by Brant Guillory, 2 September 2026
Most “modern” military RPGs are focused on Cold-War-Goes-Hot or loosely post-apocalyptic settings. Derek Roberson has pivoted toward a truly modern military setting and based his new game Outside the Wire on his experiences downrange as Marine during the Global War on Terror. The Kickstarter just launched, and funded on the first day. If you’re interested in some of the gameplay, Rocky also reviewed the free quickstart scenario earlier this Summer.
Tell us a bit about yourself, and how you’ve gone from “deployed servicemember” to “game designer” and how direct (or not) that journey has been?
I have to say that I was lucky enough to be around some awesome people for over 35 years as a Marine. After retiring last summer, I started cracking open new and old RPGs and wargames. In that process, I started replaying an old RECON campaign that I have had running in Sangria for about a decade. The “home” rules mix Traveller, MERC, RECON, and even Ranger. I also dug out a home version of the Russian invasion of Ukraine that I created a few years ago.
With these two in front of me, plus drips of inspiration, I started drafting a COIN RPG. Once I built a few basic rules, I found some testers, and off we went.
click images to enlarge
What’s the “elevator pitch” for Outside the Wire? What should players expect when they sit down to play?
Outside the Wire is a modern war sandbox RPG about dismantling hostile networks in a volatile region while also building legitimacy. Players should expect to be challenged to “do the right thing,” support locals, and build legitimacy. The game links each session in an ecosystem by tracking how players interact with and reshape the human terrain based on their decisions and actions. The players killed IED emplacers – good (?) reduced the insurgency(!), but were locals, so lost trust…. which is important to build legitimacy.
Throughout the creation process, the creators and testers, a close-knit group, shared experiences and gaming nuances that added uncanny human realism. While very much a wargame, we recognized that there are both kinetic (raids, ambushes) and non-kinetic “adventures” that happen downrange – way outside of a combat patrol – that would make a great scenario and be group RPG-able. In many ways, the ability to go from a “Tattooine” bar-like scene negotiating a merc contract to combat is part of what made my experiences with TW2000 and Traveller, to name a few, fun. In this space, we hope players will also find Outside the Wire.
Between the free quickstart that’s been out a bit, and your other playtesting, what’s been the general response to the game? Which parts of either the game system or any of the intro scenarios got pushback or confusion from the participants?
The general response is that players want more. Which, of course, further drives the writing and innovation. For example, as we added scenarios to test the system, one of the first pieces of feedback was How do we link the sessions…. So we started drafting rules for an ecosystem that responds to the players’ actions. I found a few playtesters during this process who provided great discussions, sparked ideas, and helped me stay focused. Testing has really helped us see the best parts (what people enjoy) and the parts that need work.
While I initially paid for the playtesting, it has recently become all-volunteer as the game has attracted more attention. The overall group has brought in a range of experience, humor, and thinking. The key playtesters (some play solo and others GM) include a family-man baker in Minnesota, a Kiwi Psychologist, a Brazilian professor, a Norwegian College student, a writer (82d AFG vet), a Marine Vet, a French businessman, two current Army soldiers, a newspaper editor (and Marine), and a Ukrainian Freedom Fighter. I would love to get them all in the same room.
That sounds like a Fellini film!
All games evolve through development. How close is the current release version of Outside the Wire to what you originally envisioned? What’s one of the biggest changes that happened as you were designing, and what’s mostly intact?
Not at all the same….the system changed drastically throughout the building process, driven entirely by playtesting. Initially, I had many standard skirmish-game characteristics, where the GM/players use multiple dice modifiers to determine what happens. As we added player skill levels and leveling up, the system failed, so we tried different dice types (3d6, 2d10, 2d10 + 1d6). We fell on 2d10, heavily on theater of mind, and solo play rules. The system developed to reflect incremental gains in skill and knowledge through combat deployments, giving players a better chance of success and reducing randomness as they advance in rank.
A moment on solo play design. After adapting a basic oracle (yes, no, but), we added enemy automata (charts to determine actions) and a sunlight dial. The sunlight dial drives the play forward by building tension: it advances after each player action, and if it reaches 10, the players fail the mission. Do I talk with a neighbor or the children playing in the courtyard? Do we have time to recon the target? The idea is that the players can not do everything, but must make cost-benefit decisions. The GM-led groups have also enjoyed this.
I started pulling in pieces that allowed Campaign/Sandbox play, and to this day still mentally (theater of mind) play from MERC, RECON, and Traveller. I still have a RECON campaign going in “Sangria”, a fictitious region. We added the ability to build fictional sandboxes or give structure to historical conflicts. How do we measure changes in the environment as the characters advance? The first tools included Intelligence, criminal activity, insurgent activity, local civilian trust, Government trust, and command support. This was too much to track at a gaming table. We fell on Command confidence (are you doing what they want, how they want), Local Trust (how much the populace supports/trusts you), and Insurgent Activity. This is very much a Clausewitzian trinity – where one action doesn’t support all three areas.
Finally, the campaign design has been one of my favorite areas. Essentially bolted onto the sandbox ecosystem, we designed a “deployment” campaign system where players deploy to a region for a set period to stabilize the area. The system has a weekly battle rhythm that includes intelligence collection, factional politics, tactical operations, logistics, creating local forces, bribes, and even civil affairs projects. If command confidence falls to 0, the players are relieved (fired). A win is creating a local force to replace you and continue stabilizing the region. Of course, if local trust is low, you can’t recruit locals. High Insurgent Activity negates local force gains. Back to the Clausewitzian trinity.
Where does the game go from here? Assuming there’s already additional scenarios or modules on the drawing board, what comes next once the base game is a hit?
Oh, absolutely. Through playtesting, we have developed several scenarios tied to the initial Iron Crossing Campaign (now stretch goals) and a separate Africa Campaign (in which players serve in the French Foreign Legion on a mission to take down child kidnappers). We introduce Drones in the Africa campaign. Our vision has four regional sourcebooks/box sets with campaigns (Americas, Africa, the Philippines, and the Middle East) and a standalone SOF/MEU worldwide campaign. The African campaign is almost complete (aside from layout, art, etc), while the SOF/MEU is a close second. We are working through a few testing groups to finalize these before handing them to the graphic artists.
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