Showing posts sorted by relevance for query stars without number. Sort by date Show all posts
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query stars without number. Sort by date Show all posts

Friday, November 2, 2012

Galactic End Game


The players in my first Star Frontiers campaign had big dreams.  They wanted to eradicate the evil Sathar from the universe, and poured their time and effort into they endeavor.  Trade brought them money; money built them a mega-corp; and with the mega-corp, they built armadas of warships of find and obliterate the Sathar homeworld.

Of course, there were no rules of game framework for any of that, but as a GM, I evolved a game about being a star cop into a giant game of stellar Axis and Allies.  Or, in today's terminology, we created an end game.

One of the things I like about Stars Without Numbers is that it has the end game built in it right from the start.  In creating sectors full of stars, a GM can set up interplanetary chess matches.  Each entity is a faction, with stats and assets similar to a PC, and these groups battle for dominance.  It's secret and behind the scenes as far as the players are concerned, but produces events that the PCs can become involved in.

When the PCs gain enough power and influence, they can from their own faction, step onto the galactic stage, and vie for power.

In previous Stars Without Number campaigns, I've kinda half-assed the faction game - paid lip services to it but just decided what was happening in interplanetary politics as if I was writing a novel.  While that is a completely valid way to play, the faction system offers an interesting and simple game to play that can produce results outside of my comfort zone of creativity.

I really like that idea, and am implementing it for the Redshirts campaign.  I don't know if the players will ever reach that level of power, but it's a game I can play with myself and generate new ideas with.

I'm also thinking of documenting the behind the curtains action on the blog here, if anyone is interested.

- Ark

Sunday, January 27, 2013

Death of a Campaign


Redshirts died this week.

The Stars Without Numbers campaign had a pretty good run.  I had designed it as an FLGS episodic drop-in pick-up game with a cast of freeze dried, replaceable PCs scouting the unknown horrors of my mind.  It morphed into something quite different.

The first oddity was PEOPLE KEPT ON COMING.  I finally had to cap the game at nine players.  That's enough people in a room yelling at me.

Second, instead of a pick-up game, our schedule became very specifically timed, rotating around the players INSTEAD of me.

Third - we were kicked out of the FLGS by the Chess Club.

Instead, we played every week at Merwyn's house.  He has a large table.  That table wasn't quite big enough so another table had to be attached.  Something like a kiddie table at Thanksgiving.

So what the hell happened - you ask.

Well, I read Kevin Crawford's Stars Without Number supplement Scavenger Fleets.  It's a great, free supplement detailing the bands of nomadic star-farers who dig through the trash of the previous civilization.

I got to thinking - what if one of these Scavenger Fleets got too big for its britches?  What if they stopped just scavenging dead planets, and began to *harvest* living ones.

Thus, the RECTIFIERS were born.  The Rectifier Fleet was comprised of 70+ ships, their tech level passed any in the area, and their habit of implanting all of their 'recruits' with wi-fi brain pain technology made their sufficiently Borg like to scare anyone who met them.

I figured I had a pretty good bag of villains to harass the freeze-dried scouts.

The Redshirts were passing through a system they used 'space highway' when they stumbled on the fleet.  Sensors indicated that the sleepy little planet they knew as Tunguska was being invaded, and the gas giants in the area were under lock-down.

I figured . . . well - you know what happens.  A DM goes through every thing they could think that would happen and plans accordingly.  Players always figure a way around all of that, though.

I made it clear that these dudes were billy-bad-asses and not to be messed with.  The mission was clear - find a way to refuel, jump the hell away, and warn the boys back home.  Since the CO position was being filled by Crazy-Ass Tim who was playing Professor Ramaputi - a guy who dislikes violence and wants to SCIENCE everything - I figured we were in for some interesting stealth operations.

Yeah, right.

They see a Rectifier Frigate nearby, but are cloaking really well, so it doesn't see them.  Rather than GTFO, they teleport a mirror outside of the ship and start bouncing LIDAR communications off of it, taunting the Frigate.

It went downhill from there.

It their little stealth shuttle they . . . they attacked the frigate.  They had pulled off ship assaults before.  Two - if I remember correctly.  But those assaults had always been against ships with much crappier tech.

Most of the PCs got to the hull of the Rectifier Frigate, while Ramaputi and two psychics did a halfway planned, halfway accidental maneuver where they simultaneously rammed the shuttle into the Frigate at full speed and smashed the hull with Telekenetic Ram.  At the same time, Merwyn's character faked out the ship's AI and nabbed controlled of the jump drive and maneuvering systems.

They blew a hole into the Frigate.  Nice going, yes.  But the other ships in the area were closing fast.  The crew of the Frigate was still alive and not in a great mood, however.

Meryn decided that, since he was in control of the jump drives - that they should jump the Frigate to another star system and deal with the crew later.  However, after a few minutes of paper-shuffling - it became horrible apparent that not a single member of the party had the Navigation skill to jump the ship.

At that point, Merwyn decided to accelerate to ramming speed and slam the Frigate into the nearest Cruiser.

Yeah.

The party found life pods to evacuate.  However, they were easily picked up by the Rectifiers.

Hmm.

Rather than role-play their lives as mind-slaves of the Rectifier Fleet, we decided to leave it there and let the Redshirts campaign sail off into the horizon, smoke billowing from the water-borne funeral pyre.

I would guess that the following events would happen:

  1. Capture.
  2. Torture.
  3. Integration.
  4. And then the Rectifier Fleet - with full knowledge of the Aquila Union now, would commence an invasion and the player characters would be a party to the destruction of their own civilization.

Good times, good times.

The Boy, however, is currently writing a story in which the characters escape the Rectifiers and everybody wins.  I am eagerly waiting to read that story, since it sounds a heck of a lot more upbeat then what I charted out above.

So, I salute the nine players of the Redshirts campaign for valiantly putting up with all of the horrific things that I threw at their poor, ill-equipped characters - and for the most part surviving.    But the campaign was named Redshirts - so it was really just a matter of time. :)

- Ark

Thursday, September 27, 2012

The Reprieve

Lasgunpacker and Crazy-Ass Tim have been very helpful with ideas for the upcoming Redshirts Stars Without Number campaign.  I love Lasgunpacker's idea for a crazy captain AI controlling a teleportation machine.

However, as described, it doesn't quite fit into  the SWN technology background - which I'd like to stick with.  Actually, the fact that it doesn't fit makes for a wonderful creative exercise into making it fit.  That's something I've always enjoyed immensely - mental masterba . . . I mean mental gymnastics.

So, if you'll remember from the last post, our intrepid crew of freeze dried scouts were meat-sicles aboard the experimental starship, the Reprieve.  While the Aquilan scientists were experts at stitching together a working starship from ancient parts, their aesthetic sense left something to be desired.  The Reprieve looks remarkably like Rick Moranis' spaghetti strainer hat in Ghostbusters.  Well, not exactly.  It looks like Rick Moranis' spaghetti strainer hat in Ghostbusters, covered with a hairnet.  The inside resembles the cramped, steamy corridors of a German U-boat during World War II.

For those who are familiar with ship statistics in Starts Without Number, here is the Reprieve:

Aquila Union Starship Reprieve (Experimental Deep Space Scout Ship)   Power: 15/3 free     Mass: 15/0 free
Cost: 6,290,000     Hit Points: 40     Crew: 10/40     Speed: 2     Armor: 10     AC: 7
Weaponry None
Defenses None
Fittings Spike Drive-4, Advanced Nav Computer, Armory, Cold Sleep Pods, Emissions Dampers, Fuel Scoops, Precognitive Nav Chamber, Shuttle Bay x2, Ship's Locker

Blue Ghost Reconnaissance Shuttle     Power: 3/0 free     Mass: 5/2 free
Cost: 237,000     Hit Points: 15     Crew: 1/20     Speed: 3     Armor: 0     AC: 9
Weaponry None
Defenses None
Fittings Spike Drive-1, Atmospheric Configuration, Emissions Dampers, Survey Sensor Array, Ship's Locker, 4 tons of cargo space

You may note that neither the Reprieve, nor its two shuttles, have weapons or defenses.  The crew certainly did.  The scientists pointed out that the great big hairnet helps the ship avoid detection, so they should be okay.  The crew really didn't buy that.

