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

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

Thursday, November 8, 2012

Redshirts: UFO Invasion!

In last night's Stars Without Number game, the scouts awoke to learn that they were going to an isolated human planet named Tunguska, with a technology approximating Earth around 1940-1970.  Black and white TV, check.  Radar, check.  Sonar, check. Disneyland, check.  Computers that could calculate PI to the 12th place that filled up a garage, check.  Given the fact they would be going there in an ancient alien spacecraft that resembled a flying saucer, the session had The Day the Earth Stood Still written all over it.  But strangely, it devolved into The Creature from the Black Lagoon.

I added a pack of rival scouts called the Omega team, headed by Lt. Chad Tarkinson.  Lt. Chad was, of course, blonde, square-chinned, and arrogant.  The crew found out that Omega Team had been going behind them and cleaning up the messes that they had left on various planets, and that Omega Team was jockeying for their jobs.

The players were PISSED.  Plans of how to destroy the Omega Team immediately began to take shape.

Omega team took the Northern Hemisphere of Tunguska, and '"Alpha' Team took the south.  A flyby revealed a huge structure sticking out of the sea near the only southern continent.  Quickly they determined it was what was left of a kilometer wide Jump gate.  What was above the water resembled the top of a giant "C."  Along the ocean, boardwalk, piers, and even hotels had been built by the natives.  The coral reef that had formed made the area excellent for fishing - which made stealth a bit more difficult for our intrepid crew.

Anyway, here are our dear Adelaide's notes for the night's festivities, the the traditional purple:


Stars Without Number (Bullet Points)
The newest player, Skipper again drew
her character - Manna 'Doc' Davies

  • The group awakes from the freeze sleep once again with Lt. Commander Gonzales is standing creepily over them.
  • Ken arrives with his band of plastic Barbie dolls (she's talking about Omega Team here - see how pissed off she is? -ark) and the dick measuring begins. Owlicious will forever be looking for an excuse to fire upon them.
  • The group is given a crappy beat-up version of the UFOs from last time, pissing the group off further, and they leave.
  • The group, while scanning their tiny part of the world, find part of a ship (pretech jump gate) sticking out of the ocean and they decide to investigate.
  • The native people of the world have mined out a lot of the ship and are using it for like a Disney vacation spot. 
  • They go down deeper into the ship and they discover a giant eel the size of the UFO. It attacks the ship so they decide it would be best to fire at it with the heat cannon even though Owlicious advised against it. The heat kills the eel but also wounds the UFO and probably alerts the people up above them that something has happened.
  • Doc Davies artfully awakens Kal Kek but Miles Obrian only manages to dissect Professor Ramapudi and Doc Davies is forced to try and stabilize him. She manages to keep him alive but he is now in a vegetative state.
  • The group leaves Kal Kek and Professor Ramapudi behind and head on to the door leading into the giant ship. (jump gate)
  • They come across a giant room that has a bar and dance floor as well as a giant window where the group can see sea creatures outside it. The tank, Titus Leandros, instantly runs to go get plastered and then loses himself on the dance floor. (Break dancing, strangely enough.)
  • Lt. Taylor calls for a guide to take the group to the jump gate's barracks using the wifi he’s found and the guide takes the group to an elevator that then opens to water, wounding several of the members. The team then splits up, with the power-armored people leaving to go find any items that might still be okay.
  • Owlicious, Lt. Taylor, and Desmond leave and return to the bar/dance floor area. The other party members manage to find some guns that they then load up on. Titus takes 22 stun-guns and 3 grav-harnesses. Doc Davies picks up 19 lifeboat survival packs. 
  • They then meet back up with the rest of the group and Owlicious casually lets Lt. Taylor know that Titus had consumed Methyl alcohol instead of alcohol. Doc Davies then is ordered to heal him and succeeds only in getting the toxins out of his body.
  • Fish people suddenly come out into the bar and fire upon Titus and Lt. Taylor and they go down. Miles slaps a laz patch onto Titus and he comes back to consciousness.  Doc Davies then laz patches Lt. Taylor and he is also up.
  • Lt. Taylor hits one of the guns that knocks them all, except one, unconscious. Everyone else had missed with their guns. The last fish person then disappears into a grass door that opened underneath them.
  • Lt. Taylor then gets angry and destroys all of them and Owlicious collects samples for SCIENCE. 
  • Lt. Taylor then makes the ship play the sonic sound all over the intercoms, which makes all the life signs on the scanners slowly disappear.
  • They find jewelry and the females go crazy! Then they find a box with a little sphere in it. It opens up to show a small AI and Owlicious tells it she is a princess and claims him as her new companion. She names him Teddy.
  • The group then leaves, Owlicious taking Teddy with her, and head to the hangar; which isn’t looking too well.
  • They find pieces of great ships but no full ships themselves. Owlicious and Titus decide to test Teddy’s healing abilities and he cuts Titus open, then re-closes him and actually managed to not kill him.
  • The group decides to attach a beacon to the spike drive so that they will know if it moves.
  • They wake up Professor Ramapudi using Teddy, which surprisingly it works.
  • The group decides then to stay for an extra month to build their own ship instead of trying to look for another one and lets Omega team know.
  • They take off in their new ship but it has no cloaking which terrifies the natives and causes them to react badly. The team fires their ships gun as a warning and also to test it out, cause why the fuck not?
  • They manage to make it back to the main planet with the ship and everyone is promoted! Yay! 
Adelaide drew her character's new AI friend, Teddy the floating eyeball

