Rogue A.C.E.S is a fan-made alternate campaign setting for the Snap Ships Tactics tabletop miniatures game. Players each take on the role of a disgraced military pilot, convicted of some unspecified crime at a drumhead court-martial, whose prison sentence is outsourced to Anvil Squadron – an expendable “suicide squad” within a private military company. Based aboard the starcarrier Alcatraz, this penal squadron travels from sector to sector, hired out to undertake particularly-dangerous or morally-questionable assignments that legitimate militaries either can't do or don't want to get involved in.

Indentured pilots who want to leave the squadron alive must either fight well enough to survive their sentence, or earn enough money to buy out their penal contract. Money can be earned by shooting down enemies and completing objectives, but weapons, ammunition, repairs, and ship upgrades also cost money and must be paid for out-of-pocket. Each convict's ship is also fitted with a remote detonator, so anyone trying to run won't get far.

Players tackle missions cooperatively against AI opponents, working together over a series of campaign rounds to earn money and buy their freedom. Upon earning enough money to buy out their contract, players may choose to either retire their pilot and start over with a new character, or progress the story by founding their own mercenary squadron and taking on their own jobs.

Rationale

Considering that Snap Ships is a children's toy line, the narrative framework around it is a very simplistic “good guys fighting an evil alien invasion” plot that is good enough to sell toys to eight-year-olds but which I didn't find all that engaging. I wanted something with enough complexity to allow for more interesting storytelling opportunities without devolving into an edgy grimdark nightmare. I also wanted a setting that would allow for varied campaigns, so that not every mission would have to take place in the same location against the same enemies, nor have to tie into everything else that came before. The planet-hopping space mercenaries conceit meant that any inconsistencies could be explained away with, “they took a job on a new planet under a different employer.”

Inspirations

This campaign setting is a mashup of various sources. I took the core idea of “criminals forced to undertake dangerous missions to reduce their sentence” from the DC Comics title Suicide Squad, combined with the “mercenary pilots based aboard a space carrier” idea from the Nintendo videogame franchise Star Fox, and added the idea of “either survive, or buy out your contract” from the manga/anime series Area 88.

Mechanically, this work is based on the upgrade system from Heroes of the Aturi Cluster, a mod designed by Josh Derksen (the same designer responsible for Snap Ships Tactics) made for the X-Wing Miniatures tabletop game.