The crew also noticed that the Reprieve had a honking big spike drive - faster than any engine that the Aquila Union could produce.  The scientists noticed that too, but had no idea how it worked.  That is where Commodore Halberta Clarke came in.

Commodore Halberta Clarke

Five hundred and thirty five years ago, Commodore Halberta Clarke (who looks remarkably like Nancy Parsons from Porky's, aka Ms. Ballbricker,) was an officer in the Terran Mandate in charge of the operational integrity of the regional psitech Jump Gate network.  A top notch psychic herself, she also assisted in the day to day operation of slinging spacecraft across the universe. (see Anne McCaffrey's The Rowan for a trip down the rabbit hole on that subject.)

Then 'The Scream' happened, killing all psychics, or driving them insane, thus making inoperable the Jump Gates and ending the Golden Age of Man.  Commodore Clarke didn't die - but she did go insane.  An insane master psychic with teleportation, precognition, and telepathy abilities doesn't make a very good neighbor, so the Terran Mandate military took her down and let the research scientists experiment on her to see if they could restore her sanity.

Since no one alive really understood how the psychics did their psychic things, the scientists did the best that they could as civilization collapsed around them.  They took a snapshot of Commodore Clarke's mind, then pasted that image over the pre-existing neural synapse net of a Voltaic 9000 AI brain-cube.  After they had a working simulacrum of Commodore Clarke, they extracted her physical brain, put it into a jar, and hooked it up to the Voltaic 9000.

On paper, the old 'hook an AI up to a psychic brain in a jar to use it as an input/output device' looked like a good idea to reboot mankind's crumbling empire.  It wasn't.  After 2 years of war, leveling much of the planet, the a team of brave soldiers finally shut off the AI, froze the brain in stasis, and the remaining research scientists were put to work in the rice paddies of what had been once the sector capital.

Five hundred and thirty five years later, desperate research scientists from the Aquila Union find a Spike Drive-4 capable engine they don't understand, a dead AI, and a brain in a shoe box - and have an idea.

Adventure!

The crew of the Reprieve live in fear of their commanding officer.  The hologram of Commodore Halberta Clarke stalks the corridors.  She doesn't know she's dead.  She doesn't know her brain in in a jar.  The crew must act as if they are members of the long gone Terran Mandate Fleet - not the Aquilan Navy.

Halberta sleeps most of the time, running the ship's spike drive in REM state.  The captain, the real captain,  can breathe easy then.  But when the Commodore gets up, she is grumpy.  She can read minds.  She can see the future.  And she can teleport a person into the heart of a star.  She is clinically insane.  But no one else knows how to make the ship go but her.

The research scientists who set this nightmare situation up are still sleeping comfortable in their beds back home.  After all, the Fleet Admiral okayed everything.  He's safe in his bed back home too.

The Redshirts, however, are not so lucky.

 Commodore Halberta Clarke adjusting something on the Lido Deck.

Happy gaming.

- Ark



Wednesday, October 24, 2012

Spears Without Number . . . No . . . Wait . . .


I've been looking over the shoulder of a friend who already has downloaded his alpha copy of Spears of the Dawn, and I must say, I'm very excited.  Kevin Crawford certainly seems to know how to do a Kickstarter right.  And what's more, he's releasing all of the artwork into the public domain.  I'm tickled pink.

It bugs me that mega-corporations go around squeezing drawings of anthropomorphic mice until they've wrung out all the money that they can, long after their creators of the images are dead, instead of letting that intellectual property go back to the culture that helped spawn it and become folklore instead of a cash cow for people who are already rich.  Call me a communist if you want, but companies are not people and information wants to be free, baby.

Oops, sorry, I appear to be on a soapbox.  Let me climb down . . .

So Kevin Crawford's Spears of the Dawn - yeah - awesome.

A couple of friends and I were sitting around the table last week playing Thunderstone (awesome card game, btw,) and the discussion moved towards Spears of the Dawn.  I'm very interested in it - and so is Merwyn.  I see it as a great opportunity to role play in types of cultures that are rarely explored in RPGs.

Crazy-Ass Tim worried that playing an African culture based RPG would lead to stereotypes - unpleasant ones - popping out all over the place.  Kaye - our resident African-American - had similar fears.  We are all in The South, after all, and our stream-of-consciousness role playing style amplifies ugliness sometimes.

Perhaps I have more faith in humanity.  Perhaps I have studied more, as a person who once wanted to be a history professor, about the rich history and culture of the peoples of Africa, and see a wealth of gaming and role playing opportunities.  Perhaps I am huffing paint.  But I think it would be very fun, and could be done in a non-offensive manner.

The stereotype issue - well yeah, RPGs have stereotypes, though the term archetype is used more often.  D&D uses European stereotypes, but it's so ingrained that most of us don't even notice.  Take the ideas of elves, dwarves, orcs, and goblins and move them back in time through D&D and Tolkien into mythology, and I'm sure they represented particular groups and cultures that the people telling the original stories didn't like, or didn't understand.  James Raggi tends to talk about that a lot, if you've ever noticed. :)

What I'm seeing from the alpha of Spears of the Dawn is a concerted effort to avoid negative stereotypes, and to educate gamers on broad facets of medieval African-ish culture, so that players understand their place in the game setting, and so that GMs know how to run the thing.  He's condensed what that players need to know about their chosen culture (of which there are five to choose from,) into a single page.  Okay, yeah, that is simplifying to the extreme - but it's a heck of a lot more information than you get from Basic D&D about Elf culture.  The GM gets a lot more data.

So, while I haven't delved deeply into it, the culture and setting look great.  Almost all of the game mechanics are the same ones from Stars Without Number.  There are some twists to the Death and Dying rules that I actually prefer, and I have been kind of soft-house ruling something similar myself in the Redshirts campaign - in that a stabilized but unconscious character is very boring to play - so why not have them be awake, just not able to do much.  I like his mechanic for that a lot.

The spell system appears to be a whole 'nother beast than the Psychic powers in SWN.  I haven't really read any of it, so I don't know.  Skimming it, I did see some casting times listed that were very long indeed, so looks like we have ritual based magic here as well as regular combat stuff.  I like that kind of spell diversity.

A while back I did a mini-review of a book called Essential African Mythology: Stories That Changed the World in this blog post.  I think the book would be an excellent companion piece to Spears of the Dawn for GMs and players alike.

So, I'm really pleased with what I've seen from Spears of the Dawn, and I'm sure it will illicit more discussion around the gaming table soon.

- Ark

Tuesday, July 3, 2012

Stars Without Number: A Whirlwind Tour of the Last Few Months


I've been horrible at updating readers on the progress of the intrepid crew of the Fat Tuesday.  I'll present a quick summation and bring you close to present time.  Hold your questions till the end of the lecture.

While exploring systems behind the 'Methan Veil', the PCs found a lost planet with medieval level technology named Normandie.  An apparently non-damaged, but not operating, Jump Gate was in orbit, which interested them quite a bit, but they decided to go scout the planet itself at first.

