imported_Eniqcir
01-08-2003, 03:57
At one time or another, everyone has seen the following situation, or variations on the theme, whether it be in RP or some action movie:
An order from the higher ups of some type of space fleet or military body sends orders for a group of scientists, soldiers, or a mix of the two to board and retrieve information from a supposedly abandoned space hulk or equally ominous construction. Keeping orders on a need to know basis, the insertion team isn't informed about the excruciatingly high probability that there might still be alien life on board. Cut to the dumbest member of the team sitting, spilling, or pushing on something that will somehow set off the main plot device that alerts the enemy life forms to their bumbling presence within the ship's corridors. Rounds are fired, grenades are thrown, alien beings are generally pissed off, and whatever members of the team are alive after the initial encounter (read: everyone dies but two) must now spend the rest of the story trying to save their screwed up butts from the oncoming horde of evil alien killing machines. The survivors escape, someone nukes the ship, and the director/author/roleplayers pat(s) his/her/their back(s) for a job well done.
I suppose most people must think that other normal people can easily accept human error and tactical deficiency for the sake of action, adventure, and drama. Well, that's probably true, but it doesn't make it any less screwed up.
Well.
Wouldn't it be great if a squad got in, successfully completed all mission orders, and got out?
Team casualties: none.
Mission Success: 100%.
Nothing is more beautiful in the eyes of the hyper-caffeinated alpha-gamer than to complete a level with a perfect life bar, full ammo, and all mission specific orders carried out TO. THE. TEE. Play Doom? Quake? Rogue Squadron? Adrenaline rush when you beat the game with perfect stats, right? Why can't you write a story the same way?
Now, I must say that, sometimes, the cliché is perfect. Everybody loves Aliens. It's often required for movies, where massive killing and explosions can make up for horrible acting. I'm not saying that movies falling into the idea of "everyone dies but Sean Connery, Sigourney Weaver, and Arnold Schwarzenegger," is incredibly terrible. But cliché is a horrible thing, when it becomes it becomes cliché. Please, I have no life. I need a fakeworld to live it for me. Rekindle my faith in the effectiveness of military training. Show me that orders can be followed with cohesion, precision, and guile in fiction as well as real-life. Give me beautiful wide angle panning shots of snipers effectively covering the field of fire on his forward scout teams. Give me a zoom in on the team leader's face correctly ascertaining the fire lines of potential hidden artillery bunkers. OK, maybe not those last two, since this is all text... Show me coolness under pressure. I want to see flanks covered, effective room clearing, and proper use of a frickin' rifle in close proximity of your targets! I want to see hostages rescued, aliens gutted, and cokes being downed by an andrenaline-high squad of happy happy squad of black-ops killers congratulating themselves on a job well done.
Maybe I'm being a bit too demanding- not everyone is a good writer, and that's just the way it is. But you can at least get an approximation of coolness, even if you're not good with writing out all of the gory details.
With that said, let's build an effective spec-ops insertion team.
Rule 1: Choose an effective team leader.
The person in charge must be a woman. Male squad leaders really seem to enjoy giving away a team's position as early as possible. They opt to open doors with shotguns, plasma rifles screaming, or by using the maximum amount of plastique possible sans killing themselves. They never ever check to see if something's unlocked, or maybe for an open window, quietly hacking the locking mechanism, or what have you. Another bad male trait is the idea of 'send one in while the rest of us wait out here':
"Cooper! Front and center!"
"Sir!"
"Go inside that shadowy, dimly lit warhead factory. Check every room, sewage tunnel, and bathroom for any trouble. If you meet up with those horrific hordes of lurking aliens, radio in your coordinates. THE REST OF US WILL WAIT HERE AND MAKE NO ATTEMPT TO COVER YOU."
"Yes Sir!" Cooper will then run in and get eaten by or shot in the head by something waiting for him.
And that's the last we see of Cooper. Women have a lot more common sense when keeping overly aggressive boys healthy and alive. Ever see a soccer mom assert her authority over a van full of young boys? Uh-huh. You know what I mean. Another rule of thumb is that if there IS a woman on your team, SHE WILL PROBABLY LIVE A WHOLE LOT LONGER THAN ANY GUY ON THE TEAM. Why not just let her make the calls early for everyone? [NOTE: This only works if you actually bother to give everyone an appropriate and realistic personality. If you just want your characters to be puppets of some supernatural controller (i.e., you, ther person doing the RP), you can just stop reading right here.]
Now, if you want to make your team leader a guy, but give all of those good qualities too, that's fine. But be advised that they are likely to be mistaken for women by your readers unless constant reminders are given. Most guys with big guns are either scientists or idiots, neither of which make good leaders. The exception is if they are old and experienced. But you don't want a 50 year old army general on your spec-ops team, do ya? Of course not. 'Tain't cool, unless they're an embittered veteran, and that comes with its own can o' worms. Usually having something to do with slight insanity.
