X-COM to DnD

[parinho7]

Hello everyone. Here's the deal. I want to run a campaign similar to the X-COM Enemy Unknown game. Let me be more specific.

I want to eliminate the role playing aspect of the game. My players won't have a specific character to play with. Instead they will be the minds behind the operation of a military base who receives mission from the kingdoms/cities/regions it protects.

So the game will work like this: They run the base by turn. Each turn represents a month and each month they have some income and expenditures. They have to manage their building (barracks, temples etc.), troops, and research.

At each session they'll be getting missions and given rewards on succession. The missions will be dungeon crawling and tactical combat.

The project is still in a very early stage and I'm trying to consider some things.

How to balance the income so that I won't allow them to become too powerful right from the start? I want the game to scale in a slow pace and hopping to reach epic levels in three years or more.

Which buildings are going to be required for producing characters of specific classes? For example the base will start with the barracks that can produce fighters. By collecting money they will be able to build a church and procude clerics. But I want to give them the freedom to use every 3.5 class so what is the facility that will produce say Swordsages or Beguilers?

How can I balance the money for creating and maintaining the facilities and troops without messing everything up?

I am open to any suggestions since this is on a very early stage. I will be posting more questions and I am hopping for input. Thanks everyone in advance.

 

[MarkB]

I like the concept - I once did some early planning on an "X-COM in Eberron" campaign that I never really developed because too few of my players were familiar with X-COM.

For determining what classes are available, my suggestion would be: Don't think buildings, think tech trees.

Start with just a few basic classes, and unlock new classes through research and development. Unlocking Clerics isn't necessarily a matter of building a church - it's a matter of researching the 'alien' threat and how it impacts civilised religions, so that you can persuade them to send clerics to your cause. Unlocking arcane classes might require a research team of wizards to delve into the mysteries of unusual arcane paths. Maybe make psionics exclusive to the invaders, until the players capture and interrogate them to unlock psionic classes for their own squads.

Likewise for limiting the team's power. Make it so that magic items are almost unheard-of in your setting for this campaign's purposes. When the players' assault teams defeat the invaders and capture the magical weapons they're wielding, those weapons can be researched back at base to understand their creation principles, after which teams of artificers can manufacture new magical weapons - initially at low levels of power - for the soldiers to use in the field. That way, you don't need to worry too much about income - there's a limit to their power level that ramps up naturally as the game progresses.

 

[dd.stevenson]

I've considered doing something like this myself. Personally I would recommend something with a simpler character progression system than 3.x. Depending on how many soldiers you want them to manage, I would look at OSR, or Savage Worlds, or 4E or 13th age. (I haven't played 4E, but my understanding is that xcom:uo copped a lot of 4Eisms in its design.)

If you're going for the xcom:uo feel, then I would agree with [MENTION=40176]MarkB[/MENTION] in that buildings are more of a gate for tech progression than they are resources. That's to say, once they've served their purpose and ungated the relevant tech, then they're just sitting there looking pretty.

 

[n00bdragon]

Please don't use D&D for this. D&D is terrible for firearm based combat.

 

[parinho7]

Please don't use D&D for this. D&D is terrible for firearm based combat.

I am not doing firearms. It's classic DnD 3.5 with swords, spiked chains and spells!

Maybe I shouldn't have mentioned X-COM because there have been some misunderstandings. I am just keeping the core concept of X-COM, that is the strategy part and the mission part.

The thing I am trying to achieve is play a game session every now and then and my players will only hack n slash and not role play. The military base and strategy part of the session is there just as an alternative for RP to give them something get involved with in between the missions.

I want to provide a flexibility to be able to play with different characters on each session, either pre-generated by me or by them if they want. And also be flexible with my players, for example in one session I might play with Bob, Steve and Roy but at the next session Roy can't make it so Steve bring in George and Ryan!!! But the the same characters will be available for everybody.

My main problem is with the math. What is the monthly cost of a fighter or a wizard? How much a capacity upgrade should cost, so that they'll be able to have more soldiers (by soldiers I mean every 3.5 class possible)? How much the "Arcane Tower" cost to construct and how much per month? Can anyone help create a balanced mathematical model or something similar P) to have each value depend on each other and scale as the game progresses so that they don't end up having too much or too little money available? Also they should worry about bankruptcy which will be an end game condition, but this must depend on the success of their missions.

 

[MarkB]

You can work out the economy to some extent, but I think you're better off planning some reactive events which can help to keep things in check.

By which I mean, create a number of events or missions which are specifically designed to suck up resources and require additional expenditures - and then create another set of events which are designed to be profitable and earn lots of new resources if successful.

If it looks like the game-economy is running wild and netting the players excessive amounts of profits, you sprinkle in some of the costly missions - a base attack, or a 'terror' mission where the players must either commit a lot of resources to a battle or risk losing funding from one or more kingdoms.

