game by the Gollop brothers and Microprose, call it X-COM.

It gets really confusing otherwise.

AMX
2013-02-08, 04:24 PM
Alright guys, first things first.

If you're referring to Firaxis' 2k game, call it XCOM.

If you're referring to the old '94 game by the Gollop brothers and Microprose, call it X-COM.

It gets really confusing otherwise.

Good point - I just realised that I can't tell which game the OP is talking about:
X-Com: Enemy Unknown
the new one is, technically,
XCOM: Enemy Unknown
And the original was sold as both
UFO: Enemy Unknown
and
X-COM: UFO Defense

Please consider me confused :smallconfused:

The Dark Fiddler
2013-02-08, 04:40 PM
Dark Heresy might be a good inspiration/Place to start.

File off the serial numbers and Dark Heresy is basically X-Com in the future, really.

CarpeGuitarrem
2013-02-08, 05:01 PM
Reskin Kobolds Ate My Baby (http://www.koboldsatemybaby.com/)?

NichG
2013-02-08, 05:18 PM
The threat to central officers is the same as the threat to the player in the various computer games - they could lose funding support (or in this case be fired, transferred, demoted, etc). Its a different kind of HP. The main issue is having all players participating in the game at the same time though, which is rough if you have a sniper and a central officer in the same party.

So instead of that, why not go with something more like the structure of the various '5-man-investigative-branch' TV shows out there. Its an undermanned branch of the UN that basically doesn't have a very tall internal command structure, so captains are out there in the field with the rookies rather than back home in a comfy underground base. Put a lot of focus on the research aspects - for a small team, the focus is basically espionage rather than all-out war. Yes, you fight aliens, but the point is that you'd seek out and fight smaller groups of aliens in order to press a strong advantage and capture their technology.

Then the whole research tree stuff becomes another game system. Call it organizational XP of a sort (in this case, lets say RP for research points). Basically, every game the individual soldiers get a little better, but the party as a whole also gains a few research points to spend on developing tech based on stuff they've retrieved. Each new bit of gear has a retrieval prereq, and as the prereqs get harder the missions get hairier (bring an alien back alive is the classic one).

You can keep things interesting by making the aliens more espionage-oriented as well, more like the aliens in the original games where they were making side-deals with governments and things like that, rather than the Firaxis ones. Now you might have a mission where you have to go to some senator and discover who is putting pressure on him to remove funding, since they could be a Thin Man agent or who knows what. Or maybe there's a research institute in Germany that is suddenly putting out technological advances far beyond what you estimate they should be able to, but consistent in style with the alien tech you've retrieved - is this a ploy, or did they just luck out and capture a UFO, or what?

So with all of this, I think the comparison to Stargate is a fair one. I believe there actually is a Stargate d20 book that might be worth looking at for this (its an expansion on d20 Modern, though I think it did have some broken stuff).

Hylas
2013-02-08, 05:41 PM
An X-COM RPG would suck.
An X-COM INSPIRED RPG would be awesome. Focus less on the battles, and more on the idea of alien infiltration. You could have Investigators, who hunt down alien Infiltrators, Troopers who take the frontlines in the fight, Combat Engineers who deploy experimental technology, Xenoscientists who are capable of using and adapting alien technology, and maybe even Psionics. Dark Heresy might be a good inspiration/Place to start.

Enemies could be an alien-worshipping Cult (Perhaps encouraged by a little bit of mind control), to Alien Infiltrators (Thin-Men), to Squads of Mutons, to Chryssalid-induced Zombie scenarios.

Your post is making me think that X-COM Apocalypse might be better for an RPG than XCOM: Enemy Unknown. Mostly because Apocalypse had all of those organizations with personalities and goals. While the designers didn't really develop that part much, you can tell it was meant to be bigger than what it came out to be.

Anyways, back to the thread. I actually asked this question a while ago (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=246477), before Enemy Unknown came out. Feel free to browse the thread for ideas and discussions.

For the game itself, you need to put emphasis on things that an RPG does well and less emphasis on things that a computer game does well.

Things an RPG does well:
Leveling up
Dynamic combat with strange objectives
Diplomacy with other nations/organizations

Things a computer game does well:
Really fined tuned research
Resource management
Anything that only a single person (decision maker) can do

You won't be finding good suggestions on how to do research properly, because I don't think there is way to do it well in an RPG. Likewise stuff like interceptors shooting down UFOs or having a guy "sit at base" isn't going to work that well because it's just a single guy making decisions at the table, rather than the group having fun together. Balancing the budget isn't going to work well either. Who at the table decides if you buy armor, weapons, or better equipment for the interceptor?