Rule 2: Shoot the new guy in the foot before you teleport, dock, or otherwise leave the transport vessel.
There is always that one grinning, cute rookie who thinks that he's going to save all the hostages or kill all the aliens or something equally stupidly macho. Instead, what happens is that when the crap hits the fan, or the alien guts, as the case may be, he would be the one in the group with the big "I'm a horribly obvious liability to the rest of the squad," sign suddenly flashing over his head. Save yourself the trouble of that and just blast him in the foot before you begin the mission. He can't kill anyone with his lousy shenanigans if he's left wounded on the floor of the transport you arrived in. But that's only if you want to be funny. Ideally, you, as the Omnipotent Role-Player/Writer, should have the sense to just leave him out altogether.
Rule 3: Have someone Cisco certified or Wedge on your team.
In my life, every Cisco certified person I've ever met was some kind of complete genius with networks, computer systems, and overall tech stuff. There will ALWAYS come a point where you will have to access the ship's / ominous structure's computer. Don't screw it up and give that kind of responsibility to some script kiddie. No alien, terrorist militia, or evil hive mind is more terrifying than the final test for Cisco certification. It's all about how you handle pressure.
If you're pressed for time (you know, the space transport pilot is giving you dirty looks from the monitor screen) and can't get a Cisco certified person, take Wedge along instead. Wedge was the Corellian-born starfighter pilot serving as X-Wing squad commander for Rogue Squadron. Wedge can do anything. Wedge is dark magic raining gloriously down upon all who do evil in the world. Wedge is as proficient as any Cisco technician could ever be. We love Wedge. Unfortunately, using him would get you into copyright troubles unless you're writing a parody.
If you're worried about not being able to RP such a character well, you have two options: become qualified yourself (not likely), or fake it. Just skip the details and say that he cracked the system. Problem solved.
Rule 4: Group hug and calm down the paranoid guy on your team before anything horrible happens.
We all know that at some point everything will go wrong with the mission. A surprise attack, alien babies hatching and falling from the ceiling, automated room defenses springing out of walls and floor fixtures to annihilate your squad, whatever. It will be the paranoid guy who has all this in his head before it actually happens. His constant mumblings of:
"We shouldn't go down this hall, it looks like a trap," or,
"We're gonna die like useless, defenseless maggots," or possibly,
"I'd rather activate my self destruction option on my space suit before any of those damn aliens get me," will cause unneeded tension among the rest of the squad. Group morale will be greatly impaired, a loss of precision and cohesion will be obvious, and people will die because of it. So before ANYTHING horrible happens, just take a minute and calm him down. Lay down the pulse rifle or light saber and just, well...
Cut him out of the story. No one like that would ever pass training in real life.
But if you absolutely must have someone like that, give him a hug. Tell him that everything will be fine. Smile and give him one of those tough guy shoulder punches on his arm. If you can soothe his high strung senses early, there's a greater chance no one will later fall to the ground screaming with half his face blown off or something.
Rule 5: Certain characters are expected to act certain ways. In some cases, it's just cliché, and can be altered to fit your whim. At other times, though, it's just common sense. For example, if you have a pair of lovers on your team, at least one of them is guaranteed to die. It's in the small print. This is not least because they won't keep their minds on the battle.
The black guy or the old guy will give his life valiantly, dying only as his ammo gives out. Give him vast amounts of ammo and increase his life expectancy accordingly.
The embittered veteran is useful (often as a team leader, see above, but only until the final battle, as his resentment will cause him to try to take on the [enemy platoon/alien queen/dragon/whatever] single handed. This is a Bad Idea. Capital B, capital I.
Sometimes, a little humour is appreciated, and then it's good to have a couple good ol' boys in the combat group. After all, nothin' says lovin' like a guy who screams "Yeehaw!" whenever a major fight has been successful. As I've watched a few Star Wars movies, I know for a fact that the guys who scream "Waaaaaaaa-" always, and without fail, die horribly as they crash into something. The guys who scream "Yeehaw!" always live to scream it again. Oh, and the PR guy... I don't know why anyone ever puts him on the team in the first place, he's a frickin' Marketer! He knows how to get people to buy stuff that they don't need or want, not how to get an alien to be hit by a bullet they don't want. And the ones that do know their weapons are always traitors, without fail, so it's best to leave them out. Unless you want to break new ground, and start some kind of revolution, with PR guys that are actually good and loyal fighters.... But that just doesn't make much sense.
Rule 6: Give the medic, scientist, or any otherwise non-military squad member a gun. And make sure it's a serious kick-butt gun with lots of buttons and blinking things on it, too.