If it looks like they're about to hit rock-bottom and you want to keep the game going, throw in some lucrative missions - maybe a special mission for a funding kingdom that earns either cash or material rewards, or simply a seemingly-normal mission that will earn a large quantity of loot from the defeated opponents.

This dynamic approach will allow you to keep control over the game's economy without seeming heavy-handed or having to pre-plan an entire economy in advance.

 

[Man in the Funny Hat]

Please don't use D&D for this. D&D is terrible for firearm based combat.

Which is why D&D has so few missile weapons?

People will always use D&D for things which D&D is actually terrible for. Don't stand in their way. Tell them to have fun.

 

[Man in the Funny Hat]

The project is still in a very early stage and I'm trying to consider some things.

Color me intrigued. I've always thought in terms of adapting a set of rules to play tabletop xcom rather than adapt xcom's setting to another genre.

How to balance the income so that I won't allow them to become too powerful right from the start? I want the game to scale in a slow pace and hopping to reach epic levels in three years or more.

Don't try to write a table of progress and make the game stick to that, let the game proceed however it will and adapt the rate of progress to the gameplay. In effect you'll be writing the rules as you go but it will be much easier to pace things the way you want them by doing so.

Which buildings are going to be required for producing characters of specific classes? For example the base will start with the barracks that can produce fighters. By collecting money they will be able to build a church and procude clerics. But I want to give them the freedom to use every 3.5 class so what is the facility that will produce say Swordsages or Beguilers?

It doesn't have to be just one "resource" like money. Money certainly will be needed to pay wages for everyone and obtain supplies and expand operations but clerics can be "bought" by collecting religious relics or questioning shamans and witch doctors. Wizards can be only be deployed if they can use captured "magicum" (elerium). In addition to building churches and libraries of course. Personally I don't know from swordsages or beguilers but it sure sounds like the equivalent of the Psi-lab to me - only after training/testing will recruits have access to "X" class, or especially to "Y" prestige class.

How can I balance the money for creating and maintaining the facilities and troops without messing everything up?

Just as there isn't necessarily ONE way through Xcom's tech tree don't try to write up rules for all the steps they might take and their effects beforehand. Let the PLAYERS decide where, how, and why they will expend their resources. You just need to be able to handle things when they do. At certain points you simply update their list of potential "research" avenues, suggesting that for better this they build or do that, for getting more of something else they should build, acquire, and/or do some other thing.

"We should have more Beguilers."
"The trainer can only handle 10."
"Okay, we'll see about securing another Beguiler trainer."
"It'll cost x thousand gold to hire another one and y thousand to expand the training facilities and barracks and then it'll be another month before he produces more Beguilers, but working together the two trainers could then handle 12 each. Meanwhile the alchemists are making progress on the tanglefoot bags idea. The healing potion brewing should give you 30 by the end of the week so, about, 6 per day. They've also discovered that if they can add otter's noses to one of their formulas they might be able to make something useful."
"You mean the ones we've been finding in barrels in all the Orc chieftain's rooms and have been leaving behind?"
"Yep. Those ones. The downside is they'll need to soak them in brine first and then they spoil in 3 days so you'll need to set up an operation to generate a steady supply..."

 

[innerdude]

Savage Worlds would make this a WHOLE lot easier, at least from a unit-upgrade perspective.

You set the baseline tech trees, then as the tech trees upgrade, you merely upgrade the capacity of the units being produced under current circumstances.


For example:

Basic Tech Level 1, no upgrades: You get units with Fighting / Shooting d6, with no armor
Tech Level 1, minor upgrade: Units still have fighting shooting d6, but now have the Aim or Block edges, depending on whether they're melee or ranged, and +1 Armor

Tech Level 2: All units produced now have a fighting / shooting of d8.
Tech Level 2, minor upgrade: Units now have Aim / Block, AND Frenzy. Armor goes to +2.

And so on. The fact that there's almost no connection necessary between the incremental unit upgrades in Savage Worlds would make it a very good choice for the unit-level stuff.

All of the resource-gathering and tech level analysis is all going to have to be houseruled anyway. And you can decide whether a tech-level upgrade automatically upgrades all units automatically (like in most RTS games), or the old units still have the old stats, and the new units have the new stats.

 

[n00bdragon]

I am not doing firearms. It's classic DnD 3.5 with swords, spiked chains and spells!

Oh, then by all means D&D is the perfect tool.

Which is why D&D has so few missile weapons?

People will always use D&D for things which D&D is actually terrible for. Don't stand in their way. Tell them to have fun.

If I see someone attempting to drive a nail with a screwdriver, as I thought the TC was, I will never tell them to "have fun". That's a terrible disservice to those around you.