The other day, I ran a campaign of 3:16 from level one all the way to the last survivor becoming brigadier and using the device on Terra. And damn was it fun. I ran the game for two of my friends, neither of which really play RPG's (one has a copy of the D&D 3e core books, but has only played once or twice). After several other attempts at playing that failed to produce the "we're slaughtering innocents" feel, I decided to crank it up to 11 this time. Things started off well, with a couple planets going by in full-on "blast away" mode, reveling in the power of the E-canon and the accuracy of the slug rifle. Since there were only two players, they both advanced after every planet, and the player who started as sergeant managed to rise through the ranks relatively quickly.

After about four planets (an underwater world of sentient plants, a lightning torn world of dinosaurs, a nuked out ooze world, and a mountain world of ogre-like humanoids) we got to the planet where everything "clicked". It was a forest planet full of apes (with the swarm ability, so I decided they had a huge population density, like in the millions). By this point, the players had flamers, souped up E-canons, and an APC full of kill happy NPC troopers. After a few half-hearted attempts by the apes to breach the tank's defenses and plenty of description of gunning down ape babies in cold blood while burning their villages and planet acres at a time, things shifted gears from a kill fest into something more thoughtful.

There was one more planet after that one, a nasty planet full of armored and armor piercing advanced humanoids with an AA of 10. For that mission, the players, along with several NPC superiors were to drill to the planet's core, plant a bomb, then leave. The aliens found them and the ensuing battle was only won through the use of a strength by both players (although all the NPC troopers were killed in the battle, bringing about several field promotions). After that, the players were in the upper ranks, and they were the ones planning the missions rather than going on them.

At this point, they realized that they weren't eliminating threats to Terra so much as they were killing everything that looked like it might ever at some point possibly gain the ability to maybe attack Terra someday. Still, they took out another system with the shiny new star-killer, and they then approached the final system. This one had a sentient planet, and since the 3:16 was out of star killers, the only way left to take the planet out was determined to be a suicide mission. The brigadier volunteered for it, but to determine which of the three colonels (two of which were the players) would take his place, he decided to have them all descend to a nearby planet and whichever one killed the most bugs would be named the new brigadier.

A solid plan, but one that didn't go into effect. One player, the one would had been higher ranking throughout the game, bombed the ship of both other colonels en route to the planet (killing the other player) then went to confront the brigadier. A battle soon followed, which the player managed to win, burning the brigadier alive with his flamer and claiming his title. Upon revealing his newest orders (including the ever popular "make sure the 3:16 never returns to Terra under any circumstances") he initiated the ships wormhole drive, popped back to Terra and activated the device, sending Terra and the nearest 11 star systems to it into oblivion.

Anyways, all in all it took about six hours or so, and it was easily one of the best gaming sessions I've ever had. So... I guess what I'm saying is 3:16 is awesome. Buy it. Buy it now. Also, I guess I found out that the game does have a good progression that it follows, it just takes time (in this case, not very much. I guess it has to do with the number of players and how much the "aliens pose no real threat" angle is pushed.)