I won't even start about how many times team casualties could have been averted if every member was outfitted with serious stopping power. Remember that Cisco guy? Yeah, he's likely to be absorbed in a computer screen most of the time, but even he will need a firearm when the rest of the team is dead and has their guts scattered across the floor, or are otherwise occupied and not capable of providing him cover. It just to think about the following scene: Medic is attending to a wounded teammate while two or three other soldiers provide cover fire in the general direction of trouble. Cut to something freaky dropping from behind and 'neutralizing the threat' of the rear flank of the squad with terrifying speed. The medic is the only one to see the oncoming trouble in time, and yet he can't do anything about it. Why? Because last time I checked, cotton swabs and bandages were rather ineffective when thrown at the sleek, murderous shell of a pissed off hostile alien life form moving in for a kill. Make it an order that everyone has an effective form of ranged weapon at their side at all times. Repeatedly slap any pretentious scientist-type who argues his moral stance against weapons. Or just leave them off the team. Show them polaroids of what happens to unarmed squad members when bullets start to fly. 'Nuff said.
Rule 7: Assign a job to everyone, and make sure they know what it is. Or, in other words, make sure that you remeber what each characters job is so that you don't have the Cisco guy trying to man a plasma cannon and the macho gunner hacking a spy satelite. So, when everything goes to Hades, Simpson (and, more importantly, the guy RPing Simpson) will know his job is to find cover and radio for help, whatever it takes. This is especially important when you consider that your opponent is likely to remember a lot of stuff you don't, and will become highly confused if you screw up your own characters.
Remember that any good spec-ops team will have done basic combat drills. If you panic when the big gribbly monster pops up, you're dead. If you all instinctively drop to the ground, roll, and move into mutually supportive fireteams, you're sorted. This is just a game, and time is fluid. If you need a while to contemplate what a real-life team would do, take a while. We'll wait.
Rule 8:
8a) Now, we talk equipment. Decentralise everything. You don't want your laser beam-powered single point of failure M16A1 autoloader failing at the crucial moment just because the traitorous PR guy took time off from fighting to explode the commsat. Can your weapons actually harm the bad guys? There's nothing worse than getting to an airless world and discovering that your needle guns fire a knockout drug that doesn't work, and that the only weapon you've got that can harm the bastards is a flamethrower, which unfortunately doesn't work too well without an atmosphere.
Can you use your weapons at the drop zone? Your mission is to flush out the bad guys holed up in an oil refinery. Are high explosives or incendiary grenades really your best choice of weapon?
Intelligence. Prof. Wunderkind might be female, frail and not a fighter, but not only have her radical ideas about alien metabolism never occurred to anybody else, they also just might be correct. So please remember to pack the mixed aspirin and talcum powder and a blowdart she recommended -- the worst that can happen is that you go back without having used them. This sort of information is usually acquired Out-of-Character, but make sure that there is an In-Character reason for it as well- like Prof. Wunderkind's crazy theories. In order to fulfill the requirements of this rule, you will likely have to *gasp* do some RESEARCH! Go behind the scenes, ask the other role-player what the environment is like, what sorts of stuff your team would be able to find out In-Character, etc. Don't go in blindly and make a fool of yourself by trying to climb a wall that doesn't exist, or trying to blow up the reactor on a ship powered by solar panels.
8b) Always take more equipment than you think you need. Take long coils of rope anywhere you go. Take extra ammo. For Pete's sake take a pistol, as your main weapon will always fail when you really need it. Oh yeah, and take torches. Why does nobody take torches? Your opponent RPer is likely to throw a lot of unexpected stuff your way, and you should ALWAYS, ALWAYS, ALWAYS detail all of your equipment at the beginning of the game, to avoid confusion.
Rule 9 [suggested by Iris Corporation / Whispering Voices]: Information is your friend. You want as much intelligence as you can get. Again, ask the othr RPer what it would be realistic for you to know. If you're going to kidnap someone, do your research. Know *everything* about their location, down to what radio frequencies they commonly monitor. If you're going to assassinate someone, make sure there are no records of them using doubles, or you give the game away. Get all of that in Out-of-Character information, and then come up with a plausible reason for you to have that same information In-Character. Remember Prof. Wunderkind? Perfect example. Another good idea: Say that a spec team is in space and about to investigate a drifting hulk.... use a probe/robot to go inside and explore the ship first before the team enters. You will then have a plausible reason to get more In-Character information. Now, what do you do with this information? You come up with a Plan. Spec-ops teams always have a mission plan. Even if the intelligence sucks, they'll still have at least a general outline. And if you can't devise a plan that survives first contact (like Black Hawk Down), then you shouldn't be involved in planning for a spec-ops team. Events that are so weird that they should actually throw things off (a hostage situation that turned into alien infestation) should be pretty rare, unless you purposely planned such a thing Out-of-Character with the other RPers involved.
But, when you are gathering intelligence, remember that you can only use what you've gotten In-Character. If you don't have an excuse to get certain information In-Character, forget that you ever came across it Out-of-Character. Always design your team and their mission plan around the information that they have In-Character. If that means that you have to purposely design a bad team because In-Character info doesn't match Out-of-Character info, so be it. You can use that bad team to get more In-Character information, and then you can design a good, successful team as a follow-up.
