This is technically a Glaugust post because it has a HPless combat system. It's actually more like a set of extremely rough notes towards an xcom-like, inspired by the inimitable Bad Doctor's way way way better post here.
Hail Glaugust, hail Phlox's server. Hail!
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Something changed in the last fifteen years, and now the world is dying. People disappear and the state does nothing; either impotent, or active accomplices. No one knows anything any more. It is impossible to focus, and too easy to dream more of the sickness into being.
You are ex-military; deniable assets originally charged with conducting anti-organised crime operations on home soil. Two days ago your handler fed you a dossier of information about the invasion, and disappeared. You and your squad went to ground, and tried to process what you had been told.
Now you operate without official support, making use of whatever you can scavenge. Your first and most urgent priority is to procure any available intelligence on who exactly is perpetrating...
The Invasion
Squads
Members of your squad move individually, but they attack altogether. What is relevant is whether they are in cover or not. They move on a map, which is marked up with cover.
Each member of the squad can choose to fire on a target they can see, which is a dice roll depending on their weapon. You roll each lot of attacks on each target all together. Most things need a 3+ to kill, and an AR is a d6. Cover (and other things like your combat stress or your enemy's armour) modifies the number you need to hit, and weapons modify the dice you use.
Operatives carry up to two long arms and a pistol, and can use them freely each turn.
Most things, and all humans, die if they get hit once. This includes all your guys. You are trying to play without taking fire, because even in cover and with body armour your guys are fragile. Also, in the XCOM tradition, the enemy has infinite guys and they only have to get lucky once.
Horrible wound tables.
You are trying to set up situations where you can wipe an enemy in a single round of fire - before you open fire, you're trying not to let them know you're even here.
You need to allocate all fire in advance, before you roll anything.
Your squad is probably around ten people. If they die, it is non-trivial (a mission, most likely) to find replacements.
You have some tools to keep enemies pinned, stunned, or otherwise out of the fight for a limited amount of time if you do need to protract a firefight. Things like smoke, flashbangs, suppressing weapons, etc.
Throwing a grenade is done instead of firing a weapon, and you have all the usual types. Explosives are dangerous to use indoors and at close quarters.
As with procuring reinforcements, resupplying materiel is non-trivial.
Actual invaders (as opposed to their police ground forces) are really bad news - harder to kill, harder to disrupt, more lethal. Even basic hybrid foot soldiers, the MIBs, need to be taken apart with high calibre weapons and explosives if you want to put them down.
Stress is omnipresent, and plays the role of a degrading factor, like HP, in a system where everyone dies in one hit.
Breakdown tables. The results are usually permanent, and many will take an operative out of the game.
Dreamers and Suburban Wastelands
The conspiracy are not exactly the government, but the government is full of its infiltrators, so they have a lot of power and force projection capacity. They fear being truly exposed, but the current state of society would make this difficult. Most action takes place in the suburbs and cities of the present day, which are hollowed-out to the point of barely functioning. Most people are just trying to survive, although things have not degenerated quite into general breakdown. Cops are omnipresent.
Dreamers are a byproduct of the invasion, which also happens in the mind. The world comes to pieces. Think the degraded reality in something like Serial Experiments Lain. A dreamer has a sort of spatially-limited omnipotence, but is just as physically fragile as any other human.
Dreamers are civilians (as opposed to your operatives), and will break down quickly if exposed to combat.
Invaders are also dreamers, and much more powerful.
Most of what you are doing is invading police-held compounds (and eventually alien facilities), trying to find any actionable information you can that might let you effectively strike back against the invasion. Dreamers will be revealed to be a key component of this.
Invaders
The cops and MIBs are not really invaders. Invaders are something terrible. They are psychic, and locally psionic, like human dreamers but more so. They have some technology that makes them impossible to see clearly, but you can usually feel them when they are close. They can be killed, but it is difficult. A body has not yet been retrieved from a combat mission, and this is your most pressing immediate objective.
Alongside the MIBs, it is known that the invaders have access to several other combat lifeforms. We know that they exist, but specific capabilities are currently not well understood. They are tough, but they do bleed and die.
Specifics
Body Armour gives you a + modifier on your injury table roll, depending on its type. It only works once in the field, but can be repaired afterwards.
Cover makes you harder to actually hit (medium cover +1, high cover +2). Keep in cover.
Guns
- AR: d6 at all ranges. Can suppress by firing three times (still contributes one damage dice as normal). 3 rounds of fire.
- Pistol: d6 at close range, d4 at long range. 1 round of fire.
- Shotgun: d8 at close range, d4 at long range or against a target in armour. 3 rounds of fire.
- DMR: d8 at long range, d4 at short range. 3 rounds of fire.
- LMG: must be set up to fire (cannot have moved that turn), d10 at long range, d8 at short range, can suppress by firing three times (still contributes one damage dice as normal). 5 rounds of fire.
- SMG as pistol, but with more rounds and provides a mobility bonus if it's the only long arm you carry. 2 rounds of fire.
- Reloads take up an INV slot. Pistol reloads are 3 per slot, LMG reloads take 2 slots.
Grenades: coming soon.
Injury tables: use your favourite and most horrible.
Stress and insanity: coming soon, needs to be robust. A gradual slippage into dissociation, punctuated with active breakdowns that are permanently crippling.
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