Hey all!
My gaming group and I have a bit of a different approach to Josh Derkin and his thugs who created the very very awesome cooperative campaign. First, we have a six player campaign that we only play when all six players are available (and another "side" campaign with three pilots who have more games-dedicated free time). Second, none of us have ever played the regular game, tournament or otherwise. Our only experience with X-wing miniatures is Heroes of the Aturi Cluster. My brother came into town in January for my Nerding-Man Birthday games weekend and introduced us to HotAC. After that weekend, I had to explain to wifey why our Jackson Hole trip would need to be postponed because I immediately dropped enough cash to cover the minimum miniatures for the campaign (complete with feldherr cases, playmats, blah blah blah).
Anyway, the conclusion we came to was that it's not *really* an RPG, but a progressive strategy campaign. Sort of like the single player campaign in Total Annihilation (does that age me? I remember Case's Ladder). So, in the three player campaign, we've discussed how to add more individualization to the ships without OPing the Rebels and without altering the mechanics of the base game or the AI as set out by the Creator (our term of endearment for Josh).
What we've done is added a "race trait" for your pilot, "reputations" that can be gained based on things that happen in mission, and "distinctions" that are awarded based on number of kills of specific enemy fighter types. Each of these are once per mission bonuses that recognize either flying trends, race selection, or kill accumulation. They all either affect the AI mechanic or provide a bonus to a part of the regular game mechanics that isn't otherwise affected. For example, "Courser" is a reputation you can get by flying in three missions and not overlapping or being overlapped by enemy or ally ships. The bonus for courser is that your pilot, once per mission, can use the Swerve AI as laid out in the campaign book when the maneuver revealed would overlap an ally or enemy.
So, to finally get to the point (after some good tldr), we've got the lists and have play tested them a bit, and I was wondering if anyone here would be interested in trying them out. We have one guy in our group that has a long history with miniature games, but most of us are just tabletop rpgers and board gamers. I'd be interested in getting opinions from players of the regular x-wing game and Aturi Cluster as to whether or not what we've laid out makes sense and if it seems like a fun add to the already stellar work by "the Creator".
-Madcat