Rule 10: There is a right way and a wrong way to go about exploring potentially hostile territory. The wrong way: YAAA! DIE, ALIEN SCUM! *Sprays plasma bolts in all directions, wasting ammo and stupidly giving away his position*
The right way:
10a) When moving along a dark, seemingly deserted corridor, do it properly. The point man (also known as Scout, Cannon Fodder) should look ahead. The team leader always goes number two in the order of march. Look forwards and to one side. Number three looks to the other side. The last man looks backwards. If you have more men than this, use at least one to check the ceiling. And every single one of them should have serious stopping power (read: big guns), and be really quiet. Silenced pistols, padded shoes, gloves, the works. And for gosh sakes, if your opponent doesn't give you details of everything your guys can see in his next post, BUG HIM ABOUT IT UNTIL HE TELLS! Much confuzzlement, and, occasionally, flame war, can be avoided this way.
10b) If something needs investigating, send two people together. The rest get into an all-round defence, each covering a set arc of fire. The two scouts (frequently, and often necessarily, the scout and the team leader) go to a point near the object of interest. One stops a good 10 meters back, and keeps a Very Large Gun pointed at it. The other approaches with a lot of caution. If more people can be spared to cover the searcher, good, but do not overdo numbers. You dn't want to find out later that your actions were impossible and then have to go back and re-role-play the whole scene because you had too many guys in too small of a space. Once more, Ask The Other Person Involved. And, aside from that, there's no sense in taking thirty people to cover an apparently dead body. Unless the aliens are body snatchers, of course.
Which brings me onto my next point: When searching a body, first remove their weapons, or anything that could be used as a weapon (e.g., fountain pen). Cover is needed for this as well. Then, when the body has been disarmed, one person lies on top of it. I know, it's gross, but they're just fictional characters. They roll it slowly towards them... the person covering looks underneath. If there is anything that looks even vaguely metallic underneath (remember, ask the other RPer!), yell 'Grenade!', and the other searcher will drop the body and roll away.
10c) [Modification/addition suggested by Haraki] Protect your machine gunner. The gunner is 70% of the firepower of a 12-person patrol. Don't give the job to a gung-ho Blaine-from-Predator-wannabe. And don't deploy your unit without looking at a contour map and thinking about where the gunner should be first. In additon to a machine gunner, some situations require a sniper. Modern, not-necessarily-in-close-quarters spec-ops teams should have a sniper. Someone with a sniper rifle trained to get a headshot after five seconds of aiming at a running enemy at 1000 yards. He should be protected as well. Also, use silenced weaponry. Mostly for said sniper, but if you can find a way to silence a machine gun, use it. If it doesn't otherwise adversely affect the team, everyone else's gun's should have silencers, too.
10d) Know when to fall back. If you aren't equipped to fight aliens, arachnids or battle tanks (remember, you listed your equipment at the begining, and it's not nice to just suddenly add something in mid-game), the best thing you can do for your unit (not to mention your society or even your species) is to leave the battlefield as expediently as possible and report what you have seen to headquarters. It is their responsibility to re-arm you before sending you to deal with the situation personally, or to call in air support or an artillery time-on-target.
If done properly, this WILL NOT be considered chickening out of an RP. What is bad is when you godmod your way out, and just say that your team retreated back to their base or whatnot. If you need to, Role-Play the escape as well as you do the rest of the adventure.
Don't take off your boots unless half your unit is ready to start shooting. The enemy always attacks when you take your boots off, it's just one of those things.
10e) Before setting out, pick 3 locations at random, and make sure all the team leaders know where they are (in other words, write 'em down so that you know where they are are can RP the team leaders as knowing where they are). Give directions as "310 degrees, 5 miles from point A", or "10 decks up, 3 sections aft from point B". Don't give out coordinates on the In-Character radio, it's usually not encrypted. If you need to get terrain info or something like that, ask about it Out-of-Character. Also, make sure to put in a few side remarks about how one of the team members took a drink from his hip-flask, or had to pause to put on sunscreeen, or something equally mundane. Drink plenty of water and wear a hat. It adds flavor, let's people connect with the characters. And, if you don't have your guys drinking anything, be aware that you might end up with a failed mission due to 35 out of 40 people in the platoon suffering from dehydration, sunburn or something more serious. If you can't stand, run, think or wear gear properly, you're no use to your unit. And there ARE pedants out there who will ask stupid questions like "when did Private Johnson last go to the bathroom?", so it's best to be prepared.
Hopefully, these rules will at least give the squad (and it's RPer) a better than average chance of not completely screwing themselves and everybody else.
Primary source of information: Everything2.
Improvements suggested by:
Santa Barbara
Iris Corporation
Haraki
Whispering Voices
Hopefully, those people won't mind having stuff quoted verbatim, and altered when it needs to be to fit with the rest.
