Quick-Start Saturday: Tom Clancy’s The Division – Quickstart Manual

Quick-starts are a means of trying out a roleplaying game before you buy. Each should provide a Game Master with sufficient background to introduce and explain the setting to her players, the rules to run the scenario included, and a set of ready-to-play, pre-generated characters that the players can pick up and understand almost as soon as they have sat down to play. The scenario itself should provide an introduction to the setting for the players as well as to the type of adventures that their characters will have and just an idea of some of the things their characters will be doing on said adventures. All of which should be packaged up in an easy-to-understand booklet whose contents, with a minimum of preparation upon the part of the Game Master, can be brought to the table and run for her gaming group in a single evening’s session—or perhaps two. And at the end of it, Game Master and players alike should ideally know whether they want to play the game again, perhaps purchasing another adventure or even the full rules for the roleplaying game.

Alternatively, if the Game Master already has the full rules for the roleplaying game the quick-start is for, then what it provides is a sample scenario that she still run as an introduction or even as part of her campaign for the roleplaying game. The ideal quick-start should entice and intrigue a playing group, but above all effectively introduce and teach the roleplaying game, as well as showcase both rules and setting.

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What is it?
Tom Clancy’s The Division – Quickstart Manual is the quick-start for Tom Clancy’s The Division: The Official Tabletop Roleplaying Game, the roleplaying game based on the video game developed by Massive Entertainment and published by Ubisoft, and its subsequent novels and comic book series.

It is a eighty-four page, 51.14 MB full colour PDF.

It is decently written and the artwork really is very good.

How long will it take to play?
Tom Clancy’s The Division – Quickstart Manual is designed to be played through in one or two sessions.

What else do you need to play?
Tom Clancy’s The Division – Quickstart Manual needs five ten-sided dice per player.

Who do you play?
Tom Clancy’s The Division – Quickstart Manual includes five pre-generated Player Characters or Agents. They consist of a sharpshooter and scout, a non-specialist soldier, an ex-member of the riot squad, a medic, and a leader. None of the pre-generated Agents have backgrounds.

How is a Player Character defined?

An Agent in Tom Clancy’s The Division: The Official Tabletop Roleplaying Game has three Attributes—Awareness, Dexterity, and Technique; skills and specialities in their associated Skill Domains, and three Traits—Resilience, Vigour, and Quickness, which are used to test an Agent’s speed, strength, or calmness. These all range in value between one and five. Each Agent also has his or her own specific Manoeuvre.

How do the mechanics work?

Tom Clancy’s The Division – Quickstart Manual—and thus Tom Clancy’s The Division: The Official Tabletop Roleplaying Game—uses what it calls the GRIS system. This is short for ‘Gather, Roll, Indicate, and Succeed’. Rolls will either be Trait or Skill rolls. The Traits are Resilience, Vigour, and Quickness, which are used to test an Agent’s speed, strength, or calmness. The number of dice rolled when a player wants his character to act are determined the points in Skill Domain, Skill, and Specialities for skill rolls and the Trait values for Trait rolls. In either case, this will be between one and five dice. The Difficulty value for any task will be between five and ten with seven being average. Modifiers apply to the Difficulty value only, and do not adjust the number of dice rolled. Once rolled, the player choses which die will be his Resolution die, which will determine the outcome. In most situations, this will be the highest die, but in certain circumstances, such as determining how much trauma an Agent suffers when taking damage it might be lower.

The result on the Resolution die will determine the outcome. A result of one is a fiasco, a roll less than the Difficulty value is a failure, a roll equal to the Difficulty value is a success, greater than the Difficulty value is a Tour de Force, and a result of ten which is higher than the Difficulty value is a Feat. The skills list possible Fiascos, Tour de Forces, and Feats. Outside of combat, this might be to generate a Strategy Point, an Inspiring Example which grants an ally a one-time bonus die, and even lowering the Difficulty value for that skill for the rest of the mission. In combat, it can do extra damage, but also generate a Strategy Point or an Inspiring Example. 

How does combat work?

