Three-Sixteen

[Stormonu]

As part of the RPG package DriveThru offered for the Haiti relief there was an interesting game called 3:16.

It is a game very strongly based on Starship Troopers, with one of the most unique and rules-lite set I've run across yet. My friends and I did about an hour's worth of playing with the game yesterday, with them clearing the heavy-gravity planet Holbein (Whole-Bean, as the players started calling it) of the dastardly cat-like Skurria (for those that haven't played, you can random-roll the planets and alien inhabitants; it's fun fluff that minimal mechanical impact; this is a game, IMHO, requires a lot of imagination to really bring it to life).

Overall our group enjoyed it enough that they're coming back this Thursday to take the next step in the game - heading to jungle planet Warhol to face the Armorers - a race of humanoids who were supplying the Skurria with the deadly weapons that were used to harry the United Earth Force.

I've already found myself using a couple home-brew worlds to enhance the game and I'm wondering if others have tales of their antics or experience with the game or any home-brewed content they've added to the game to extend the fun.

 

[Hussar]

Funny you mention this. I just started reading through the rules. I WANNA PLAY. Looks like a hell of a lot of fun. From what I've seen, combat and mechanics are heavily abstracted and it's almost like a wargame that you use as a springboard to create a group narative.

Very, very fun. I got the same package as you did. Between this one and Seven Leagues and Chronica Feudalis, I've got some really cool games.

 

[jdrakeh]

This is a very fun game, if somewhat narrowly focused. A fantasy variant is on the way, as well.

 

[Mark Hope]

We played this last year - lots of great fun. If I recall correctly, our GM sent us up against a race that was basically Ewoks with kalashnikovs, so blowing them up in a variety of interesting races was hugely enjoyable. The very sparse rules encourage innovative roleplaying to flesh the game out, and it really captured the genre's feel well. It seems like it lends itself well to campaign play - a series of adventures over the course of an arc - even moreso than one-shots. I reckon you could incorporate play elements from games like Primetime Adventures to really amp up its narrative aspects. Good stuff.

 

[Wightbred]

This is a very fun game, if somewhat narrowly focused. A fantasy variant is on the way, as well.

Awesome - thanks for the heads up. Plus I see a Roman Empire version is coming and he has a cyberpunk game I somehow missed.

 

[Beginning of the End]

3:16 is a great game on many levels and I highly recommend it.

But it does have a serious mechanical flaw in the balance between Fighting Ability and Non-Fighting Ability: To actually accomplish anything in the game you need a high FA, but a group without at least one character with a high NFA is going to get ambushed and fragged by the aliens.

Which creates the old school "cleric conundrum": Nobody wants to play the healer, but if the group doesn't have one then the group is screwed.

Fanboys of the game will, unfortunately, claim that NFA is important because you roll it for "everything outside of combat". But the entire game is structured around the success-or-failure of combat missions and, because of the way that the game is designed, all that stuff "outside of combat" has absolutely no impact on the combat. So you can roll NFA all you want and free improv around the entirely meaningless results, but the game is still going to revolve around FA.

I recommend introducing Mission Objective Tokens (MOTs) to complement the Threat Tokens on each plant. MOTs represent specific non-combat goals and can only be resolved using NFA rolls.

I also recommend allowing creative use of NFA rolls to generate kills (for example, by hacking enemy security systems or commandeering an orbital laser).

 

[tenkar]

This was on my RPGNow wish list for ages. Completely overlooked it was in the Haiti Relief bundle. Time to download my copy and take a close peek. Thanks for pointing this out.

 

[Stormonu]

Fanboys of the game will, unfortunately, claim that NFA is important because you roll it for "everything outside of combat". But the entire game is structured around the success-or-failure of combat missions and, because of the way that the game is designed, all that stuff "outside of combat" has absolutely no impact on the combat. So you can roll NFA all you want and free improv around the entirely meaningless results, but the game is still going to revolve around FA.

I recommend introducing Mission Objective Tokens (MOTs) to complement the Threat Tokens on each plant. MOTs represent specific non-combat goals and can only be resolved using NFA rolls.

I also recommend allowing creative use of NFA rolls to generate kills (for example, by hacking enemy security systems or commandeering an orbital laser).

Good ideas, but I have already found NFA is already quite important to the game (but the rule system is so loose, it might be considered house rules). The NFA rolls have been having a strong effect on precombat things and mission success already in the games I've run.

As far as homebrew material, I've been looking to add the following (but haven't statted it up yet)

-adding small Mechs
-rules for Fire Support from NPCs attached to the group
-adding modifiers to combats based on Planetary Conditions (such as slowing movement on Heavy Gravity Worlds, reducing sight on Rain Worlds, etc.)
-adding "Wrinkles" - special Threat tokens that represent bosses, obstacles or other hinderances/complications to the PCs mission.

 

[Woas]

Never got a chance to play a multi-session game of it. But the many times I've done one-shot games f it, always loads of fun. Once I did my own fantasy version where the players were all orcs killing various cutesy fantasy creature staples.

When I run it for the local gameday I make grab a couple sheets of label sticky paper, like the kind you use to make your own address labels on your printer and color a bunch to make my own service/campaign pins, kill count badges, etc like you see on real world soldiers to hand out to the players so they can wear them.