An order from the higher ups of some type of space fleet or military body sends orders for a group of scientists, soldiers, or a mix of the two to board and retrieve information from a supposedly abandoned space hulk or equally ominous construction. Keeping orders on a need to know basis, the insertion team isn't informed about the excruciatingly high probability that there might still be alien life on board. Cut to the dumbest member of the team sitting, spilling, or pushing on something that will somehow set off the main plot device that alerts the enemy life forms to their bumbling presence within the ship's corridors. Rounds are fired, grenades are thrown, alien beings are generally pissed off, and whatever members of the team are alive after the initial encounter (read: everyone dies but two) must now spend the rest of the story trying to save their screwed up butts from the oncoming horde of evil alien killing machines. The survivors escape, someone nukes the ship, and the director/author/roleplayers pat(s) his/her/their back(s) for a job well done.
I suppose most people must think that other normal people can easily accept human error and tactical deficiency for the sake of action, adventure, and drama. Well, that's probably true, but it doesn't make it any less screwed up.
Well.
Wouldn't it be great if a squad got in, successfully completed all mission orders, and got out?
Team casualties: none.
Mission Success: 100%.
Nothing is more beautiful in the eyes of the hyper-caffeinated alpha-gamer than to complete a level with a perfect life bar, full ammo, and all mission specific orders carried out TO. THE. TEE. Play Doom? Quake? Rogue Squadron? Adrenaline rush when you beat the game with perfect stats, right? Why can't you write a story the same way?
Now, I must say that, sometimes, the cliché is perfect. Everybody loves Aliens. It's often required for movies, where massive killing and explosions can make up for horrible acting. I'm not saying that movies falling into the idea of "everyone dies but Sean Connery, Sigourney Weaver, and Arnold Schwarzenegger," is incredibly terrible. But cliché is a horrible thing, when it becomes it becomes cliché. Please, I have no life. I need a fakeworld to live it for me. Rekindle my faith in the effectiveness of military training. Show me that orders can be followed with cohesion, precision, and guile in fiction as well as real-life. Give me beautiful wide angle panning shots of snipers effectively covering the field of fire on his forward scout teams. Give me a zoom in on the team leader's face correctly ascertaining the fire lines of potential hidden artillery bunkers. OK, maybe not those last two, since this is all text... Show me coolness under pressure. I want to see flanks covered, effective room clearing, and proper use of a frickin' rifle in close proximity of your targets! I want to see hostages rescued, aliens gutted, and cokes being downed by an andrenaline-high squad of happy happy squad of black-ops killers congratulating themselves on a job well done.
Maybe I'm being a bit too demanding- not everyone is a good writer, and that's just the way it is. But you can at least get an approximation of coolness, even if you're not good with writing out all of the gory details.
With that said, let's build an effective spec-ops insertion team.
Rule 1: Choose an effective team leader.
The person in charge must be a woman. Male squad leaders really seem to enjoy giving away a team's position as early as possible. They opt to open doors with shotguns, plasma rifles screaming, or by using the maximum amount of plastique possible sans killing themselves. They never ever check to see if something's unlocked, or maybe for an open window, quietly hacking the locking mechanism, or what have you. Another bad male trait is the idea of 'send one in while the rest of us wait out here':
"Cooper! Front and center!"
"Sir!"
"Go inside that shadowy, dimly lit warhead factory. Check every room, sewage tunnel, and bathroom for any trouble. If you meet up with those horrific hordes of lurking aliens, radio in your coordinates. THE REST OF US WILL WAIT HERE AND MAKE NO ATTEMPT TO COVER YOU."
"Yes Sir!" Cooper will then run in and get eaten by or shot in the head by something waiting for him.
And that's the last we see of Cooper. Women have a lot more common sense when keeping overly aggressive boys healthy and alive. Ever see a soccer mom assert her authority over a van full of young boys? Uh-huh. You know what I mean. Another rule of thumb is that if there IS a woman on your team, SHE WILL PROBABLY LIVE A WHOLE LOT LONGER THAN ANY GUY ON THE TEAM. Why not just let her make the calls early for everyone? [NOTE: This only works if you actually bother to give everyone an appropriate and realistic personality. If you just want your characters to be puppets of some supernatural controller (i.e., you, ther person doing the RP), you can just stop reading right here.]
Now, if you want to make your team leader a guy, but give all of those good qualities too, that's fine. But be advised that they are likely to be mistaken for women by your readers unless constant reminders are given. Most guys with big guns are either scientists or idiots, neither of which make good leaders. The exception is if they are old and experienced. But you don't want a 50 year old army general on your spec-ops team, do ya? Of course not. 'Tain't cool, unless they're an embittered veteran, and that comes with its own can o' worms. Usually having something to do with slight insanity.