Things that you can do well in the RPG that involve everyone are things like tactical combat, investigation, or diplomacy. Tactical combat is the obvious one, but don't limit yourself to things that you see in a video game. The president's daughter has been kidnapped? Time to send in the skyranger to do a mid-air boarding of the alien ship. Some town is acting strange? Time to go investigate and maybe find a hidden base under a city in Ohio. Russia doesn't like Germany and wants to give you money so you'll "ignore" the next alien invasion there, what does the group do?

darni
2013-02-08, 06:04 PM
Ages ago, I played a Cyberpunk 2020 game mostly refluffed to be an X-COM based game. It ran pretty nicely (sadly the campaign was interrupted and never finished).

The CP2020 system is not my favorite, but it's playable, and the mechanics and existing stuff (vehicles, weapons, etc) fit well with an X-COM theme, so you don't have to redesign a whole system from scratch

NichG
2013-02-08, 06:13 PM
You won't be finding good suggestions on how to do research properly, because I don't think there is way to do it well in an RPG.

I would like to take this challenge.

Each game, each PC generates RP equal to their Character level + Int mod. This represents a combination of actual research the PC does as well as the clout they have to direct the research efforts of the base as a whole. Artifacts brought back also generate RP (1 point for things that have already been studied, 5 points for new examples of studied principles, 10 points for stuff that's completely new). The party can choose how to allocate these to various projects, either splitting them evenly between PCs or making a group decision or whatever.

PCs get to choose where their RP goes. Projects are completed when a sufficient amount of RP accrues to them. This opens up new gear, which is simply available to all characters at that point (no individual wealth since this is all company gear).

Assuming roughly Lv5 characters, this means an income of ~50-70 RP per session. So cheap projects should be in the 30RP range, moderate projects in the 100RP range, and big projects in the 200RP range.

Examples, stripped of most of their flavor-text, might be something like:

- Increased Accuracy Weapon (40RP): Upgrades a single weapon type with +1 to hit.
- Increased Damage Weapon (40RP): Upgrades a single weapon type with +1 die of damage.
- Medkit (80RP): Makes available an item that can heal wounds in the field a certain number of times.
- Alien Armor I (120RP): Requires a piece of alien hull metal has been retrieved. Makes available armor that also provides 5 DR.

How does that not work for a tabletop RPG? Or do you mean that it doesn't really simulate the true experience of research? (which I do agree with, but I'd also say that computer games are bad at doing that too...)

Amaril
2013-02-08, 06:14 PM
The threat to central officers is the same as the threat to the player in the various computer games - they could lose funding support (or in this case be fired, transferred, demoted, etc). Its a different kind of HP. The main issue is having all players participating in the game at the same time though, which is rough if you have a sniper and a central officer in the same party.

So instead of that, why not go with something more like the structure of the various '5-man-investigative-branch' TV shows out there. Its an undermanned branch of the UN that basically doesn't have a very tall internal command structure, so captains are out there in the field with the rookies rather than back home in a comfy underground base. Put a lot of focus on the research aspects - for a small team, the focus is basically espionage rather than all-out war. Yes, you fight aliens, but the point is that you'd seek out and fight smaller groups of aliens in order to press a strong advantage and capture their technology.

Then the whole research tree stuff becomes another game system. Call it organizational XP of a sort (in this case, lets say RP for research points). Basically, every game the individual soldiers get a little better, but the party as a whole also gains a few research points to spend on developing tech based on stuff they've retrieved. Each new bit of gear has a retrieval prereq, and as the prereqs get harder the missions get hairier (bring an alien back alive is the classic one).

You can keep things interesting by making the aliens more espionage-oriented as well, more like the aliens in the original games where they were making side-deals with governments and things like that, rather than the Firaxis ones. Now you might have a mission where you have to go to some senator and discover who is putting pressure on him to remove funding, since they could be a Thin Man agent or who knows what. Or maybe there's a research institute in Germany that is suddenly putting out technological advances far beyond what you estimate they should be able to, but consistent in style with the alien tech you've retrieved - is this a ploy, or did they just luck out and capture a UFO, or what?

So with all of this, I think the comparison to Stargate is a fair one. I believe there actually is a Stargate d20 book that might be worth looking at for this (its an expansion on d20 Modern, though I think it did have some broken stuff).

This. All of this.

Hylas
2013-02-08, 07:42 PM
I would like to take this challenge.

