The nature of a work of crossover Fanfic based off of a video game and a web animation both well-known for attracting fanfiction and character stories is that someone is going to want to try and make an actual game based off of it. XCOM: RWBY Within spawned RPGCOM.
While the sheer range of changes to XCOM: Enemy Unknown made by the inclusion of RWBY in DrAmishMD's
XCOM: RWBY Within are utterly impossible to mod into the notoriously finicky video game, the dice roll mechanics underlying XCOM: Enemy Unknown, Enemy Within, and Long War did lend themselves very, very well to an almost direct adaptation into a well-formalized d100-based play-by-post role-playing game. A herculean and ongoing effort by a team of dedicated gamemasters then added and balanced RWBY's abilities for the Huntresses as well as a wide range of new options both native to RWBY Within and original, culminating in an extensive 120-page player handbook. This is no messy freeform game.
Into this mix, fans of RWBY Within added their own cast of characters from across the world, many soldiers, but some from a range of other useful professions, such as scientists, base security, medical professionals, and covert operatives. Hosted on a parallel Discord server to that of the main fic, RPGCOM follows the path of the Long War (and, in the future, will move to XCOM's presence on Remnant), with added events, factions, and stories brought to the players by the gamemastering team. At the time of writing, the liberation of Britain is underway.
The RPG occupies a quasi-canon status, where the runners attempt to keep it as close to canon as possible by avoiding conflicts with the ongoing fanfiction and occasionally consulting with the author (who, it should be noted, does not take an active role in the game or its running), but it cannot be considered fully canonical - though some of the characters in Tales from the Anthill and Tales from the Avenger do originate from it.
XCOM: RWBY Within contains examples of following tropes:
- Adaptation Expansion: The game started six month's before Team RWBY's arrival via the Hyperwave Relay, and continued adding new elements as the plot of the fanfic unfolded. Highlights include a more threatening and visible EXALT presence, a subplot involving different Ethereal factions within the alien ranks, an in-depth look at Ruby's post-Site Recon spiral into exhaustion, and the retooling of the St. Louis terror mission to introduce the Cult of Sirius.
- A Day in the Limelight: Considering how the roster is made up of player characters, a large focus is placed on them and their struggles.
- Apocalypse Cult: The Cult of Sirius, a new enemy faction made for the RPG, are comprised of fanatics who worship the creatures of Grimm as divine instruments and willingly ingest Grimm Matter to gain horrific abilities. Compared to the Reapers and Merlot's creations in Remnant Unknown, the Cult are far more primal and monstrous in appearance, with high-ranking members even becoming visibly part Grimm themselves.
- Ascended Extra: Secondary operatives from both RWBY Within and the sequel Remnant Unknown show up occasionally as non-player characters, controlled either by game masters or players themselves.
- Additionally, the Ethereals themselves. There is only one canonically-named Ethereal, the Uber-Ethereal; all others are mere set dressing and enemies to be fought. RPGCOM gives many additional Ethereals their own original names, personalities, methods, goals, and plotlines, such as the Collector, the Historian, the Glutton, the Hematophage, and the Patriot.
- Badass Army: XCOM, naturally. There are few members of XCOM's combat roster who weren't either active duty military, police SWAT, or an equivalent, and many are former or current special forces. And that's the baseline for joining.
- Earn Your Happy Ending: XCOM as a whole. It's XCOM, after all. With added Grimm.
- Annette. Oh, good God, poor Annette Durand. She's indisputably The Ace in XCOM's psi-ops division now, amongst a whole selection of Aces, and her presence on an actual mission as a player character is a sure sign that the threat level is through the roof. Getting there, however, was
an incredibly hard and rocky road. - Sue Susan, XCOM's Covert Operations Director, who is the sole survivor of an engagement and nearly ended her own life from the survivor's guilt, before rising to the top of the most powerful spy agency in the world, bringing down EXALT, and gaining a happy relationship with her partner, Vapor.
- Annette. Oh, good God, poor Annette Durand. She's indisputably The Ace in XCOM's psi-ops division now, amongst a whole selection of Aces, and her presence on an actual mission as a player character is a sure sign that the threat level is through the roof. Getting there, however, was
- Ensemble Dark Horse: The Historian, an Ethereal who was fought once, proved popular, made a comeback, ended up being even more popular, was taken alive by popular demand, and then became the centerpiece of at least one long-running character arc, a major player in several others, and has proven to be highly memorable.
- Genocide Dilemma: Noah Byrne is fighting an uphill battle to gain some measure of clemency for the defeated Ethereals after war's end when that day comes, on the grounds that giving them the hanging they so richly deserve would be tantamount to xenocide, and humanity would never get that off their conscience. In-universe, this opinion is controversial, though not to the point of making him a pariah.
- Mildly Military: XCOM actively eschews formality, and its hijinks are more at home in an episode of M*A*S*H than they would be in a real military unit. Any resemblance to real militaries is either coincidental or provided by the occasional active and military veteran members around.
