Republic Commando – Review by ReviewAnon

By: ReviewAnon (name given by the readers)
Originally posted: 28.02.2016
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PREMISE
You are a Commando class clone unit, assigned as the leader of a 4-man Commando unit designated Sierra. You operate operationally in operator ways with your brothers in arms, making your way through mission after mission for the Republic during the Clone Wars.

Glory, loyalty to your brothers, and engagingly written combat.
Also the PTSD. There's a lot of that.

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REVIEW pt1

Mechanics.
Most action rolls require a simple Best Of, using a 1d10 instead of a 1d100. Naturally this means that your rate of success is generally skewed upwards, which makes sense because a lot of the charm and emphasis in this quest is being a hardcore team of tactical badasses.

Information gathering uses 1d100s for... Reasons. I don't see a specific reason for this change, other than just being able to set DCs in the equivalent of (X.Y) instead of just (X.0), but it doesn't really change much of anything.

Regardless of which method being used, crits and degrees of success aren't counted; Though there are often two "DC"s you can meet which serve the function of a Degree of Success, where you can meet one and technically pass, or meet both and pass in overwhelming fashion.

It's worth noting that even with the odds skewed towards victory like they are, the amount of times not one, but multiple 8s get rolled on those 1d10 action rounds is staggering. This quest had some of the best dice luck I've seen, and it was funny reading back through it.


Plot.
The plot is simultaneously not much to speak about, and fairly good for what it is. You are the Chief of Sierra unit, a small group of Commandos, and you mostly work to complete whatever mission gets assigned to you as an excuse to go be awesome somewhere. Along the way you're typically asked to make decisions between your team's integrity and accomplishing more objectives, or moral questions about whether it's better to put someone down if there's still a chance they can be saved.

There is intrigue, there is betrayal, and some missions leave a bitter taste in your mouth even when you succeed. This isn't a happy world, and while you're enjoying being a badass, there are stark reminders that this is (occasionally grimedge) war, and there's no room for leniency; No trick too dirty, nor lie too farfetched.

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REVIEW pt2

Writing.
So many typos. Missing letters, missing words, misnamed characters... Live writing is demanding, but geez. These posts are NOT long; Take some time to proof read them.

Combat is where the QM shines, more than anything else. Melee is often extremely difficult to convey intricately, but they manage to keep it very easy to follow, and it's a blast to read through the relatively short but action packed sequences of breaching rooms or infiltrating places, etc.

Unfortunately as seems to be a common occurrence, the skill in writing combat also takes its toll elsewhere. Dialogue is often stilted or left to the wayside in favor of more action. Characters do develop, but much of it is done off screen and/or relatively privately, leading you to have an unsettling view from the outside as the others around you can sometime to pick up chips on their shoulder the size of a deathstar... And no one wants to talk about it. While on one hand you can look at this and consider it a more realistic story telling - Because how many people will just spill their problems to you? How often do you see every moment of development in the people around you? - I feel you also need to remember that the questing is typically a textual medium, where if you lack the agency as players to affect something, or at least gain more insight into something, then it becomes harder to care about it.

However that said, even though you have very little effect in trying to improve your companion's moods and various PTSDs (outside of terribly cheesy speeches about brotherhood), it's extremely easy to get attached to them. While it starts hilariously forced, seeing your unit on the battlefield and ordering them around, catching their dialogue between firefights and picking up on their minor quirks easily lend an affability that endears your unit to you far more than just supporting characters to order around. You, as a character and as a player, really CARE about your squad.

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PERSONAL THOUGHTS pt1

Suspense is really easily (and often) generated by removing people from your direct sphere of influence. This is something that really begins to bother you as the quest goes on, partly because you really start to worry about your team, and partly because it seems any time anything of importance happens, you are suddenly eating communications jamming or someone is refusing to respond for reasons. While there's no denying it's an effective method of building concern, it also becomes frustrating when it's the ONLY way that ever gets used.

Character motivations outside your squad often seem... Arcane. Some times this is harmless, like "this guy doesn't like you, don't ask why. He'll get better about it when you do cool things". Other times, particularly in the case of these reoccuring Separatists sisters, there's so painfully little information available to the players, and no meaningful character interactions, so you're left just nodding along dumbly that something happened because... Well, lets face it, the best reason you have to explain why they do anything is because you don't why they WOULDN'T do something.

What are they there for? Why do they keep sparing you? What the hell is going on?

And again, you're a soldier. A clone soldier at that. These sprawling plots aren't really your job. I get that.

But we're the MC, and while that's not a ticket to solve all the universe's problems forever, we should still be able to try and muddle through figuring out the problems in front of us. It becomes especially notable towards the end of the archives when more of the plot is shifting towards conspiracy and intrigue that the QM was grasping desperately at straws to pull together plot threads they had laced earlier in the story but didn't really seem to know how to tie them together without it being awkward... If at all.

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PERSONAL THOUGHTS pt2

Then there's a bit of context regarding consistency. Sometimes you fail a DC and you don't kill as many units as you should have. Sometimes you fail a DC and you or your squad get injured, which happens from time to time. It's not a huge deal.

Sometimes you fail a roll and your entire party gets stun-grenaded into a cutscene where one of your squad is kidnapped because reasons and there's literally nothing you can do about it.

There is a fair amount of narrative fiat going on here as far as what a failure really constitutes, meaning that missed DC could be anything between "haha, we're frosty, keep at it." to "Well there goes half our unit. Shit."

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CLOSING

[spoiler]Unavoidably, I'd hesitate to recommend this quest to anyone because it's arguably dead. It left off early in its life despite being fairly successful and enjoyable to read through; I presume even more fun to play through.[/spoiler]

That said, if someone was looking for examples of decently executed melee (which is a rarity), as well as fun and engaging precision teamwork in combat, I'd suggest at least browsing through Republic Commando. It's a simple quest, it knows it's a simple quest, and it doesn't have any delusions of grandeur. You come for the great fighting, and it delivers with a satisfying efficiency like a well played FPS match would. If the QM picked this back up, I doubt many of his players would hold it against him if he just dropped the attempts at complicated intrigue to get back to being a team of battle-bonded badasses doing their best to make it through the war.

I feel the biggest issue with it is that the QM wasn't sure how to handle the plot itself. Every time they started edging towards it, you could see them start to hesitate, and finally when everything went full-bore into plot land, they just broke down and left. It felt like an after thought that they wanted to include, but began to regret trying to integrate after it had started. It wouldn't have been difficult to eschew a more involved plot altogether and just focused on the fun combat of being a team of Commandos, and I don't think it would be difficult even now to just forgo trying to aspire to anything complicated and just having simple plots carried by fun fights and potential romantic entanglements.

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ADVICE

As I really just did this by request of the QM, my advice here is to not stress out over trying to make your quest something it isn't. Don't try and force yourself into writing things you're not comfortable with just because it seems like a good idea at the time. And, finally, if things go wrong... Just admit they went wrong. In this case, plot isn't why your players loved your quest; Botching it is unfortunate, but it's not what they came for, or what they stayed for.

Don't be afraid to realize something isn't working and go back to your roots, instead of holding on until it's too late.

[spoiler]Pictured: Whiskey upon realizing the plotroller wasn't going to work; His players as they ride upon it in horror.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OdctnPIR5kA [/spoiler]