[Black Vulmea]

First time poster, so be gentle . . .

Originally Posted by Southernap

If we don't use their 9 archetypes to play the game. Then you have to use the life paths. The rules as written doesn't have a character generation worksheet included to walk through this path, unlike what GDW did for us in V1 and V2.

The Alpha rules provide a step-by-step description for creating characters sing the life-path on page 31, and a step-by-step example of creating a character on page 39.

Originally Posted by Southernap

1. There is only 4 major nationalities to pick from right now.

T2K v1 PH didn't even have that: it detailed US Army soldiers, said you could play a foreign soldier attached to an American unit, but that Americans were in charge, no matter what.

Originally Posted by Southernap

2. Everything seems to be a D6 role to start with, based on that A-D attribute skill roll. Why not just say, roll a D6 or D12 to get this score? If the little attribute score chart isn't on the Ref's screen. It will be flipping back and forth too much to roll up my character.

I'm not clear on what you're saying, to be honest. Could you give an example?

Originally Posted by Southernap

3. Why the roll for the childhood on 1D6 well after one has filled out their attributes. That seems particularly silly, since I might have tanked one of my attributes scores that would give a reason for my skills. I am also troubled by the forced taking of skills via dice roll.

That's a fair point, but it's also part-and-parcel of random character generation, and even if the specialty you roll doesn't play to your character's strengths, it significantly improves on their weaknesses, frex, making a success five or six on d6, improving your character's chance of success from 16% to 33%

That said, while I personally prefer random character generation, if I'm the referee I'd strongly consider just letting players choose their specialties if they prefer. Optimized characters don't bother me much.

Originally Posted by Southernap

4. . . . Yet, you only get a chance to pick one of 6 skills based on the career choices that I see.

It sounds like you may be confusing skills and specialties. Can you cite a page number?

Originally Posted by Southernap

In addition it appears they made officer a separate category of career for the military paths. When it should have been pick a military path and if your attributes are B or better all across three of the categories then you can be combat arms and an officer or Special Ops and and Officer. With maybe a pair of 2D6 rolls for skills.

An officer does pick a branch as well: "OFFICERS must qualify for both the Officer career path and for the functional area in which they want to serve. They also get to choose which of the two columns to use for each career bonus" (page 32).

Originally Posted by Southernap

Similarly, their breakdown of the "Intelligence" civilian career field has the career path of "Assassin", which I am sure seems cool; but it also seems very Pulp novelist like. Also, why not have a similar path of "hit man" in the Crime field?
The whole thing for the civilian career paths makes no sense.

It allows players to opt for different skill sets before getting swept up as draftees once the war starts. That's not really my personal cuppa - I prefer the familiar T2K conceit of a band of brothers and sisters in arms - but they're trying to make a dollar and cent here, and if increasing the diversity of character options helps their bottom line, then they'd be fools not to do it. I seriously doubt their business plan was 'sell a copy to everyone who played this game since the Eighties.'

Originally Posted by Southernap

5. Aging rules seem overly complex. Why not just say that each term is 4 years like before? So you go from 18 to 22 to 26 to 30 and so on. By saying roll 1D6 for aging. Then roll again against the number of terms that I have completed to figure out if I have lost some attributes. If you do it this way from the start, then you could be figuring attribute loss on a 24 year old PC. I mean I know I probably was starting to lose something at 24, but I didn't feel it when I compared myself to being at mid 30s or even now in my mid 40s.

I took that to represent the possibility of an injury, abandoning a workout plan, &c, but that said, I'm not wild about it either and would house rule this if it stays in the final version.

Originally Posted by Southernap

They then want you if the war doesn't break out to add three years to your age. Seriously.

• Aging starts at 18
• Then roll a 1D6 to age your character
• Then add three years to that current age if war hasn't broke out
• Then roll 1D6 and if you roll <current number of terms you lose an attribute score by one step
• Then add three to your score.
  ************************************
• So lets play this out. Start at 18. Roll 1D6 and I get a 6.
• Now I am 24 years old. Roll 1D6 and get a 3, so no attribute loss
• Roll 1D8 to see if war breaks out. Recieve a 2. No war. Add three to my current age.
• Second Term starts at 27 (since 24+3 is 27). Roll a 1D6 and I get a 1.
• Now I am 28, roll 1D6 again and get a 1. Now I have to lose an attribute? At 26? That makes no sense.

That's incorrect - you roll d6 for the length of the term in years, and once the war breaks out, your final term is three years without rolling, so that everyone's life path concludes with the same three years, syncing up the characters. It's not 1d6+3 every term.

Originally Posted by Southernap

5. Trying to figure out the hit capacity and stress took me a while. Their example wasn't clear. It appears the rules have you take one of the attribute types die size + another attribute die size. Average them together (say Attribute B and D, which is 10+6=16. Divide by 2 to find the average is 8) then divide that by 2 to get the half of that number (or 2 if I am using the example). Why not make it simple math and say "add attribute scores together and find the quarter of that sum"?

Agreed - the wording is wonky; that said, telling people to divide by one-quarter doesn't really improve on that, in my opinion.

Originally Posted by Southernap

6. The unit morale, moral code and dreams and the other fluff listed on pages 16 and 17 of the Alpha players manual means nothing. Where are the contacts that used to exist?

Contacts are v2, yes? My own experience is limited to v1, and I don't recall that.

The Moral Code, Big Dream, and Buddy rules seem to follow tagging Aspects in FATE. That's literally the only thing I like about FATE, so I'm curious to see how they work in v4.