They quickly found a large land-war with six legged reptile horses and knights and shit going on, picked sides, and used their armed spacecraft, a grav tank, and a floating motorcycle to turn the tide and win the war. Well, actually, the Boy popped the enemy king with a sniper rifle from like two miles away and ended the war before it began, but the PCs had to have some fun now, didn't they?  It would have been a complete slaughter fest, but the enemy had teleport ninjas that crashed their spacecraft upside down in a forest full of pine, which promptly caught on fire from the heat of the engines.

Eventually they patched their ship back up and left, but not without the King granting the players each 50 acres of land, peasants to farm the land, and giving Captain Goodnight two squires, a handmaiden, and his youngest daughter's hand in marriage.  Surprisingly, Captain Goodnight got hitched to Princess Evangelyne, who only spoke archaic French, but was a wiz at heraldry, the abacus, and 13th century encryption techniques.

They also fought an 1/8th of a mile wide crazy AI, rescued ancient German engineers from a decaying Battleship, and caused the nuclear annihilation of a medieval city, but that is neither here nor there.

So, the PCs hopped back to Metha and traded their information on the Jump Gate, as well as a map to every jump gate in the known galaxy, and even an entire library of engineering documents on how to recreate much of the lost technological wonders of humanity, to the crazy alien Methans.  I'm still wondering about that, and the campaign ramifications are going to be horrendous.  I mean, um, wonderful.  For me.  The evil GM.

They traded all of that for enough money to replace their aged, broken Patrol Scout class vessel for a brand new Frigate level ship.  But they didn't want to get thr new ship from the Methans.  No sir.  They look upon the Methans (rightly so,) as the Tinker Gnomes of the galaxy - only crazier.

So, they went to the nearest human planet with a high-tech ship yard - the bustling planet of White Chapel.  For six months the crew has been putzing around the planet,  attending parties, throwing parties, getting throw in jail, clearing out the occasional genetics laboratory complex 500 miles underground full of 30 feet high, eight legged wolf mutants and horses without heads whose entire bodies are plasma cannons, etc.  Captain Goodnight's Princess wife has been behaving like a princess, draining him of as much wealth as possible on dresses and university mind implant training.  AR-50, the bio-infiltration robot threw a 30,000 credit rave, which caused so much damage that it took 270,000 credits worth of lawyer fees and city fines to get him out of jail.  And so on.

So there we are, with the crew about to get their big, bad new ship, and then the next thing happened.  I'll tell you about all the problems they had later. :)

- Ark

Friday, March 30, 2012

Exposition Without Number


I just wrote a note to the players of my Stars Without Numbers campaign containing some information so I wouldn't have to blab it all out when we start playing on Saturday.  I amused myself quite a bit as I droned on, producing far more exposition that
I had planned.  I'm sure it will bore them to tears.  But I enjoyed it, dammit, so I figure the rest of the world should suffer.

So enjoy.  Or suffer.  Or both. :)

* * *

The party returned to the planet Metha aboard the Fat Tuesday at the end of the last game session.  The Methans were happy with the resolution of the Hard Light novium issue and paid well (except for Dr. Mann, who was paid well for her research on the Amazon Floral Hive Mind.)  The party is not actually on Metha (which looks a lot like Titan, if you remember,) but on one of the thousands of space stations orbiting the planet.  Elysium Station is unlike any of the other stations the party has seen, however, as it has clearly been designed with humans in mind.

In fact, humans are all over Elysium Station. There are living quarters, restaurants, shopping malls, and hydroponic parks bustling with people - families with children even.  Occasionally, Methan hybrids like Ellen-14 shuffle along the walkways in their giant, bloated tick-like bodies without so much as a second look.  It's a lively place, but clearly all of the humans are in the employ of the Blue Methan Hegemony.  There is an unusual amount of human psychics on the station, utilizing their skills out in the open - something not normally done inside of human space.  Centuries of anti-psi bigotry has convinced most psychics to keep a lower profile.

Another odd sight aboard Elysium station is the abundance of Harpathians - perhaps ten percent of the population.  The creatures resemble anthropomorphic, roly-poly, three foot tall baby seals.  Yes, the ones with the poofy white hair and the 'don't hit me with that club, you bastard' stare.  Harpathians are well-known in human space, but mainly as cartoon characters in the holo-vids designed for girls 8-10 years of age.  The most well known is JOLO, the fluffy sidekick of CAPTAIN KENDRA AND THE KOSMOTEERS.  Few humans have ever actually seen a real Harpathian, as the entire race avoids humanity like a plague.  The history of Human-Harpatian relations involves liberal amounts of slavery and being sold as pets, despite the Harpatian's loud, literate, and eloquent protests that they are actually a sentient race with thoughts, feelings, and a desire not to be a cuddle toy for 6 year olds.

The Harpatians appear to have support jobs all over the station, including spacecraft servicing, but they seem to be most prolific in security positions.  Three foot tall baby seals walking around in power armor bristling with plasma projectors is a common sight.  It's unnerving - and doesn't get any better with repeated viewings.

Ellen-14 is eager for the party to accept the currently offered job.  If you remember, this is to track down the source of the Berserker Spider manufacturing box - which  would logically (per the Methan's past experiences,) be a box that makes boxes that make Berserker Spiders.  The Methans are worried that if the Box is not located soon, it could run across an AI, hack it, and un-brake the AI - causing a heap load of trouble for whatever civilization the newly formed Berserker AI ran across.

The Fat Tuesday's Chief Engineer and back-up pilot, Sophia Lucullo, expresses concerns about the Methans.  She's never seen them before, and is clearly frightened.  She also reiterates the story from the Kingpin of Blue Saturn (whom Captain Goodnight met with in the Tigris System,) who said that the Methans had exterminated almost all of his race and were not to be trusted.  The ship's marine compliment - Alice, Bethany, and Carmen (Kevalt's Angels,) have a completely different attitude toward Ellen-14 and her kind - and have been buying as much military hardware as they can afford from the giant space-ticks.

If the party chooses not to accept the mission, Ellen-14 says that she and her brood understands, and they will gladly program the navicomp aboard the Fat Tuesday to the destination of your choice.

Um, anyway, I've gone overboard with interlude - but there you are. :)

See you on Saturday!

- Ark

Tuesday, October 23, 2012

Redshirts: Choose the Form of the Destructor!

I make cranky players.

Apparently, I am not fast enough at posting, nor detailed enough in my game play session reports.

They are probably right.

So, Adelaide, our resident gamer grrrrl, has decided to write up the session for last Wednesday.  It's a lot different than the way I approach reports.  For instance, where I might spend a paragraph describing the intricate patterns on the alien wallpaper, Adelaide goes straight for the action.

Go figure . . . :)

She has done an excellent job, giving a good feeling of the psychosis, chaos, frustration, and helplessness that I try to imbue in gaming sessions.  You know, stuff that you might have to go talk to your psychologist about later in the week.

Oh, and before you ask - Spark Notes are apparently this century's answer to Cliff Notes.  I had to Google that.

So without further ado . . . say hello to Adelaide - she's in purple:

Stars Without Number (Spark Notes :D)

Everyone was in the shuttle.  The ship’s hold was full of giant crab meat and the A3-500 Transducer that they had been searching for.  All of the scouts felt good, but there seemed to be something off. Professor Ramapudi was missing from the rest of the group. 

It was also kind of odd and disconcerting, because no one remembered getting on the shuttle, or leaving the ark, for that matter.

Lt.Taylor and Spaceman Slate checked Slate’s helmet cam, only to get fuzz. The cam had been wiped completely clean. Undaunted by his inability to find shit the easy way, Lt. Taylor searched for a wifi signal, found one, and heard the haunting voice of GAIA whisper the words, “Help me help them,” again. He asked GAIA what was going on and the call for help was repeated, only this time much louder. 

