Military in bts?

[lather]

BtS-2 has a government agent but it's not very detailed.

Nightbane has some government agents and agencies in Beyond the Shadows I think.

Boxed Nightmares deals with investigative agencies and may have some military but nothing detailed, again.

Our group is a small government team that researches and fights the supernatural. The problem is that all the information is very specific to our campaign. Although I am working on a write up to make it a little more generic so that it can be used just about anywhere in the world.

[Josh Sinsapaugh]

I don't believe there is, and personally I don't believe such a thing would fit the setting.

To each, his (or her) own though...

~ Josh

[lather]

Obviously I think it fits the setting. After all, governments and research institutes with government money do study the paranormal.

I think the most important question is scale.

Things like The Mist and Cloverfield do not fit the setting. Unless the monster is rampaging around Area 51 or a wilderness setting where perhaps a hiking group catches a glimpse of the action.

I think the beauty of BtS is that it is an exgtremely flexible setting. But I think the scale must always be kept small and/or out of the mainstream public eye.

[sasha]

Military units and BtS is something you can spend a lot of time thinking about.

If scope expands you get into more trouble. I know that's been pointed out a couple times at least already but it bears repeating.

[bigbobsr6000]

I usually put a group together like "Torchwood". But they have government ties like a black ops section.

[sasha]

You could use Boxed Nightmares to create an agency for such a thing

That's true but there's nothing about a specific unit. And I do not like the international scope and the international espionage scope that creeped in from Ninjas & Superspies. That said, I don't think it's impossible to play such a game in Beyond the Supernatural. For instance, we have run KGB vs. CIA successfully but the scope was small, localised to El Paso, Texas.

[sasha]

Agree 100%

[bigbobsr6000]

Rift Jumper, I agree with you. Especially the part about capture/containment. And that the "normal" military weapons would have no effect or kill them and gone without a trace.

This is why if I have military involved at all, it is a small unit trained to handle BTS creatures. Along the lines of MIB or Torchwood mix of civilian specialist with the backing, if need be, of the special military unit assigned to them.

This, of course, is all on the "hush-hush" and "need-to-know" Black Ops kind of stuff.

Big Bob.....................

[sasha]

Military units and BtS is something you can spend a lot of time thinking about.

There's a place for them in BtS.

I promise you.

[Library Ogre]

Military units and BtS is something you can spend a lot of time thinking about.

There's a place for them in BtS.

I promise you.

You just have to take The Initiative.

[bigbobsr6000]

I can imagine an all out war between the BTS forces and the "puny" humans. Not the devastation of the Rifts Catacylism, but dimensional portals opening up everywhere like all major cities. The BTS creatures already here attacking as the portals open. At midnight on some blah blah astrological alignment. All the monsters, spirits, creatures, etc. put aside any differences or fears of each other to fight as one force against the common enemy, mankind. Similar to System Failure but with the BTS monsters pouring through these portals instead of the Bugs coming thru electrical systems.

We mobelize all our military resources to fight these monsters. The battles that would rage. Lazlo Society, maybe going underground to moblize a Resistance Force as military options fail.

Then we have life on earth after the Invasion. Throw in some Nightbane stuff and wweeeeee! Away we go.

Hey! I just got my next major campaign.

[sasha]

It's game over, man.

[Gallahan]

Something to consider is the "Predator" scenario. If the party consists of a team of white, grey or black ops members, they can be on a mission unrelated to the monsters. In "Pretador," the team is recuing hostages in a jungle, and what a firefight in the village before they really encounter the creature (Predator)! You can have a lot of fun before the party runs into the beast(ies).

The initial campaign could have nothing to do with the supernatural. It's black ops stuff in the real world, like say in Iraq (Middle East) or South America (Drug War) or Pacific Rim (pirates!). Once the team has a good old fashioned firefight with the "real world" threat, they get a hook/clue leading them into the "real" campaign. A prisoner, a map, an object, a GPS tracker that was on a boat they were hunting for (that was missing, owned by a wealthy/influential member of government/elite society)... You get the idea.

Maybe they discover a "secret" lab on a freighter that was listed as nothing more than a cargo ship. In that freighter they uncover "bodies," either in stasis or dead yet preserved. Hmmm...

Further, and on a grander scale, imagine if you will a scenario in which "we" (the public) have NOT been told of true dangers to our way of life... that wars and such over the last 100 years have been nothing but staged pretexts to the "real" conflict(s) between UNGODLY BEINGS and the human race. Imagine that the military elite know of this supernatural war, and use "real world" conflicts to mask atrocities brought upon us by supernatural entities. Imagine, that a Brookings Institute-level study concluded that the average person would go insane if exposed to the truth, and that social order on a global scale would unravel if this ever became public knowledge.

Suddenly, with that last scenario, it is PARAMOUNT to shield the public from this knowledge, for its own good... --even if it means that some really black, black BLACK ops units would have to "eliminate" people who have seen too much. THAT- or have them join the cause, never to interact with the "real" world on a meaningful level ever again.

Tough choices.