Rule 2: Shoot the new guy in the foot before you teleport, dock, or otherwise leave the transport vessel.
There is always that one grinning, cute rookie who thinks that he's going to save all the hostages or kill all the aliens or something equally stupidly macho. Instead, what happens is that when the crap hits the fan, or the alien guts, as the case may be, he would be the one in the group with the big "I'm a horribly obvious liability to the rest of the squad," sign suddenly flashing over his head. Save yourself the trouble of that and just blast him in the foot before you begin the mission. He can't kill anyone with his lousy shenanigans if he's left wounded on the floor of the transport you arrived in. But that's only if you want to be funny. Ideally, you, as the Omnipotent Role-Player/Writer, should have the sense to just leave him out altogether.
Rule 3: Have someone Cisco certified or Wedge on your team.
In my life, every Cisco certified person I've ever met was some kind of complete genius with networks, computer systems, and overall tech stuff. There will ALWAYS come a point where you will have to access the ship's / ominous structure's computer. Don't screw it up and give that kind of responsibility to some script kiddie. No alien, terrorist militia, or evil hive mind is more terrifying than the final test for Cisco certification. It's all about how you handle pressure.
If you're pressed for time (you know, the space transport pilot is giving you dirty looks from the monitor screen) and can't get a Cisco certified person, take Wedge along instead. Wedge was the Corellian-born starfighter pilot serving as X-Wing squad commander for Rogue Squadron. Wedge can do anything. Wedge is dark magic raining gloriously down upon all who do evil in the world. Wedge is as proficient as any Cisco technician could ever be. We love Wedge. Unfortunately, using him would get you into copyright troubles unless you're writing a parody.
If you're worried about not being able to RP such a character well, you have two options: become qualified yourself (not likely), or fake it. Just skip the details and say that he cracked the system. Problem solved.
Rule 4: Group hug and calm down the paranoid guy on your team before anything horrible happens.
We all know that at some point everything will go wrong with the mission. A surprise attack, alien babies hatching and falling from the ceiling, automated room defenses springing out of walls and floor fixtures to annihilate your squad, whatever. It will be the paranoid guy who has all this in his head before it actually happens. His constant mumblings of:
"We shouldn't go down this hall, it looks like a trap," or,
"We're gonna die like useless, defenseless maggots," or possibly,
"I'd rather activate my self destruction option on my space suit before any of those damn aliens get me," will cause unneeded tension among the rest of the squad. Group morale will be greatly impaired, a loss of precision and cohesion will be obvious, and people will die because of it. So before ANYTHING horrible happens, just take a minute and calm him down. Lay down the pulse rifle or light saber and just, well...
Cut him out of the story. No one like that would ever pass training in real life.
But if you absolutely must have someone like that, give him a hug. Tell him that everything will be fine. Smile and give him one of those tough guy shoulder punches on his arm. If you can soothe his high strung senses early, there's a greater chance no one will later fall to the ground screaming with half his face blown off or something.
Rule 5: Certain characters are expected to act certain ways. In some cases, it's just cliché, and can be altered to fit your whim. At other times, though, it's just common sense. For example, if you have a pair of lovers on your team, at least one of them is guaranteed to die. It's in the small print. This is not least because they won't keep their minds on the battle.
The black guy or the old guy will give his life valiantly, dying only as his ammo gives out. Give him vast amounts of ammo and increase his life expectancy accordingly.
The embittered veteran is useful (often as a team leader, see above, but only until the final battle, as his resentment will cause him to try to take on the [enemy platoon/alien queen/dragon/whatever] single handed. This is a Bad Idea. Capital B, capital I.
Sometimes, a little humour is appreciated, and then it's good to have a couple good ol' boys in the combat group. After all, nothin' says lovin' like a guy who screams "Yeehaw!" whenever a major fight has been successful. As I've watched a few Star Wars movies, I know for a fact that the guys who scream "Waaaaaaaa-" always, and without fail, die horribly as they crash into something. The guys who scream "Yeehaw!" always live to scream it again. Oh, and the PR guy... I don't know why anyone ever puts him on the team in the first place, he's a frickin' Marketer! He knows how to get people to buy stuff that they don't need or want, not how to get an alien to be hit by a bullet they don't want. And the ones that do know their weapons are always traitors, without fail, so it's best to leave them out. Unless you want to break new ground, and start some kind of revolution, with PR guys that are actually good and loyal fighters.... But that just doesn't make much sense.
Rule 6: Give the medic, scientist, or any otherwise non-military squad member a gun. And make sure it's a serious kick-butt gun with lots of buttons and blinking things on it, too.