While trying to figure out what was going on, Petty Officer James Loranzo, Lt.Taylor, and Doctor Daktan woke up to hear a drilling noise. 

The whole party was actually in the air lock where they had last left off, under the influence of enforced dreaming.

Petty Officer Loranzo saw Spaceman Kek lying on the ground with a drill about to dig straight into his head, while all the others were still lying around unconscious with strange blue alien balls with tentacles floating around them. One of the aliens seemed to be operating the drill aimed for Kek’s brain.

Loranzo quickly decided that it would be wiser to release Prof. Ramapudi, who was frozen in place by some psychic force, instead of stopping the drill. Luckily for Kek, the newly freed Ramapudi blasted the drill with a laser pistol, making it grind to a halt.  But the blue alien things that had been floating around turned toward the Professor and one of them attached itself to his face visor. Another blue alien went for Dr. Daktan’s face, shattering his visor in the process, and yet another raced for Lieutenant Taylor’s visor, also shattering it. Two aimed for Loranzo and managed to rip his entire helmet off. 

Lieutenant Taylor yelled an order to wake the rest of the sleeping members, which succeeded. Doctor Daktan tried to teleport one of the blue aliens away but failed. Loranzo ripped the alien off of the Professor’s visor before going after his own and Kal Kek walked over to stab at the alien on Lieutenant Taylor’s face with a mono-blade, which unfortunately ended up slicing the Lieutenant’s face.

After waking, Jack Slate fired a shotgun at a nearby alien and missed horribly, which caused Lieutenant Taylor to take shrapnel to the thigh - enraging him further. Doctor Daktan pulled the alien from his face by pure willpower, while Professor Ramapudi shot at the alien on Loranzo’s face but missed.  Luckily for Loranzo it didn’t hit him instead. 

The blue alien that had attached itself to Lieutenant Taylor’s head appeared to “melt” into it.  All the team saw were glowing blue eyes as Lieutenant Taylor turned towards Doctor Dakton in a zombie-like fashion. 

Upon waking and further inspecting the aliens, Petty Officer Owlicious decided that she knew of these creatures. They were actually animals from the main planet and had much lower levels of intelligence than what the team had already encountered.  But they were trainable and controllable by psychic means, and she let the Professor know.

Possessed Lt. Taylor knocked Doctor Daktan unconscious before anyone could react, bringing Doctor Daktan close to death but Taylor managed to break the mind control after it happened.

Yet another alien aimed for Lt. Mark Five’s visor and managed to attach itself, but did not break it. Petty Officer Loranzo began to roll around on the floor, almost like he was on fire.  Everyone was unsure as to what he was doing. Undaunted by his inability to remove the creature last time, Kal Kek attempted again to stab at Lieutenant Taylor’s face, this time artfully the slicing the alien in half without harming Lt. Taylor. 

Jack Slate shot at one of the aliens on Petty Officer Loranzo’s face with a shotgun and managed to blow one off while somehow not causing any damage to Loranzo himself. Then Professor Ramapudi laz-patched Doctor Daktan in an attempt to stabilize him - but it unfortunately did nothing. 

Another creature attached itself to Lt. Taylor’s face, only this time instead of it taking a while his eyes instantly started to glow blue once more. Petty Officer Owlicious also got an alien attached to her face and her eyes turned blue as well. She then attacked the Professor, but luckily for him, she missed. 

Petty Officer Loranzo stabbed at the other alien on him and succeeded in freeing himself finally, while Kal Kek punched at the creature on his head which did nothing.


Professor Ramapudi then attempted to cut the alien from Petty Officer Owlicious’ face and beautifully sliced it in two. Petty Officer Owlicious became free of the zombie-like embrace, but all the aliens, including Lieutenant Taylor who was still under their influence, scampered up a wall in an attempt to flee. 

Lt. Five stabilized Doctor Daktan with a laz patch, while the others attempted to quickly think of a way to halt the fleeing Taylor. Petty Officer Owlicious fires at the wall in front of him to scare the scurrying Lt., but the bullet misses its target and ricocheted around the hall. Luckily for the team Lieutenant Taylor slipped and fell on his face and the alien lost its power over him. 

Petty Officer Loranzo attempted to pull the alien off Lt. Taylor’s face and managed instead to get it stuck on his own face. Jack Slate then fired another shotgun blast - point blank - at Petty Officer Loranzo but somehow missed. Doctor Daktan finally managed to become conscious once again and shot at the alien on Petty Officer Loranzo’s face and epically removed it, killing it in the process. 

Once all the immediate danger had passed, Professor Ramapudi and Lieutenant Taylor teamed up to hack into the drill’s control panels and so they could control it as they wished. Everyone then took stock of the situation and paused to make a decision as to which door to go into first.

The Professor and Lt. Taylor argued over which door would be best, but they somehow are able to overcome their differences and hacked into the data center to attempt to figure out what was in each room. They found that the center door seemed to hold the most promise.

 Jack Slate stood in front of Lt. Taylor as he opened the center door.  (The DM goes on to describe the room – filled with a gigantic glowing ball forming an AI core and various other components   - with something about a machine that goes ping. ;D) 

Loranzo and Taylor made their way inside stealthfully to find the A3-500 Transducer before everyone else. Once inside, Taylor attempted to remove the Transducer, but set off an alarm in the process. He quickly hacked the security measures that will turn off the power to the whole ship, and instead rewired it to allow XC-OM, the shuttle’s computer, to control the reactor core. Everybody celebrated - silently - of course.

The two scouts then took the man-sized transducer out of its compartment completely.  The sphere in the center in the room powered down, and a breeze gusts through the room.  They realize that the AI core had been covered in black, hand shaped, feathery creatures that had begun to bob up and down like a colony of daddy-long-legs on a hot summer day.  Then the things disconnected from the sphere and shot into the air.

The rest of the group saw a cloud of black creatures rush out of the room and they all heard an alarm shouting, “Prepare for jump - moving to spike launch point NOW.” Lt. Taylor saw that GAIA had suddenly taken control of all the systems and that there was plotting going on astronomically. 

Lt. Taylor ordered Slate to open another door in the airlock they see nothing but darkness. Slate and Kal Kek turn on their lights and everyone heard a strange, girlish giggle.

Startled Kal Kek threw a glowbug towards the back of the room and there was a humanoid shaped creature that everyone could see. It seemed to be a small girl covered completely in a midnight black color with white star patterns running along her body and she had strangely glowing yellow eyes. Behind her was an external window where the Three Sisters’ pulsars could be seen flashing fast and asynchronously, creating a strange strobe-light effect in the room.

She suddenly blinked out of existence and then reappeared right in front of Kal Kek, reaching out to touch him with the tentacles protruding from her back.  The batteries from his suit began to drain. Kal Kek fired with his laser rifle, dead center, at the childlike creature, but it only giggled again. 

Professor Ramapudi and Petty Officer Owlicious fired their weapons as well, but both miss.

Doctor Dakton attempts to light the black tentacles on fire with his omnitool and failed.

Jack Slate fired at her with spikes, doing lots of potential damage but she simply shrugged it off much to everyone’s shock. 

Lt. Taylor rushed to the back of the room to close the windows to see if having direct access to the sister suns had any effect but nothing changed.

The girl then grabbed for Kal Kek’s face and her hands fazed through his visor, causing him to duck quickly in reaction. Then the mysterious black flying feathered hand things descended from nowhere almost instantaneously, attached to his power armor, and ripped it pieces just as quickly. 

Kal Kek, in his anger, fired again with his laser rifle, this time at her head and she actually hissed, reacting as though that hurt her. 

She then climbed into Kal Kek like some sort of body stealer.  Petty Officer Owlicious attempted to communicate with it, causing it to attack her gleefully using Kal Kek’s body. 