There are secrets in our world, the "real" world... EVERYWHERE. This kind of campaign/storyline is really juicy because it takes advantages of modern-day news headlines. Look through the paper. Find an interesting article. Clip it out. Use it as a prop. Come up with a backstory involving special ops military units. Make correlations between diverse stories, like last year there were rare earthquakes in the Gulf of Mexico... Strangely enough, just before these earthquakes, it was stated that oil companies were searching for new deposits in the gulf... Hmmm.... And, what if a ship went missing in the middle of the gulf during a storm... Hmmm...

You get the idea.

Gallahan

[sasha]

I threw that curve ball in a RECON game.
Zombies and oh the napalm.

[glitterboy2098]

a few times i've toyed around the idea of a secret government agency dedicated to the study and containment of the supernatural.

playing up on the "men in black" mythos. while they occassionally do get involved in actual "clean up" during incidents, they're mostly just agents (posing as FBI, CIA, what have you) to contain the damage by spreading the proper cover-stories and creating enough doubt about what actually happened to keep people doubting.
all to prevent panic and chaos.

i'd probably have it as an outgrowth of the counter-espionage groups during the 2nd world war. looking into "supernatural" encounters on the assumption that they might be nazi or japanese sabotours or spies trying to cover up their work. only to find more than they figured.
would then be tied into things like project bluebook, project stargate (the real world one), and so on.

such a set up would give the GM a tool to cover up any major events the PC's accidently set off in the course of their investigations, as well as giving the PC's more NPC's to interact with (think X-file's deepthroat for example)

[bigbobsr6000]

This is all good stuff, I have really enjoyed the input.

[glitterboy2098]

actually i was thinking more "we're trying to use this to our countries advantage*, and if the public finds out and beleives in it our enemies will be able to duplicate our efforts and block us."

i'd stop short of the whole hellboy route (i can't see the nazi's in a secret occult war. though as a research division on exploiting hitler's occult beleifs to allied advantage it would have been useful), more along the lines of, 'in the cold war the intellegence community explored the applications of psycic talents in the fields of espionage', and post cold war those talents are just as valuable against things like terrorists.

and of course, they use them to keep the chaos of the supernatural from spreading and spilling over into the public eye.






*i direct your attention to the very real stargate project. alien rings that flush sideways would have made more sense i think...

[lather]

I learned the hard way when a game I had saw an elite military unit level a haunted house (commandeering a pair of fricking bulldozers) in order to pick through the rubble (they used the excuse that the "serial killer" had the place booby trapped). No more official mandates & authority in my BTS games after that.

What were the team's ROE?

[glitterboy2098]

I was just wondering if there some kind of military unit or something that investigates/eradicates these mysterious creepy crawlies. No I'm am not only talking about a x-files/MIB type feel but more something more akin to section 8 from basic or something along those lines to deal with these threats.

there was an PBRD. the burea of paranormal reaserch and defense. it really existed look it up

oh yeah, their top agent came over the other day...heckboy i thnk it was?
sorry, the BPRD exists in fiction only.

the FBI does have some members who investigate supposedly 'supernatural' occurances, though not officially. and the CIA had their stargate project and things like MK-ultra, which tried to exploit less-than-confirmed psuedoscience to the organizations advantage, but those all failed to produce conclusive results.

[runebeo]

If your looking for a good military O.C.C. for BTS the Paratrooper from Rifts: Mercenary Adventures could sure hold his own combat wise with a great skill selection and has a immunity against Horror Factor. I lost two character to horror factor kills in the last two years. This O.C.C. is right on the button for dealing with hideous monsters and it works well as military specialist characters we always seen on TV shows, you know the ones that do every thing from sniper assignments in arctic one week and next week trapped in the middle a mine field in Burma the next week, then to round out the month jump on the back of a crop duster full of anthrax kill the terrorist pilot and safely land it. Just like in real life, I love the Unit lol.

[Gallahan]

I can't (haha) claim to have any personal knowledge in these areas, but let's just speculate for a moment...

- The US has special operations forces in ALMOST EVERY COUNTRY around the globe. Units might range in size from a special A-team of 4-8 members to larger teams of about 8-12 (or more, depending on the "hotness" of a location).
- You might be surprised at how many different countries the US has teams in.
- These team members are highly trained personnel. Each is trained in basic and advanced first aid at a minimum, if not CPR and advanced field medical technician training. That goes with their real specialty: dealing death in various ways, with and/or without weapons.
- Imagine these A-teams like small groups of Jedi, spread across the world/galaxy to keep the order and manipulate/intervene in foreign affairs discreetly, never getting the recognition they deserve (yet do not crave).
- Because of the secret nature of these teams, the team members are entrusted with some of the most hidden secrets of the modern world; these secrets involve the supernatural, the ancient, the unexplained, the extraterrestrial and the lost knowledge of forgotten civilizations.
- Perhaps... even moreso, these secrets involved the true nature of our planet, hidden underneath a multi-generational conditioning program; the true nature of the planet being that it is HOLLOW. Google anything involving "hollow earth" and you will get a LOT of information for a great campaign; also take a look at the latest movie "Journey to the Center of the Earth" and you'll see some of the horrific possibilities.

Have fun!

[gaaahhhh]

Warpath could be used with Beyond the Supernatural for exactly what you are looking for. Now we just have to wait...

[Natasha]

Boxed Nightmares, too.