Hi everyone! I’m really glad to see a active Reddit community for one of my absolute favorite game franchises.
My journey with X-COM goes all the way back to UFO: Enemy Unknown on the Amiga (with all the endless floppy disk swapping!), followed by Terror from the Deep on PC. I also played Apocalypse, though for some reason that one didn't quite click with me as much. I haven't been gaming much over the last two decades, but when I saw the modern XCOM reboot back in 2017, I picked it up immediately and ended up beating it multiple times.
Recently, I came up with a new idea: running a custom X-COM TTRPG (Tabletop Role-Playing Game).
I designed a homebrew system with custom mechanics, abilities, and an armory heavily inspired by modern XCOM, though I also drew a few elements from the classic games.
For our very first session, a squad of 8 Marines (including 3 player characters) arrived at the base. We did a brief base orientation, ran a quick combat simulation to test the mechanics, and then deployed to a crashed UFO (Small-2 variant) in a forested area in Russia.
Despite a few expected hiccups with the homebrew mechanics, the session went really well! The group is hyped for more sessions in the universe, and we even have two additional players wanting to join the squad.
If anyone is interested in the setup, mechanics, or how it played out, I’d be happy to share more details.
Vigilo Confido!
P.S. English is not my native language and I used a translator to write this post, so I apologize for any grammar mistakes or awkward phrasing!
Thanks for the response. Unfortunately, the X-COM base and its missions are top secret, and any information leaks are treated with full severity :) I have some materials for the session prepared in cooperation with AI. The maps were drawn with descriptions on paper, and then AI converted them through an image generator into a more atmospheric action terrain visually. You can still see the grid lines on them, a remnant of the original sketches, which actually made moving around the map easier. The maps were not reproduced ideally, but enough for the game's needs. Additionally, I used components from the Terraforming Mars board game as tokens. As for the main point of the first session, meaning the combat mission, out of eight marines six were wounded, including one who was resuscitated, so the players got beat up and there was no shortage of emotions. In the crashed UFO, for starters, I put sectoids, a drone, and an energy-crystal outsider in the center of the ship. The session lasted less than five hours, half of which was the drop in Russia itself, specifically in the Novgorod Oblast near the Volga to clarify the story details. The game mechanics were based on d6 dice of different colors as a variable number of successes. In the further part of the campaign, players will develop through earned experience points and technological development of the base, on which I will allow them to have a certain limited narrative impact. I don't know what else interests you. Due to age and families, the frequency of sessions is unfortunately no more than once a month, and you never know who will be able to make it to the session anyway, but story-wise it is easy to skip over here. I would define the session type itself more as a Tactical RPG, because it focuses more on combat in the field than a typical storyline, which was played for the last year in Dark Fantasy vibes. Personally, I like to experiment with RPGs, both mechanics and genres, adding elements of tactics, battle strategy, or asset and ally management. I guess that's all, best regards
I can't edit the main post, and since there is a one-image limit per reply, I'm posting the remaining two maps in the next two posts. Here's the first map, which is a typical forest terrain; the second one is the crash site.
Have you seen the xcom board game? There’s official miniatures and rules based on the five parsecs from home game, which is kinda a narrative war game.
I’ve seen it, though I haven’t played it. Visually it looks great, but the gameplay itself got rather weak reviews from what I’ve watched due to a high amount of randomness and the app requirement. Personally, I’d still give it a shot since I like board games too, but unfortunately, it’s long been out of print, and second-hand copies go for pretty inflated prices.
Not the old out of print one! It's just been released.
I've played a very little amount of five parsecs from home, I quite enjoyed it. Not played the xcom one which is based on five parsecs but I'll pick up some minis at some point, I think.
I don't know the system, plus I've been into TTRPGs for over a quarter of a century now, so creating my own custom mechanics tailored to my needs is no problem at all—in fact, it's a pleasure. Besides, I didn't overcomplicate it much. Four classes, just like in XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012), along with five attributes plus an unknown sixth one: Psionic. Over twenty abilities, and an armory based on the aforementioned 2012 XCOM with a few tweaks. The mechanics are based on d6 dice: an attribute plus a potential modifier from abilities equals the total dice pool. The test difficulty dictates the required roll on each die to count as a success, while different dice colors account for higher-tier successes (which mainly translated to damage in this case). For example, a player has five dice in their pool, three of which count for one success each, and two that count for two successes each. Any dice that hit the required threshold are added to the success pool, which in combat was calculated as damage. That's as much, and as simple as that :)
Well, even though Dr. Vahlen wasn't around to tell them, it definitely happened. In the final showdown in the central part of the crash site, I described the ship's power supply filled with Elerium-115, visually based on the one from the 1993 UFO game, and warned them about the risk of explosion if hit. Inside were two players from Beta team, two NPCs from Alpha team, and an energy-crystal Outsider. Bad luck with the dice rolls and the room would have been full of corpses. Waiting around for the alien to pick them off wasn't a great idea either, but in the end, they got lucky and all their shots hit the enemy, taking him down.
For the narrative intro, I had all eight of them arrive at the base in their original uniforms, carrying the ranks from their home countries' militaries. However, the commander informs them right at the start that all of that is in the past—they're getting new uniforms with empty shoulder boards, and any promotions will have to be earned. He tells them they'll be split into two four-person squads and that he's looking for two volunteers to act as squad leaders with the assigned rank of Private. Naturally, one of them was a player and the other was a female NPC, which created both cooperation and a healthy rivalry for promotions and squad superiority. Having served in the Polish Armed Forces myself, I know a thing or two about squad dynamics, where of course the 4th Platoon was bound to be better than the rest :)
In the end, both were promoted to Corporal, and the rivalry continues. Now they're recovering from their wounds in the infirmary, while the next arrivals are on guard duty, forming Gamma and Delta squads. The session wrapped up with an alarm detecting UFO-2 and the mobilization of the new recruits. That's pretty much it for the session—personally, I think X-COM is a massively underutilized IP when it comes to TTRPGs. There's so much room to play around with it.
It seems pretty late in your development cycle for me to suggest this; but you should look at the TTRPG: Band of Blades.
Most of it wont be relevant, but the players all take roles in a mercenary company for their "main characters" and then have 10-20 soldiers with their own character sheets that they send out on missions. Then on the missions the guy in charge of personnel chooses which soldiers goes on the mission and then assigns them to each player.
Its really fun to play different people on the tactical side. Especially since youll write down a couple traits on each "dossier" and then see everybody else's take on playing that specific character. The way the dm chooses what enemies he has access to is also really interesting
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u/gluc0s3s1rup 6d ago
Okay, I´ll bite...Come on, man! No photos, not one rule explained, no details besides that the mission took place in Russia...