On Fri, Mar 11, 2016 at 4:01 PM, Timothy Collinson <xxxxxx@port.ac.uk> wrote:

Plan B is the navy turning up so I've just put together a squad of marines who arrive wearing red shirts...

Which reminds me while I'm here... I could guess that you'd have a Lt commanding, a sergeant and a corporal and a marine. Takes care of 4 of the 'six' (convention sized gaming group for an alternative way of running the adventure). Would the other two be more likely Lance corporals or marines? (The rank structure in the Darrian Navy: Marine branch is marine, l.c., corporal, sergeant... and the first officer rank is an Lt.) Can't see any notes on squad formation so have just gone with what I felt like.

Eh. You're only going to need an officer if you need political decisions. :)

Sending an officer with a *squad* seems kind of top heavy, unless they are going along to bodyguard the LT while the LT does officer things.

If it's just simple recon, or a use of force job, send a sergeant, maybe a corporal, a couple of lances, maybe one or two privates. You don't want to send a bunch of junior-junior privates out unless it's a low threat mission; lack of experience will get them killed, and others with them.

For a low threat/training run, I'd give each corporal or lance corporal or corporal a peon to supervise, with a sergeant to or corporal to run the detail.

(That is also handy if you want to double up pc/npc characters; each of the senior Marines gets a meat shield who is somewhat inexperienced/less trained/lower skilled than the primary character.)

"Any sufficiently advanced parody is indistinguishable from a genuine kook." -Alan Morgan