Combat is intended to be fought out on the hex grid. Initiative is a Quickness roll. In a round, an Agent or NPC can move and either sprint, use a Manoeuvre, or an automatic action. The use of a Manoeuvre requires the expenditure of Strategy Points. Strategy Points represent powerful actions, are shared resource and in limited supply. Generic Manoeuvres include ‘Barrage’, ‘Precision Fire’, and ‘Suppressive Fire’. In general, a player will be rolling to see if his Agent hits and that will inflict damage. Damage is a straight value—four for a pistol, five for a submachine gun, six for a rifle or assault rifle, and so on. Armour worn reduces damage, whilst all Agents have ten boxes of Health. They have a Wound Threshold which when reached, means they are exhausted and/or in pain and suffer a die penalty to all rolls. An Agent is down when his Health is reduced to zero. This does not mean they are dead. In a Skirmish, they will be out of the fight, but not dead, whereas in a Confrontation, it can mean they are. There are tables for both Minor and Major Trauma suffered when this occurs. 

 

In general, the combat rules in Tom Clancy’s The Division – Quickstart Manual do feel underwritten and perhaps an example of combat would have helped. One thing that is clear is that Manoeuvres are special actions and should be selected with care. In another roleplaying game, a Player Character might be able to do them all the time and so gain the bonus. Not so here, where their use is likely to be narrative-based. In other words, the players should be asking themselves if now is the right time to use a Manoeuvre instead of later in the scenario.

What do you play?

The setting for Tom Clancy’s The Division – Quickstart Manual and also for Tom Clancy’s The Division: The Official Tabletop Roleplaying Game, requires some explanation. It is a near future post-apocalyptic setting in which a deadly bioweapon, known as the ‘Green Poison’ because it was primarily spread via infected bank notes, led to high casualty rates, civil unrest, the collapse of civil government, and near societal collapse, especially in the US cities of New York and Washington, D.C. Both cities are quarantined, populated by criminal gangs, separatists and secessionists, and worse, as well as refugees and communities surviving despite the chaos and disorder. In response, the President of the United States activates sleeper agents in the population who work for the Strategic Homeland Division (SHD; or simply ‘the Division’), who are ordered to enter the quarantined zones, render aid and assistance, and combat any threats within the bounds of the city which threaten the continuity of the USA. Tom Clancy’s The Division – Quickstart Manual provides an extensive background to and overview of the current situation in the roleplaying game including the factions on both sides in New York and Washington D.C.

The scenario in Tom Clancy’s The Division – Quickstart Manual is ‘Ashes of Murray Hill’. It is an introductory scenario and so does not use the full mission rules from Tom Clancy’s The Division: The Official Tabletop Roleplaying Game, though the Director could adapt it if he has access to them. There is advice on adjusting the story in palces as well. In ‘Ashes of Murray Hill’, the Agents are stationed in a fire station at Kips Bay on the edge of the New York City quarantine zone. The Joint Task Force, made up of police, fire-fighters, and emergency workers, has been sending medical and food convoys into eastern Manhattan to help civilians. Amidst a rainstorm, the Agents learn that one of the convoys has been hijacked, probably by the Rikers, a violent gang made up of former inmates at the infamous prison. The Agents have access to an ECHO or ‘Evidence Correlation Holographic Overlay’, from which they can determine what happened at the ambush site and track the culprits to the Murray Hill district. Whether they use stealth or a more direct approach, the Agents will be able to find the Rikers base of operations and with luck, rescue the survivors from the convoy. In the final scenes, the Agents have to escape the Rikers base of operations as it is attacked by a rival faction and get back to safe territory, only to discover what the Rikers’ true plan was all along…

Is there anything missing?
No. Not as written, but examples of play or combat would not have gone amiss.

Is it easy to prepare?
Yes. Tom Clancy’s The Division – Quickstart Manual is easy to prepare.

Is it worth it?
Yes. Tom Clancy’s The Division – Quickstart Manual does give a good idea of that the roleplaying game will be like. Some players may be disappointed by the lack of tactical elements in the combat system and the combat mechanics may be too light for others, especially given the combat-focused game play of the video game it is based on. On the other hand the rules are not too complex, the background to the setting is surprisingly detailed in its explanation, and the scenario is decent.

Tom Clancy’s The Division – Quickstart Manual is published by Arkhane Asylum Publishing and is available to download here.

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Tom Clancy’s The Division: The Official Tabletop Roleplaying Game is currently being funded on Kickstarter.