<snip>

How does that not work for a tabletop RPG? Or do you mean that it doesn't really simulate the true experience of research? (which I do agree with, but I'd also say that computer games are bad at doing that too...)

Actually that works pretty well. I like the idea of each player getting points to spend to any part of research that they want. I think it may work even better if the GM uses E6 instead of straight d20, assuming they're using d20. My original comment though was also meant to be a challenge so discussion could bloom and we might get a cool method for doing research.

I'm assuming this is going with the method of "each player controls a single field agent" rather than "everyone gets a character at base and another character who is a soldier."

I would also like to suggest the idea of using an episodic type campaign. Each session could be a mission and they're all tied together by using the same characters.

Glimbur
2013-02-08, 10:06 PM
Rippers (a expansion for Savage Worlds) has people fighting supernatural horrors and grafting on bits of them for extra power. I'm not certain how well it works in practice, but it might be worth looking at for ideas.

ShneekeyTheLost
2013-02-08, 10:11 PM
Call of Cthulu would be a pretty good system, and the SAN mechanic does an excellent job of the Panic mechanic.

Surrealistik
2013-02-09, 12:47 AM
File off the serial numbers and Dark Heresy is basically X-Com in the future, really.

Yeah, I've actually got to agree with this, especially on the lethality front.

shadow_archmagi
2013-02-09, 09:41 AM
Of course, the trouble with Dark Heresy is that while it is very much Xcom in the future, the setting is a huge part of the game. You'd have to rewrite psykers entirely, take out all the references to the warp, write rules for diplomacy with modern nations...

As much as I love Dark Heresy I'm not sure it's actually an efficient starting point.

Clepto
2013-02-09, 11:00 AM
On base building: I haven’t fully worked through the idea, but I had been considering retooling the kingdom building rules from pathfinder, assuming you build this game with d20. Instead of the monarch/priest/assassin/whatever, you have the Senior Administrator, Science Officer, Engineering Officer, etc. The point system still stays mostly the same, you're just renaming the magic shop to the Engineer bay. Farms and lumber mills become Power Plants.

tensai_oni
2013-02-09, 11:50 AM
If I were to play an X-Com inspired game, I'd throw out all the economy and research bits. Or rather, they still happen but as background, something outside the players' area of influence. The player characters aren't the heavy hitting squad either - they are field agents, performing investigations, researching weird occurences, gathering artifacts, and if things get hairy - calling in support with big guns.

It's really X-Files as much as it is X-Com.

For this type of gaming, anything with high lethality and focus on the characters' skills (as opposed to magic or cybernetic enhancements) will do the trick. Call of Cthulhu might be a good idea. Low-powered Mutants and Masterminds works SURPRISINGLY well. Anything class-based or with heavy character advancement isn't going to work well.

Trekkin
2013-02-09, 07:12 PM
Must an X-Com RPG focus on the humans? It looks to me like it might be easier to do one where the players are the invading aliens.

shadow_archmagi
2013-02-10, 01:06 AM
Must an X-Com RPG focus on the humans? It looks to me like it might be easier to do one where the players are the invading aliens.

It wouldn't really be X-Com then. I mean, X-com isn't a big brand name in and of itself, and "Secret team of guys who fight off supernatural threats" isn't really a big original idea. What seperates X-com from, say, Men in Black is the combination of squad-based tactics, equal-opportunity death (No plot armor for YOU), and the constant sensation of being desperately under-equipped for this.

NichG
2013-02-10, 04:40 AM
Must an X-Com RPG focus on the humans? It looks to me like it might be easier to do one where the players are the invading aliens.

I'm curious, why would it be easier? It seems like there'd be a lot more work to do, especially considering the basic X-Com aliens (who are not at all equal in power or even close to it).

tensai_oni
2013-02-10, 07:28 AM
A role-playing game assumes there is some character to roleplay. Aliens are either controlled mooks (psionically or with chemicals), mindless robots and beasts, or overlords who have no agenda beyond being myyyysterious and eeeevil.

How would that be any fun to play?

The Dark Fiddler
2013-02-10, 07:51 AM
How would that be any fun to play?

See who can be the best faceless mook or the most mysterious and evil?

kyoryu
2013-02-11, 04:57 PM
I think the best system for an XCOM game would depend entirely on what kind of game you wanted.

Are you focusing on the squaddies going into battle?
On the guys in charge?
On the research? The pilots? What, exactly?

I can think of a bunch of systems I'd use for an XCOM game (GURPS, Savage Worlds, Fate, and more), but they'd each be appropriate for a slightly different flavor of XCOM game.