Everyone kind of mentally spazzed.  Petty Officer Loranzo, perhaps freaking out, was pretty sure there was chocolate somewhere.  Doctor Daktan quickly rummaged through a medpack, Lieutenant Mark five got undressed, and Lieutenant Taylor and Professor Ramapudi search the room for major science equipment. 

Accessing the equipment uncovered data fragments detailing the horrendous experiments undertaken on the ark - before and after the Scream.  The last experiment, implement over 400 years before, used the power of the combined supernovas of the Three Sisters to vacuum a ultra-dimensional creature from a higher plane of existence and imprison it inside a young psychic girl.  Then the girl proceeded to kill every crew member.  You know - that old story.

Petty Officer Owlicious’ vacc-suit was ripped from her, much like Kal Kek’s had been, and the creature using Kal Kek’s body backhanded her - knocking her several feet away. Petty Officer Owlicious noticed she was pretty much on her own for the time being and desperately started singing lullabies to distract the psychic child.

It worked.  For a brief, brief time.

Doctor Daktan, finally done with his looting, teleported Kal Kek a few feet away, which caused the child to be forced from his body and left her standing there entranced but Petty Officer Owlicious’ singing. 

Lieutenant Taylor then tried to hack into the main commands and GAIA fried his data slab completely….

….and then my computer had about 1% battery life left so I had to close it and of course we miss the best part of the night. 

Doctor Daktan, with his telepathy ability managed to separate the child – a more or less normal human girl, from the other-worldy, hyper-dimensional being that had possessed her.  The thing had 14 legs, 23 arms, 37 tentacles, 92 eyes, and it’s entire body was simply a giant mouth with so many teeth that it seized up a human’s brain if they tried to count that high.

Everyone ran around like chickens with their heads cut off, thinking of making a run for it.  The little girl was screaming incessantly, making it really hard to think.

Then Chonga, playing as the psychic doctor Daktan, attempted to jump into the monsters mouth– thus guaranteeing a touch - to teleport it elsewhere, but failed and only managed to slide “elegantly” underneath the beast. 

The beasts’ tentacles grappled just about everyone.  Before it could eat everyone, Kaye, playing as Jack Slate, once again sacrificed his character for the greater good and manages to destroy the beast. He jumped artfully into the monsters mouth, detonating the six rockets h was carrying all at the same time, killing the creature. He died in the process but everyone else lived, even the child! Yay Kaye!

The party then rushed as fast as they could to their shuttle and left the ark, which was mysteriously bound for parts unknown.  They did stop and get some crab legs on the way, though.

So, that's it from Adelaide.  Like I said, she did an excellent job.  Oh, and you can see Crazy-Ass Tim's take on the adventure over here.

And the crew has a new member - a blonde haired little girl.  And like any little girl who survives for a ridiculously long time amidst an alien infestation and lives to tell the tale - her name shall be Newt.

:)

- Ark

Friday, April 27, 2012

Echos and an Awesome New Drawing . . .

. . . that I can't show.  Because . . . you know . . . boobs. Why on Earth would I draw Super Mario Galaxy's Rosalina without any clothes on?  Um . . . better not answer that one.

Anyway, like most of the things I draw, I think this one is the most spiffy to date.  I spat it out in record time - a couple of hours. Tomorrow I'll hate it, for sure. That's a little chunk of it over on the side.  You can go over to my deviantArt gallery to see the nekkified version, if you want.  Pervert.

In other news, An Echo, Resounding showed up in my mailbox yesterday.  Yay!  While I'm not DMing a fantasy game at the moment, I'm interested in running a 'domain game' at some point.  ACKS is all popular right now, but rather than go with a whole new rpg, I decided to first look at An Echo, Resounding which is a domain 'strap on' for Labrynth Lord.

Strap on.  I'm funny.

Anyway, An Echo, Resounding: Lordship and War in Untamed Lands, is by Kevin Crawford of Stars Without Number fame.  It looks pretty damn spiffy, with domain game and mass combat rules.  It looks like you could run it with any pre-3rd edition D&D game with little or no fiddling.  I don't know how it compares to ACKS, but judging from my brief glance, I don't think I'll need any other domainish products.

- Ark

Saturday, March 1, 2014

The Reachers

The D&D Blog Hop last month was interesting.  it helped me think over my gaming career.  But it's time to move on.  Our GURPS Horror Noir game reached a pause point after the group brought down a vampire in Transylvania, and we are off to new skies.

New skies.  New atmospheres.  Distant atmospheres.

So, we'll be kicking off the GURPS sci-fi campaign Distant Atmospheres soon.  The idea is to try to take everything I like about Traveller, Star Frontiers, 2300AD, Stars Without Number, Mass Effect, Lexx, Ghost In the Shell, and Revelation Space, pop in all into a GURPS blender, and see what happens.

In the Distant Atmospheres universe, humans are three centuries into exploring and colonizing their local neighborhood of space.  While they have a high level of technology, going faster than light is beyond their abilities.  That's where the Reachers come in.

The Reachers are intelligent creatures that can bend the fabric of space time enough to break off a piece and move it around, simulating faster than light travel without actually moving themselves anywhere.  It's clear that the Reachers did not evolve this way, but were manufactured by some species long ago whom they do not remember.

Luckily for humans, the Reachers enjoy interstellar travel, can shift around their internal organs to create livable compartments, and they can grow to huge proportions.  They can't actually travel in space in their 'natural' state, but humans have learned to augment the Reachers to survive in a vacuum and exceed the speed of light, and perform various feats of heavy lifting and hauling.

To the Reachers, this is all just good fun.  They also create such a powerful magnetic field around their body that any human inside a Reacher ship is subjected to a constant MRI in which the Reacher can read their every single thought.  It's really, really hard to bluff a Reacher in a card game.  Well, unless you are wearing a tin-foil hat.

Originally I thought that the Reachers might look like space whales or something, but after a few drawing they became more squid like.  The savvy player might be reminded of Cthullu, or some other non-euclidean nightmare.  And to those accusations, this GM can only shrug and grin.

- Ark

Wednesday, November 28, 2012

Redshirts: Courts-Martial Carnival, an Email Interlude

The pre-Thanksgiving week Stars Without Number session was so odd - from an outside perspective - that I felt that a higher authority should get involved.  I mean, while the scouts were initiating first contact with two genocidal species - the Berserkers and the Warchou - the CO had been killed by friendly fire, a team member had allegedly committed treason against the entire human race, and another team member had tried to murder that alleged traitor.

In a D&D game that would be nothing strange.  It would not even be that strange in a tramp steamer space opera.  But Redshirts is a military scouting expedition.  Yeah, it's specifically set so far away from the brass back home that the PCs have a lot of autonomy and leeway in how they accomplish a given mission, but the results of this particular mission were on the order of several levels below 'complete screw up' and dangerously approaching 'fire everyone and outsource to the another dimension.'

So, between games, I had the players give email testimony in various courts-martial regarding the mission, having the top brass level charges against the scouts.  They really got into it.  I swear, some of them must have had lawyers coaching them.  It was funny.