I won't even start about how many times team casualties could have been averted if every member was outfitted with serious stopping power. Remember that Cisco guy? Yeah, he's likely to be absorbed in a computer screen most of the time, but even he will need a firearm when the rest of the team is dead and has their guts scattered across the floor, or are otherwise occupied and not capable of providing him cover. It just to think about the following scene: Medic is attending to a wounded teammate while two or three other soldiers provide cover fire in the general direction of trouble. Cut to something freaky dropping from behind and 'neutralizing the threat' of the rear flank of the squad with terrifying speed. The medic is the only one to see the oncoming trouble in time, and yet he can't do anything about it. Why? Because last time I checked, cotton swabs and bandages were rather ineffective when thrown at the sleek, murderous shell of a pissed off hostile alien life form moving in for a kill. Make it an order that everyone has an effective form of ranged weapon at their side at all times. Repeatedly slap any pretentious scientist-type who argues his moral stance against weapons. Or just leave them off the team. Show them polaroids of what happens to unarmed squad members when bullets start to fly. 'Nuff said.
Rule 7: Assign a job to everyone, and make sure they know what it is. Or, in other words, make sure that you remeber what each characters job is so that you don't have the Cisco guy trying to man a plasma cannon and the macho gunner hacking a spy satelite. So, when everything goes to Hades, Simpson (and, more importantly, the guy RPing Simpson) will know his job is to find cover and radio for help, whatever it takes. This is especially important when you consider that your opponent is likely to remember a lot of stuff you don't, and will become highly confused if you screw up your own characters.
Remember that any good spec-ops team will have done basic combat drills. If you panic when the big gribbly monster pops up, you're dead. If you all instinctively drop to the ground, roll, and move into mutually supportive fireteams, you're sorted. This is just a game, and time is fluid. If you need a while to contemplate what a real-life team would do, take a while. We'll wait.
Rule 8:
8a) Now, we talk equipment. Decentralise everything. You don't want your laser beam-powered single point of failure M16A1 autoloader failing at the crucial moment just because the traitorous PR guy took time off from fighting to explode the commsat. Can your weapons actually harm the bad guys? There's nothing worse than getting to an airless world and discovering that your needle guns fire a knockout drug that doesn't work, and that the only weapon you've got that can harm the bastards is a flamethrower, which unfortunately doesn't work too well without an atmosphere.
Can you use your weapons at the drop zone? Your mission is to flush out the bad guys holed up in an oil refinery. Are high explosives or incendiary grenades really your best choice of weapon?
Intelligence. Prof. Wunderkind might be female, frail and not a fighter, but not only have her radical ideas about alien metabolism never occurred to anybody else, they also just might be correct. So please remember to pack the mixed aspirin and talcum powder and a blowdart she recommended -- the worst that can happen is that you go back without having used them. This sort of information is usually acquired Out-of-Character, but make sure that there is an In-Character reason for it as well- like Prof. Wunderkind's crazy theories. In order to fulfill the requirements of this rule, you will likely have to *gasp* do some RESEARCH! Go behind the scenes, ask the other role-player what the environment is like, what sorts of stuff your team would be able to find out In-Character, etc. Don't go in blindly and make a fool of yourself by trying to climb a wall that doesn't exist, or trying to blow up the reactor on a ship powered by solar panels.
8b) Always take more equipment than you think you need. Take long coils of rope anywhere you go. Take extra ammo. For Pete's sake take a pistol, as your main weapon will always fail when you really need it. Oh yeah, and take torches. Why does nobody take torches? Your opponent RPer is likely to throw a lot of unexpected stuff your way, and you should ALWAYS, ALWAYS, ALWAYS detail all of your equipment at the beginning of the game, to avoid confusion.
Rule 9 [suggested by Iris Corporation / Whispering Voices]: Information is your friend. You want as much intelligence as you can get. Again, ask the othr RPer what it would be realistic for you to know. If you're going to kidnap someone, do your research. Know *everything* about their location, down to what radio frequencies they commonly monitor. If you're going to assassinate someone, make sure there are no records of them using doubles, or you give the game away. Get all of that in Out-of-Character information, and then come up with a plausible reason for you to have that same information In-Character. Remember Prof. Wunderkind? Perfect example. Another good idea: Say that a spec team is in space and about to investigate a drifting hulk.... use a probe/robot to go inside and explore the ship first before the team enters. You will then have a plausible reason to get more In-Character information. Now, what do you do with this information? You come up with a Plan. Spec-ops teams always have a mission plan. Even if the intelligence sucks, they'll still have at least a general outline. And if you can't devise a plan that survives first contact (like Black Hawk Down), then you shouldn't be involved in planning for a spec-ops team. Events that are so weird that they should actually throw things off (a hostage situation that turned into alien infestation) should be pretty rare, unless you purposely planned such a thing Out-of-Character with the other RPers involved.
But, when you are gathering intelligence, remember that you can only use what you've gotten In-Character. If you don't have an excuse to get certain information In-Character, forget that you ever came across it Out-of-Character. Always design your team and their mission plan around the information that they have In-Character. If that means that you have to purposely design a bad team because In-Character info doesn't match Out-of-Character info, so be it. You can use that bad team to get more In-Character information, and then you can design a good, successful team as a follow-up.
