how would you run a War of The Worlds campaign?

>>54431898
Set it in more modern times.

At the end of the book there was a 2nd fleet of ships observed via telescope heading to Venus. Lets assume that in this universe the 2nd planet is how they thought it would be back then, 100% cloud cover, wet and warm but habitable.

Since the 1890 botched invasion there have been two other attempted invasion, from the older dying mars, none yet from the Venus colony.

1st was in 1915. Possibly they expected to find a broken world laid low and bleeding it's last after the pasting we received from what was essentially farming equipment. This time they break out the Black Fog as soon as they land and roll around on very fast wheeled contraptions with heat beams scything anything that moves.

But man has not been idle. World unites in a common wroth, brothers in hate. There was no WW1 in this history, but there was considerable tooling up for this very day. First counter agents to the Black Fog are developed, crude and imperfect and not without side effects of their own. It is costly, the major empires fall apart. London is exterminated as is Paris, Moscow and Washington. Earth survives and the invaders driven off. The broken nations of earth now know that they will never stop trying, the 1890 invasion was not the last gasp of a dying world, Mars still has some bite left to it.

A council of nations forms, cities are rebuilt, fields resown. Over the next 60 years the shit that the aliens left behind is tinkered with, dissected and studied to find what principles it uses to work. To see if it can be copied.

The 1975 War happens. They aren't fucking around now. Now they park a ship in orbit and launch nukes at the population centers. They can out wait the half-life if it means humanity dies. By the time so clever bastard is Cheyenne Mountain figures out the detonation code and uses it to destroy the ship by timing it to explode a nuke just as it launches. Largest city left is Toronto, everywhere larger is a glowing crater.

>>54432408
>>54431898
what system too? please no fantasy

>>54431898

If you're going for the classic setting of the book, I'd run it as a straight up horror game. A small group of civilians, maybe an injured soldier or two, just trying to run and hide and survive the martian onslaught any way they can.

>>54432408
The ground war was almost as costly in lives as the nuke tossing but without their ship they are at a disadvantage. The prototype mounted heat beams work beautifully, Black Fog treatments further refined and mandatory for all soldiers.

Mankind moves underground. Notions of nations are lessened as the council takes further control in the name of survival. Cities are now cavern bunkers with from their access shafts radiating outwards underground trains to the fields that keep these bastions fed. Nobody trusts anymore the open sky.

Technology progresses, first man portable heat ray guns are produced, Black Fog immunity perfected (so long as you don't inhale it or get it in your eyes), cybernetic augmentation is happening (but nobody knows the extent) and now it's 2040 and the Venus and Mars armadas are coming.

Is your ragtag band of Alien Slayers worth their salt?

>>54432533
Only War

https://youtu.be/0EKzV9JdAVM?list=PLZh-ijTJHOA-auy0nSEQbEGe2idC9K-6e

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>>54432606
how would you stat Tripods? would there just be a bunch of different Martian Machine's or just one or two types like the books?

I also like the idea of humanity moving underground more than having one city. gives me a better feeling of humanity surviving and still having a foothold on old earth while still showing/telling you that were the underdogs here

File: war_of_the_worlds_martians.jpg (65KB, 591x397px) Image search: [Google]

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self bump

>>54432876
It's because although we can fend them off we can't hit them properly yet. It is essentially a siege without possibility of relief.

Reskin some sort of small Titan maybe.

>>54433162
>Reskin some sort of small Titan maybe.
wouldnt that result in a TPK on the first encounter?

>>54432408
So basically Ender's Game except people unite instead of continuing their cold war bullshit?

Though now that I think about it that's basically just Independence Day.

>>54431898
Similar to the book,have it be hard survival-focused campaign slowly building up towards finding a secret weakness to the aliens/a way to fight back against the tripods. Would have to do it well though, it'd seem kind of cheap if the players just found a way to make them all drop dead or something...