Here are some quotes from various players:
"On charge D. Spacer Kal Kek's attempted murder of Lt. Miles O'Brien. Not Guilty, the Lt. O’Brien is a traitorous scumbag, and he was about to divulge the location of the secret asteroid base and the rendezvous location for the ancient mother ship to a known race of hostile creatures."
Yeah.  Miles O'Brien was his name.  Yeah.  Anyway, more quotes:
"On charge C. Spacer Kal Kek's negligent discharge in the death of Lt. Commander Nathaniel Taylor. Guilty, but I wish it to be here recorded that I was attempting the execution of a well thought out rescue plan to retrieve Lt. Cmdr. Taylor. But despite my best intentions, my understanding of the spatial rotation of space born rotating mass was lacking, and I could not preform the calculation well under pressure. These facts lead to a miscalculation and a mis-fire. I there for ask for the leniency of the court in sentencing as it was not my intention to damage the Lt. Cmdr. Taylor, but rather to assist in his rescue."
and:
"Spacer Kal Kek's attempted murder of Lt. Miles O'Brien.  Not Guilty.  Officers have the right to put down members of the team that are endangering the mission. Kal Kek was simply the weapon used to do so. Due to incompetent training Lt. Miles O'Brien was only wounded. Requesting Kal Kek be put into Field Arms Training course to better prepare for such events.  Requesting Lt. Commander Mark Five be sent for a brush up on Officer Training, with possible officer candidate evaluation. Lt. Miles O'Brien should have been apprehended after such an encounter, yet was not. This is against regulations."
and this gem:
"Lt. Miles O'Brien's high treason against the Union.  Guilty.  Knowing full well that these aliens had already exterminated the humans in the area, O'Brien gave away the biggest secret known to team, endangering the mission and all Humans in the sector.  Requesting evaluation of loyalty, Evaluation of officer candidacy, Psychological Evaluation, Back ground check, Drug check."
In the end, all charges were dropped except one.  I mean, really, all of the friendly fire was basically a lot of natural 1s rolled one after the other, and a DM who is a prick. (Yay me!)

Lt. Miles O'Brien was convicted of high treason against sanctity of the Aquila Union, and had his rank reduced to Midshipman.  He was then released on his own recognizance into the depths of space without directional control or atmospheric succor.

One player thought that meant I was giving him a shuttle and letting him go.  Funny . . .

- Ark

Tuesday, October 6, 2015

Wormhole Thoughts

The SS Freeman - Earth's first Wormhole Transit Vessel :)
John had some questions about the wormholes in my GURPS Space campaign, The Nazareth Chronicles, so I figured I'd answer him here and babble some on the subject.

Back a couple of years ago, I completed the lifelong dream of creating an accurate (mostly) stellar database for scifi gaming.  Alas, my life's work turned out to be not nearly as fun or useful as I had hoped.  Space is big.  Even with a slew of number-crunching tools and auxiliary programs, I found GMing the thing very taxing and un-fun.  It killed my geographical spontaneity.

Going back to the drawing board, I looked at the hex-based star maps of Traveller and Stars Without Number.  Not for long though.  I just don't like compressing 3d space into two dimensions, even if that two dimensionality is explained as 'hyperspace geography.'

About the same time, I was looking at the Vorkosian Saga supplement for GURPS, as well as the Infinity scifi miniatures wargame.  Both have node-based stellar astrography.  I mulled wormholes over in my mind, did some research, and figured I might be able to come up with something that I could use.  By May of this year I had a pretty good idea for a wormhole-based scifi setting.

Stellar Map for Corvus Belli's Infinity N3 Game
I've discussed the campaign briefly elsewhere, though not as much as I had intended.  What follows is an elaboration on the setting that I hope answers John's questions:

  • The wormhole system in The Nazareth Chronicles is a zero-distance network.  Travel through the wormholes is instantaneous, though travel from one wormhole to another is not.
  • Wormholes are a Precursor Artifact in which two gas giants in different star systems as quantumly entalgified and electro-bosonified with gravoblobicons [insert more techspeak as needed] until they form into either end of a wormhole.  Minimum size of a wormhole seed is a Neptune/Uranus type planet.  Cooking time is half a million years.
  • While the Wormhole mouths must be relatively close to one another when initially created, the nature of stellar orbits around the galactic core ensure than most wormhole entry/exit points are scattered all over the place.  The node map has very little in common with the actual stellar topography.
  • A wormhole has the mass of a gas giant, but has little volume.  Ships and stations can orbit the wormholes, as well as moons and planet-sized objects.
  • Around each wormhole orbits an artificial satellite that acts as an interface for controlling the wormhole.  The term for these satellites is a Triton Core.
  • Wornholes can be put in one of three states; Locked, Closed, or Open.  A Locked wormhole has a closed mouth where nothing can get through.  A Closed wormhole is closed to physical traffic, but allows energy to pass through.  An Open wormhole allows matter to pass, the width of the hole being adjustable.
  • Humanity has never figured out how to Lock a wormhole on purpose, though it has happened.
  • The Triton Core interface satellites can relay communication almost instantaneously with one another, as long as they are within 1,000 Astronomical Units.  Thus, a patch of the Wormhole Network that is left in a non-Locked state acts as it's own Galactic Internet. 

Humanity became aware of the Wormhole Network when the planet Neptune disappeared. Researchers discovered that the mass remained, however, still orbited by a remnant of the moon Triton.  Eventually, they discovered that the core of Triton was a machine that could control the wormhole, and exploration of the galaxy began.

Relics of Past Civilizations
The wormhole network led to thousands and thousands of systems.  While the Precursors were never definitively located, countless ancient destroyed civilizations were found.  Living sapient species were found as well, but even though they apparently scattered themselves across the network, none were at a very high technological level.  Strangely, none had very good records of their history, and few of the species seemed to have any gumption to explore or expand.

After several centuries of colonization, the wormhole network mysteriously shut down.  All nodes went into a Locked state.  Isolated from one another, most of human civilization collapsed or regressed significantly.  Five hundred years later, one planet learned how to open some of the wormholes, though the decryption algorithms took decades to perform with the most powerful computers available.

Currently there are only 25 systems open.  12 of them have enough will and resources to be capable of interstellar trade and cooperation.  They formed a coalition 50 years ago, but much of the goodwill is gone.  And still, no one knows why the wormhole network turned off five centuries ago.

Interstellar Magic Carpet Ride
Given their importance, wormholes and their interfaces are guarded by system governments, coalition forces, or the local thug/pirate king.  But to say that the wormholes are 'controlled' is false, as anyone with a fast enough ship, heavy  enough armor, and a good enough hacker can open a closed wormhole and zip on though past a blockade. Such a maneuver is called anything from 'Threading the Needle' to a 'Suicide Dive.'

Before going through a wormhole, it's standard to wake up everyone on a ship.  Sleeping through a wormhole passage is not recommended.  People report confusing and horrific nightmares in transit.  Some say that a sleeping person's mind connects to every other alternate reality version of themselves that is going through the wormhole at the same time.  The Surgeon General recommends against it, but there are a few cult members that relish the chance to dream in the quantum foam.

I hoped that answered all of John's questions. :)

- Ark

Sunday, November 6, 2011

Rahul and the Bobble-headed Ganesh

I've just come back from role playing tonight and am still basking in the glow.  The Stars Without Number game went very well.  Tim, Ron, Mervyn, Kay and the boy were great as an unsuspecting band of space adventurers who had the all sorts of crap thrown at them.