Rule 10: There is a right way and a wrong way to go about exploring potentially hostile territory. The wrong way: YAAA! DIE, ALIEN SCUM! *Sprays plasma bolts in all directions, wasting ammo and stupidly giving away his position*
The right way:
10a) When moving along a dark, seemingly deserted corridor, do it properly. The point man (also known as Scout, Cannon Fodder) should look ahead. The team leader always goes number two in the order of march. Look forwards and to one side. Number three looks to the other side. The last man looks backwards. If you have more men than this, use at least one to check the ceiling. And every single one of them should have serious stopping power (read: big guns), and be really quiet. Silenced pistols, padded shoes, gloves, the works. And for gosh sakes, if your opponent doesn't give you details of everything your guys can see in his next post, BUG HIM ABOUT IT UNTIL HE TELLS! Much confuzzlement, and, occasionally, flame war, can be avoided this way.
10b) If something needs investigating, send two people together. The rest get into an all-round defence, each covering a set arc of fire. The two scouts (frequently, and often necessarily, the scout and the team leader) go to a point near the object of interest. One stops a good 10 meters back, and keeps a Very Large Gun pointed at it. The other approaches with a lot of caution. If more people can be spared to cover the searcher, good, but do not overdo numbers. You dn't want to find out later that your actions were impossible and then have to go back and re-role-play the whole scene because you had too many guys in too small of a space. Once more, Ask The Other Person Involved. And, aside from that, there's no sense in taking thirty people to cover an apparently dead body. Unless the aliens are body snatchers, of course.
Which brings me onto my next point: When searching a body, first remove their weapons, or anything that could be used as a weapon (e.g., fountain pen). Cover is needed for this as well. Then, when the body has been disarmed, one person lies on top of it. I know, it's gross, but they're just fictional characters. They roll it slowly towards them... the person covering looks underneath. If there is anything that looks even vaguely metallic underneath (remember, ask the other RPer!), yell 'Grenade!', and the other searcher will drop the body and roll away.
10c) [Modification/addition suggested by Haraki] Protect your machine gunner. The gunner is 70% of the firepower of a 12-person patrol. Don't give the job to a gung-ho Blaine-from-Predator-wannabe. And don't deploy your unit without looking at a contour map and thinking about where the gunner should be first. In additon to a machine gunner, some situations require a sniper. Modern, not-necessarily-in-close-quarters spec-ops teams should have a sniper. Someone with a sniper rifle trained to get a headshot after five seconds of aiming at a running enemy at 1000 yards. He should be protected as well. Also, use silenced weaponry. Mostly for said sniper, but if you can find a way to silence a machine gun, use it. If it doesn't otherwise adversely affect the team, everyone else's gun's should have silencers, too.
10d) Know when to fall back. If you aren't equipped to fight aliens, arachnids or battle tanks (remember, you listed your equipment at the begining, and it's not nice to just suddenly add something in mid-game), the best thing you can do for your unit (not to mention your society or even your species) is to leave the battlefield as expediently as possible and report what you have seen to headquarters. It is their responsibility to re-arm you before sending you to deal with the situation personally, or to call in air support or an artillery time-on-target.
If done properly, this WILL NOT be considered chickening out of an RP. What is bad is when you godmod your way out, and just say that your team retreated back to their base or whatnot. If you need to, Role-Play the escape as well as you do the rest of the adventure.
Don't take off your boots unless half your unit is ready to start shooting. The enemy always attacks when you take your boots off, it's just one of those things.
10e) Before setting out, pick 3 locations at random, and make sure all the team leaders know where they are (in other words, write 'em down so that you know where they are are can RP the team leaders as knowing where they are). Give directions as "310 degrees, 5 miles from point A", or "10 decks up, 3 sections aft from point B". Don't give out coordinates on the In-Character radio, it's usually not encrypted. If you need to get terrain info or something like that, ask about it Out-of-Character. Also, make sure to put in a few side remarks about how one of the team members took a drink from his hip-flask, or had to pause to put on sunscreeen, or something equally mundane. Drink plenty of water and wear a hat. It adds flavor, let's people connect with the characters. And, if you don't have your guys drinking anything, be aware that you might end up with a failed mission due to 35 out of 40 people in the platoon suffering from dehydration, sunburn or something more serious. If you can't stand, run, think or wear gear properly, you're no use to your unit. And there ARE pedants out there who will ask stupid questions like "when did Private Johnson last go to the bathroom?", so it's best to be prepared.
Hopefully, these rules will at least give the squad (and it's RPer) a better than average chance of not completely screwing themselves and everybody else.
Primary source of information: Everything2.
Improvements suggested by:
Santa Barbara
Iris Corporation
Haraki
Whispering Voices
Hopefully, those people won't mind having stuff quoted verbatim, and altered when it needs to be to fit with the rest.