Alien Invasion: Earth! (Idea for an RPG)

[Erika]

EHI, you are not stealing any ideas, we are just providing you some inputs and I am having fun in participating to this brainstorming.

I like the idea of the orcs being the good guys, why not? I mean, if you are handsome you are not necessarily a good person. The orcs and gobeling against the humans who are polluting everything... EH EH EH!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Bullet42]

Aliens could get on the planet by some astronauts carrying it for examination from a planet or colony and then they escape killing and nesting everyone in sight.

[AstroBoy]

I'm thinking that in your design of the aliens you need to get clear what sort of tech they have.

Sciency Tech: Ori, Goa'uld, strogg etc
Biotech: Tyranids/scrin
No Tech: aliens aliens, starship troopers

[exowolf]

I was really going to just lurk on this thread but man...now I gotta throw something out there...

I like your squad idea...but what if you did a squad that was more NPCish in nature.  Each character starts out by themselves...as an average joe.  As you save people (thinking Dead Rising) you can employ them to keep surviving with you.  Then you have to do roll checks to see if they follow you...and history of actions/feats you accomplish with them builds up character...Now as the various characters (real characters, not NPCs) are in their perspective worlds...the GM can gradually have them work towards each other.  Then you could have a variety of people in a gang like sense (Mad Maxish).

Aliens, Disease, Spores, whatever you wish in my opinion.  I personally would love to see a world where one Villian (unnamed) actually tries to take over the world with a new breed of something.

Hmmm another angle you could add is using the Internet itself as part of the gameplay.  create myspaces and facebooks of characters as they try to communicate about the situation..?  Eh just another idea make it a little more interesting...

So there is some stuff for ya to chew on Pants.

[pants]

The aliens are definitely techie Astro Boy, but I'm trying to make their tech level not far ahead of Earth's but I might have to limit them culturally some how, for example maybe their all an alien version of the Amish and can only use the minimum amount of Tech possible.

Exowolf that's a cool idea about having NPC squads that you have to roll reactions for.  Maybe make them all archetypes say, like 'Gunnery Sergeant' 'Weekend Warrior' 'Soccer Mum' and then give them certain reactions in different situations.

Internet sites could be cool, might be worth looking into it perhaps...

[exowolf]

Thanks!  See back in the day I used to play GURPS from Steve Jackson...it was a universal RP system so we would create all kinds of fun stuff using that system's criteria...i say take a base system like that then build your world around it...unless you want a completely new raw game...

[AstroBoy]

So what are your current ideas, pants? You can always leave the why as a secret. Thing is, how do you explain the luck in that the aliens and humans are evenly matched even though their tech is better.

[Erika]

Another idea could be about some evil people from Earth trying to invade a pacific planet and the goods guys would be the Aliens.

What do you think?

[pants]

I like that idea a lot Erica!  The old switcharoo!

GURPS is a pretty cool system exowolf, at the moment I'm not even concentrating on the system itself I'm just trying to build the universe itself.

Without going into to much detail AstroBoy currently me and Jocke are thinking that the bulk of the invasion force would have to be robotic.  As Jocke explained it to me it makes a lot of sense militarily to go the robot route. 

I'm still trying to think up an interesting way in which the aliens don't kick our butt while carrying out a full on invasion.  At the moment the only way an alien force would lose realistically is if they were stupid. 

Earth cannot mount an out of atmosphere defence at all really.  Possibly some of our long range intercontinental ballistic missiles could hit an orbiting target but the problem is the aliens just move out of missile range and then start throwing meteorites and asteroids at us.

I'm thinking on it but it's a slow process.

[AstroBoy]

I heartily and strongly endorse FUDGE for a game system. GURPS is too complex imo.

[pants]

FUDGE?  I haven't heard of that one.  Got a link?

[AstroBoy]

http://www.fudgerpg.com/

It's free for one. It's really not a system as such though. It's more a set of guidelines. You know how GURPS is such that they cover all bases? This helps you cover the bases. If you keep it simple and make the game about the cinematic bits and story, it's the way to go. I GMed some stuff with Con as a player in FUDGE.

FUDGE is the reason i dont throw up my arms every new idea i get. I can do any of them with FUDGE. It just means a bit fo work/stealing

[Sam Winter]

Hey again to all the people who used to be on the old site!
Hey to the new people as well!

Sorry, I was just offered a spot so I'm reading through much of the site and keep finding interesting nuggets. Pants, your from NZ? Which part? I used to live there/was born there. I live in Atlanta now though.

[Jocke]

I live in Atlanta now though.

A Dixie Kiwi... How strange. 

[pants]

Hey Sam, yeah I live in NZ in the Big Smoke, A to the U to the C to the KLAND.  What does that spell?  AUCKLAND!  YAY!

*runs around waving his poms poms in the air*

So you managed to escape...I mean leave pleasently from old NZ.  You weren't stopped hassled in customs like Erika were you?