Highlights of the Night:

  • The party realizing that they just woke up to a fight between a group of bounty hunters and a family fleeing from the clutches of the Holy Order of Sapphic Islam.
  • Mervyn taking out an entire boarding party with some clever computer commands that vented the atmosphere out of a part of the spacecraft they were in.
  • Tim trying to beat a bounty hunter to death from 200 meters away - telekinetically - with the bounty hunter's own pistol.
  • The Boy firing a laser gun at the nefarious Bounty Hunter Tabari, only to find out that she was a phychic with expertise in both the disciplines of precognition and teleportation.
  • Ron jumping the ship out of system just as the bounty hunters attached a cubic meter of plastic explosives to the hull of the freighter.
  • Tim wandering off on a space station unannounced and coming back with a job offer to hijack an ore shipment on an ice world.
  • The party crammed in a tiny shuttle flying from orbit to a rubble strewn glacier field.  Their erratic pilot, Rahul, had upholstered the dashboard with purple shag carpeting and affixed a Bobble-headed Ganesh there to be his 'co-pilot.'
  • The party convincing a convoy of Hindu ice-truckers to drive their 130 foot long tractor-treaded cargo trucks (laden with highly explosive QUANTIUM ore) on a six-hour journey up a glacier.
  • During a kidnapping, Kay stopping to steal the victim's television from the apartment.
  • The party trying to beat the crap out of their underworld contact Mujibar for non-payment of of services rendered (hijacking aforementioned 130 foot long cargo trucks,) only to find out that the funds had been into their accounts already.  They had been expecting to be paid in gold coins, I think.
  • The party pissing off their employer and Ron having to jump out of system in a spacecraft just seconds before a a space cruiser (owned by their employer) blew them to smithereens.

So, the party is wanted by two major interstellar powers for multiple crimes - and it's just one game into the campiagn.  That's pretty awesome.

I think it behooves a game master to end a night with a desperate attempt to jump into hyperspace or be blasted into component atoms by an angry space armada, relying on a sole Navigation skill check by one of the party members.

Tim, however, is still on the fence about what he calls the "one roll party save versus death saving throw."

I am still trying to keep a straight face.

- Ark

Friday, January 18, 2013

Player Portraits: Adelaide

Adelaide has been playing with the group for a while now - Labyrinth Lord, Stars Without Number, and now Traveller.  She's typically the most level headed of the group - not poking any great big red buttons that say "DON'T POKE ME" and ducking behind something large and heavy when the rest of the party does something stupid.  Her sanity seems to be wearing off, however.  In Traveller, she's playing an interstellar pop-star who has a habit of pissing off Planetary Contessas for fun.  Obviously, Adelaide has been hanging around the wrong people. :)

I've been working diligently to learn some new drawing techniques over the last few month.  I've been unhappy with my progress, but this one of Adelaide didn't come out too bad.


- Ark

Thursday, December 6, 2012

Redshirts Christmas


After last night's Redshirts game, I was wondering exactly what time it was.  In the game, I mean.  We've had nine sessions in two months, and I was estimating that it had been about a year in game.  Looking at my notes, and slapping them into excel, I saw that I was wrong.  It has only been ten months.  In fact, the crew of frozen Popsicles was due to be back at their base on Christmas Eve.

Now, I've done holidays inside of RPGs before.  My favorite has usually been Halloween in D&D.  That's no-brainer right there, especially if you use zombies.

Heh.

I don't think I've ever done Christmas in Space before, though, and definitely not in Stars Without Number.  I'm not exactly sure what I should do.  Something horrific, of course.  Cthulhu Claus.  Yeah.  I like the sound of that.  Well, maybe that wouldn't the the best Christmas present for the players, but it would be one heck of a present for me.  Ho ho ho.

I supposed, at the very least, the characters should exchange gifts.  I'll let them mull that over in their minds. Great - not only do they need to really go shopping, they have to go virtually shopping as well! ;)

So has anyone else put Christmas into their games?  Anything good come out of it?  Anything horrible?

Here is the timeline, for what it is worth:

2/2/3200 The Reprieve blasts out of Perimeter Station Nine.
2/7/3200 Arrival at Three Sisters system.
2/9/3200 Exploration of the Biotonics Ark 3 begins.
2/15/3200 Arrival at Ukraine system.
2/19/3200 Alpha Team captures a Ukrainian Patrol Boat.
2/25/3200 Escape to Three Sisters system.
2/28/3200 Beginning of the construction of Beachhead Base.
6/11/3200 Completion of Beachhead Base.
6/28/3200 Arrival at Banyan system.
7/1/3200 Alpha Team delivers gun printer to the Brambles.
7/2/3200 Lifter pyramid explored.
8/2/3200 Arrival at Tunguska system.
8/3/3200 Submerged Jump Portal discovered in ocean.
9/4/3200 Ship building activities complete.
10/3/3200 Arrival at Thomas Jefferson.
10/4/3200 Alpha Team encounters Warchou and Berserkers.
10/24/3200 The court-martial and execution of Lt. O'Brien.
11/21/3200 Arrival at Levant system.
11/24/3200 Alpha Team acquires the Molten Rain.
12/8/3200 Refueling stop at Tunguska reveals mystery ship.
12/9/3200 Alpha Team meets Charles Shuttleworth.
12/24/3200 Arrival at Beachhead Base on Christmas Eve.

Ho ho ho!

- Ark

Friday, November 9, 2012

SWN Factions: The Alliance of Independent States

I am going to start outlining the four big players in the Stars Without Number factions game, starting with the Alliance of Independent States.  As said before, this is a loose alliance of worlds that were wrested from the Aquila Union and the Skorpios Empire by regional warlords.   The AIS is situated in the Wilds, far away from the travelled space lanes in the Ptolemy Sector, so it was easy to escape retribution for the rebellion.  However, that distance also makes it difficult for the Alliance to bring much force to bear against their former friends.

The leader of the Alliance, Magistrate Popova, has decided to continue his already successful campaign of coercion, sabotage, and shit-stirring to disrupt the trade in both Aquila and Skorpios controlled space.  He has built a covert transit net, giving him easy access to most of the planets of Aquila and a piece of Skorpios.    Now he is prepared to send a wave of spies, assassins, and loud mouthed trouble makers out into the galaxy and make a base of operations where he can cause even more trouble and profit as much as possible.

The stats for Magistrate Popova's political machine are below:

Faction Alliance of Independent States
Attributes
Force
5
Cunning
6
Wealth
3
Hit Points
29
Systems/Assets
Atlas
Planetary Government
Base of Influence HP:5
Covert Transit Net/Cunning 6
Demagogue/Cunning 6
Psychic Assassins/Force 5
Surveyors/Wealth 2
Geographia
Planetary Government
Base of Influence HP:1
Novikov
Planetary Government
Base of Influence HP:1
Smirnova
Planetary Government
Base of Influence HP:1
Talus
Homeworld
Planetary Government
Base of Influence HP:29
Tags Pirates
FacCredits/Turn
4
Goal Expand Influence

- Ark

Wednesday, December 5, 2012

The Void Quadrant

Klikbikken
For those keeping track of the Redshirts Stars Without Number campaign at home, here is a handy-dandy star map to let you know from which direction the next horrible mutant plague of xenophobic xenomorphs will come from and kill all of the PCs.

Hmm, I might have given away too much with that sentence. :)

- Ark

PS

Oh yes, a key . . .

Black - Explored Space (inasmuch as space can be explored in SWN)
Purple - 'Hunch' Space (big bags of guesses from old charts, here-say, and psychic divination)
Dark Blue - The righteous Aquila Union
Orange - The Ptolemy Wilds, controlled by the Alliance of Independent Systems
Red - The foul fungal Skorpios Empire
White - The El Dorado Archipelago, a sort of close cluster in the El Dorado Sector
Yellow - A horrible, horrible place filled with genocidal machines and dog-bear things with horns.
Light Blue - The New Mandate, a place quite unknown to the PCs, that sounds pretty well organized.

Okay, that's about it.

- Ark :)

Thursday, December 20, 2012

Redshirts: Jack Frost Roasting Over an Open Fire

HO HO DIE.
Last week was the Stars Without Number Christmas Special.  The Reshirts were back at the Beachhead Asteroid Base for some well deserved R&R, shopping for Christmas presents at the PX or performing maintenance and/or horrific biological experiments in the lab.  In the station's Zócalo, a robotic Santa, reindeer, and elf were amusing soldiers and scientists alike.