Originally Posted by Southernap

This is a game where everyone is together trying to survive and get home or to some form of a home and survive. The boundaries of morals and ethics will be tested by the GM about trying to maintain a shred of civilization and sanity.

Well said.

Originally Posted by Southernap

Similar the unit morale means what exactly?

It can give you another die to roll to avoid Stress and remain Cool Under Fire.

So, last night I created a character using the life path rules, and I can walk you through the steps.

Character is an American with Coolness Under Fire D (d6). Starting attributes are Strength B, Agility C, Intelligence B, and Empathy B; I don't favor or slight any of the attributes, which would allow me to increase an attribute to A at the cost of dropping another attribute to D - a nice call out to v1 there.

The Alpha rules suggest a referee can allow the player to choose his childhood, but since I don't really have a character concept in mind yet, I'll roll: Working Class. I can choose from Brawling, Stamina, and Tech as my starting skills; I take Stamina and get the Load Carrier specialty - that's a lucky confluence of skill and specialty, and speaks to the idea that characters should get to choose their specialty to match their skill, or roll for the specialty first, before choosing the skill to take or improve. A possible house rule there.

His first term will be spent getting an Education - I think I'm going to go for officer here. He meets both minimums, for Liberal Arts and Sciences, and I elect to Sciences, getting Recon D and Tech D. I have to make skill roll to earn a specialty, which is d6 and d10 to roll a six for success, and I miss on both dice - no specialty. I roll for term length duration and get a 4, and add four years to the character's age. Since I can't roll under a 1 (1st term), there's no risk of losing an attribute level yet. At the end of the 1st term, my guy looks like this.

My Guy, Age 22
Strength B (d10) - Stamina D (d6)
Agility C (d8)
Intelligence B (d10) - Recon D (d6), Tech D (d6)
Empathy B (d10)
Specialties: Load Carrier
CUF D (d6)

Second term is military service and he's qualified to be an officer, so he commissioned as 2LT; with four years in Education, maybe he's ROTC? or USMA? He's eligible for three of the four branches - needs AGL B for Special Forces, so that's closed to him - and opts for Combat Arms; I thinking cavalry if he gets the Tanker specialty. I'm required to take Ranged Combat D and choose Stamina C - two of the six specialties are gunners, so he's gotta be ready to hump a load. I roll a skill check against Stamina - because his Stamina improved, I roll d6 and d10 and get my six this time, gaining the specialty Combat Engineering. As my fellow pirate Captain Jack Sparrow says, that's very interesting. Blowing shit up is cool. Because I passed the skill check, he also gets promoted to 1LT and his CUF goes up to C. I roll for term length, get a one. This time I roll for both aging and the start of the war; neither die comes up a one, so on to term three. At the end of two terms, here 's where he is.

1LT My Guy, Age 23
Strength B (d10) - Stamina C (d8)
Agility C (d8) - Ranged Combat D (d6)
Intelligence B (d10) - Recon D (d6), Tech D (d6)
Empathy B (d10)
Specialties: Load Carrier, Combat Engineering
CUF C (d8)

Third term I can choose two skills, and this time I take Command D from the officer skill list and Stamina B. I roll another skill check against Stamina, this time with d10 and d10, easily beating six on both dice and d10, picking up another Combat Arms specialty, Tanker; that actually works well with being a combat engineer, because it also covers bulldozers. My Guy's taking shape! Because he made his skill check, he is promoted to CPT and his CUF is now B. a d6 says two years pass,, and I roll again for attribute loss and war; he doesn't lose an level, but the war d8 comes up 1 - it's on! As he ships out for Europe, here's how he looks.

CPT My Guy, Age 25
Strength B (d10) - Stamina B (d10)
Agility C (d8) - Ranged Combat D (d6)
Intelligence B (d10) - Recon D (d6), Tech D (d6)
Empathy B (d10) - Command D (d6)
Specialties: Load Carrier, Combat Engineering, Tanker
CUF B (d10)

CPT My Guy is now At War; he can increase two skills by one level each - he goes Command C and Tech C - and gets an At War specialty automatically: Improvised Munitions. I hoped for NBC or Ranger, but IM tells me a lot about how he spent his time in combat.

Now it's time to give him a name and fill in some of his other blanks.

CPT Tomas 'Tom' Andrej Ruzicka, USMA '94, Age 28
Strength B (d10) - Stamina B (d10)
Agility C (d8) - Ranged Combat D (d6)
Intelligence B (d10) - Recon D (d6), Tech C (d8)
Empathy B (d10) - Command C (d8)
Specialties: Load Carrier, Combat Engineering, Tanker, Improvised Munitions
CUF B (d10)

Appearance: blond crew cut, grey-eyed, rock-jawed
Moral Code: Duty, Honor, Country
Big Dream: We all get out of this alive
Buddy and How You Met the Group : TBD

Born in Kewaunee, WI, moved to Green Bay at age 6. Attended Xavier HS in Appleton, living with an aunt. Father's family is Czech; mother's family Norwegian and German. Dad's a roofer, and Tom helped out during the summers, humping bundles of tar sheets and plywood. Solid grades; lettered in football and basketball, inside linebacker and small forward respectively - not the most talented, but coaches respected his toughness. Accepted to USMA, played football, deep on the depth chart; only made the travel team twice, but once was against Navy so it was all worth it. BS, Civil Engineering; AOC 12B, Combat Engineer, CO, 'B' Company, 7th Engineer Battalion, 5th ID (Mech) - served as battalion XO in Poland for six days, battalion CO for about three hours . . .

He needs a nickname.

My first impression is v4 characters tend to be less capable overall than their v1 peers, but that may be deceiving; I think I'll try re-creating this character in v1 to see the differences.