The scouts are getting rusty.  I swear.  Come on, a robot Santa, reindeer, and elf?  That has to mean trouble.

Kal Kek and Roswell were in the Zócalo, and Kal Kek was acting kind of grumpy.  The elf came over to cheer him up by pulling out a pistol and shooting him.  Then the Santa open his mouth wide and began spewing a green mist that turned people into glowing eyed yellow zombies.

Merry Christmas!

Robot Santas are mostly evil.  Mostly.
Things went downhill form there.  Battle-stations were called as a Skorpios attack force was bearing down on the asteroid as well.  Their secret base had been compromised, and the enemy had decided to send their presents on Christmas Eve.

Much chaos and battle ensue.  Eventually, the evil robots were blown up, but Roswell the (sort of) good robot was blown up in the process.  Kal Kek grabbed his C3-P0-like head and ran with it like a football back to the ship.

While escaping from the zombie gas, Dr. Ramapudi followed Newt, through the station's air ducts.  Newt was the eight year old psychic girl that the scouts had rescued in an earlier episode from an crazed interplannar entity that had inhabited her body for 600 years.  Well, Newt, being a bit untrusting, had stockpiled rifles and grenades in the air ducts, just in case something like this happened.

Eventually, the party made it back to the ship, where they found out that the Reprieve had been undergoing maintenance and had it's engines dismantled.  Having no other craft that could mount a defense versus the Skorpios attack fleet, they hopped in the Molten Rain mech suit assault shuttle and blasted off.

The plan was simple.  Everyone was to get in their mech suits and be shot out of the mech suit rail gun at the oncoming Skorpios Cruiser that was making an attack run on the Beachhead Base.  At the end, "Profit" was somehow to be gained, but plan for everything in-between was somewhat hazy.

The Skorpios Cruiser was actually an old, run-down ship constructive with run-down, primitive parts at the Lost colony of Ukraine, so luckily, it didn't have much defense against seven human size projectiles shot at it.  The scouts didn't have much defense against being shot at a cruiser, either.  Kal Kek ented up penetrating a armored turret with his head.

The scouts began to dig through the ship like miners, using the mechs' urban assault abilities to turn the cruiser's bulkhead's into Swiss cheese.  They plugged Roswell's C3-P0 head into a computer conduit in a maintenance tunnel to begin the cyber assault.  Roswell took over a pack of maintenance bots that launched an assault on the bridge while the party split up in an attempt to take over engineering, nullify the angry grav tank muscling it's was through the maintenance shafts, and eliminate the threat of unattended cafeterias.

Admiral Beringer looses eye in attack.
Despite the fact that the party split up, or maybe because of it, the Skorpios lost most of their control of the ship and decided to self destruct.  Roswell narrowly prevented the cruiser from blowing up, but the Skorpios crew sabotaged the craft, detonating as many munitions and hydrogen tanks as possible before they evacuated.

The guns on the asteroid base mopped up the stream of evacuees and the scouts took control of the devastated, burnt out hulk.  Regretfully, the resident psychic was killed in a munitions explosion.  Attempts to revive him by The Boy using an untested nanotech revitalization system proved to have horrific results, turning the dead body into an ever expanding ball of gray goo that was eventually isolated by Aquila scientists.

As a reward for saving the day, Admiral Beringer cancelled the scheduled court-martial of the group for horrendous crimes to humanity that they had perpetrated on previous missions.  Merry Christmas, Redshirts, Merry Christmas.

- Ark

Tuesday, November 20, 2012

Desmond Connors

The Boy's write up of his Stars Without Number character:


Recruit Archive Desmond Connors
Occupation: Military assassin
Height: '5"6
Weight: 150 lbs
Age: 26
Eye color: steely grey
Hair color: Dirty Blonde
I.Q: 143
Bench: 351 lbs

Background: Desmond Connors was born 3175 in the small town of Autumn Springs. At age 5 the Skorpios attacked the countryside he lived in.

He and a few of his quicker friends escaped the fray. They left the area and hunted and gathered for several years before making their way to the big cities.

While there Connors left the group and went to a stealth class. During this harsh time in Connors' life, he made a living as a petty thief, Then quickly realized it was not a "worth-while" career. At age 18 Connors was drafted into the military, and the recruit trainers quickly learned of his skill. He was put in a special unit for stealth ops and climbed the ranks to Petty Officer First Class. Then 7 years after being drafted, he volunteered for the Reprive expedition, where a new adventure awaits him.....

The Boy can draw too.  That's Desmond up there fading away with help from a camo-suit. :)

- Ark

Tuesday, October 11, 2011

The Metallic Mouse That Doesn't Rust

I just devoured The Stainless Steel Rat.  I forgot how much I enjoyed my first reading of it, circa 1982, or how much the Stainless Steel Rat series influenced my playing of both Star Frontiers and Top Secret.

The books follow the adventures of  'Slippery Jim' DeGriz, one of the biggest thieves and con-men around.  It's over 32 thousand years in the future, and most of humanity has grown up and solved problems like war, plague, famine, and crime.  This has left the universe a very boring place, and for hyper-intelligent people like DeGriz, such boredom is simply unacceptable - so he stirs the pot and sows as much chaos around as possible.

He's not a 'bad' guy.  Slippery Jim doesn't like hurting people - and killing people outside of self-defense is definitely not on his list of things to do.  But as long as he's sure the insurance will cover it, he'll steal anything - and the more complicated, the better.  His sheer outrageousness and intelligence puts him at the top of the most wanted lists, and makes him the target of the galaxy's super police, the Special Corps. who eventually employ him to catch other ne'er-do-wells, stop war-mongering planets from mongering, and fix time itself.

The Stainless Steel Rat books became a template of how I constructed just about every Top Secret and Star Frontiers campaign I even ran.  'Slippery Jim' is essentially a PC - straight out of a game - a smart ass there to amuse himself and put on a spectacle for others.  The stories are essentially sandboxes with some loose 'mission' that ties everything together, but the Rat is free to wander entire planets to complete his objective - usually in whatever timeframe he feels like.  One minute he's pretending to be a janitor herding robots with a whip, the next he's a billionaire on a golden space yacht.

The players fell into the pace quite easily.  A grumpy 'administrator' gives the team an assignment.  They get dumped off undercover far away somewhere and start snooping around.  They discover the 'bad thing' is being done by some rich guy. They need funds, so they knock over a bank.  They then go pretend to be millionaires (well, at that moment they 'are' millionaires)  A chase ensues.  The bad guy gets away.  They chase him to another planet.  Then they discover that the rich guy controls the mafia on that planet, so they have to join and work their way up the ranks until they have access to the guy.  Etc.  Great fun, and lots of role playing,combat, scheming, lying, and stealing to be had.

The formula worked for both Top Secret and Star Frontiers.  On the surface it may seem very James Bond-ish, but there is a certain air about The Stainless Steel Rat.  It's . . . well . .. it's chaos.  Much like the Honey Badger, 'Slippery Jim' DiGriz don't give a shit.  He does what he does for fun - not for duty, honor, or what is best for society.  That's really what makes it.  There is nothing to 'convice' the PCs to do.  They are given a job, and they figure out the most fun way to accomplish it - preferentially with lots of explosions and loose cash.

And, strangely, the books allow for a great way that relative npcs can be useful and fun.  See the novels for details. :)

I'm already chewing through the second book in the series - The Stainless Steel Rat's Revenge - grinning away.  I've also got Retief of the CDT next to me as well - speaking of great books to turn into adventures.  It's giving me a big itch to run some Ratty Sci-Fi games, big time.  And over on the table is Stars Without Number.  Geez.  Gamer ADD, take me away!

- Ark