So, the team made some pretty good choices - and because they were so pissed off with the Omega Team - they stayed on task and completed one of the most important parts of the entire mission into the Void; obtaining a ship - other than the Reprieve - that could make a 4 hex jump.

Meanwhile, Omega Team found a museum, which they broke into, and only recovered some pretech walkie-talkies.  Alpha Team rubbed their noses in it. :)

- Ark

Tuesday, November 6, 2012

Redshirts: Banyan Trees of Mars

The inspiration for last week's Stars Without Number's game came from photos beamed back from the Mars Global Surveyor.  They caused quite an uproar a decade ago, as they appeared to show gigantic trees thriving at the Martian poles.

The images looked very much like banyan trees.  Whatever they were, the shapes looked very organic.  It caused quite a stir.  Even venerable Arthur C. Clarke thought he was looking at a new life form.  NASA disagreed.  New World Order conspiracy nutjobs came out of the woodwork, proclaiming that NASA was hiding the BIG SECRET from us all, and the Banyan Trees of Mars were final proof.

Alas, the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, with it's much better imaging system, showed the Trees to actually be cracks in the polar ice.  Bummer.  

The image of gigantic black trees contrasting against an icy, white landscape on an alien world has been burning in my mind for over a decade now.  So, in my mind, I made that planet.  I populated it with strange creatures that fit into the ecology of the Trees.  Then I sent the Redshirt crew to the planet and tried to kill them with it.  Ahh - good times. :)

Our intrepid documentarian Adelaide took notes on the adventure, as it happened:


  • Six months have passed since more hell went down; some of the crew is still in the sleep pods - Nick Scryer and “Doc” Davies to be specific.
  • The rest are left on an asteroid to mine out a base before kicking the crew off so they can use it for pirating.
  • While the group was mining Lt. Commander Gonzales and the ship received a signal from an indigenous species that contacted them and asked for assistance getting off the Skorpios invaded planet. In return they will assist in destroying the Skorpios.
  • The group is to take a gun printer to the world and they will be dropped off there. They each need to drop most all of their items to do so. (the party must walk for two days with a heavy load. -ark)
  • The planet is very shiny white except for around the equator, which is black. There is very strange plant life around this planet.
  • Doctor Daktan scans the trees and thinks they are elephants, and Professor Ramapudi thinks it is actually aardvarks. Owlicious knows they are alive and that they are made of graphite and they are very efficient at surviving. She also sees no animal life just plant life.
  • Professor Ramapudi uses his drill to grab some DNA from the trees and see’s that they will work well as raw materials for the gun printer. Owlicious cuts down a bush and notices it starts to bleed a tar like substance.  
  • The group continues on and the sun finally sets, the planet cools down.
  • Lt. Five gets attacked at night by a black mass and tries to attack it with a butt of his gun. He fails and whacks himself instead. The black mass rips out his intestines while he screams in pain.
  • Everyone wakes up suddenly; Kal Kek rushes out to search for Lt. Five. He only see’s the shadow moving away and a bloody trail but nothing else. He fires his thermal pistol at the shadow and see’s he’s shot what looks like a four legged, eight foot tall “bush” and Lt. Five dangling from its “mouth.”
  • Professor Ramapudi bioscans the creature and see’s that is it an animal.
  • Owlicious fires at the creature but misses, Loranzo also misses, but luckily Doctor Daktan teleports Lt. Five safely into the snow in the group. 
  • Lt. Taylor rushes out and angrily runs up to the monster and punches it into the ground. In his boxers. Holy shit.
  • Doctor Daktan Laz patches Lt. Five successfully bringing him back from the dead. For the third time in Lt. Mark Fives existence.
  • Professor Ramapudi and Owlicious gleefully dissect the creature. Professor Ramapudi programs the bioscanner to detect these creatures (FOR SCIENCE) and Doctor Daktan notices it’s registering 35 different once surrounding them.
  • Lt. Taylor orders everyone to reenter the campsite and no one is allowed to leave, they also close off the opening. 
  • The next morning Doctor Daktan’s bioscanner detects 5 creatures following from behind.
  • The group decimates them and then Lt. Taylor sets up his compad to constantly signal Russian chatter to him so he always attempts to know where they are.
  • They find a domestic “dog” just sitting in the street and the group waits to see what it’s going to do. It leaves and they continue.
  • As it starts getting dark the group starts to see something shiny under the canopy and they find that it is a building. There are 12 foot monsters under the canopy as well.
  • These creatures look like thorny silverbacks. It has a belt and a sword on its side. Lt. Taylor has a staring fight with it and 19 others come out of the canopy.
  • Lt. Taylor opens his compad to try to communicate with it but the voice over the compad says he is not the gorilla creature and to stay calm.
  • Another gorilla comes out and says thanks for bringing the “medicine” and to come with him.
  • The group proceeds to show the gorillas the gun printer and then follow the gorillas into an underground tunnel.
  • In a room the group sees that there are lots of random human items there but also a dissected human on the wall.
  • Everyone proceeds to talk some bullshit until they ask for some medicine and they find out Lt. Mark Five is infected with a toxin that he is then given an antidote. It makes him puke a bunch but he feels better.
  • Everyone decides to test out the gun printer to make sure it works and Owlicious suddenly screams “WE USE MY BUSH” while excitedly holding up the bush she slaughtered earlier. The men whole-heartedly agree.
  • Lt. Taylor manages to talk what seems to be the main priest into letting the group into the silver temple. While the rest of the group gets carried (Especially Owlicious because she offered up her bush and deserves to be treated like a fucking princess) Lt. Taylor gracefully climbs the steps much to the gorilla’s amazement. At the bottom they see an altar and everyone offers up their branches.
  • Professor Ramapudi does a scan and can see that the alter will move and there are areas underneath it.
  • Lt. Taylor bullshits with the priest some more trying to get him to leave them there alone. It works and he stomps off but then dogleader speaks up and seems nervous about the group setting off explosives.
  • Loranzo finds a switch and tells Lt. Taylor while he stupidly attempts to force it open. They open the altar and see stairs leading down and near the stairs there is a bowl.
  • As they go down all the signals jam, at 50 meters they get to a platform that is held in place by the stairs and then there is a drop. Kal Kek drops a glow bug down there and it lights up the walls slightly. They see more drawings on the walls and see that there are three legged creatures that seem to be much larger than the gorillas that are petting them like they are just dogs.
  • At the very bottom there are four disks about forty meters across a piece and look a lot like flying saucers.
  • Lt. Taylor presses a button and the platform disconnects from the stairs and starts going down.
  • They open a ship and stand on a slab that came out of the ship and the group goes into the ship except Kal Kek and Doctor Daktan who stayed behind.
  • Lt. Five sits in a large uncomfortable seat and sees a button near him which he presses and it lights up the entire inside and the inside group can see outside the ship now and a camera narrows in on Doctor Daktan and Kal Kek with red squares around their image. Doctor Daktan wanders off down a hallway as Kal Kek enters the space ship.
  • The group inside the ship realize once they need to go find Doctor Daktan that they are stuck inside until Loranzo finds a picture button to open the ship again. 
  • Doctor Daktan encounters a giant robot hand grasping for him when he opens a random door down the hallway and screams.
  • Lt. Taylor, Kal Kek, and Loranzo left the saucer to try and save Doctor Daktan but Loranzo runs back to warn the rest of the group to leave.
  • Owlicious presses a button and the three left in the ship as well as the ship shoot upwards and stay stuck against the ceiling as Professor Ramapudi hacks into the wifi system.
  • Doctor Daktan, though he ran, gets captured by the robot.
  • Lt. Five points at the red circle that was on the robot and the image got much bigger with data charts coming up that seem to be about the robot.
  • The robot shoots a beam of light straight into Doctor Daktan ‘s head but doesn’t seem to be in pain.
  • The three in the ship see the red circle on the robot flashing as the robots light grows brighter and Doctor Daktan passes out and his eyebrows and hair light up. 
  • Lt. Five makes a gun symbol with his fingers at the robot on the ship and the ship fires a light beam at the robot hitting it. It drops jimmy and Loranzo hides in another ship. It makes a fist motion at the ship with the scientists and Lt. Five.
  • Owlicious decides it would be a good idea to make the fist action back at the robot. Lt. Taylor drops unconscious but Kal Kek stays standing. The robot bursts into flames. Doctor Daktan is dead.
  • Kal Kek picks Lt. Taylor up and brings him to the lift where they ascend. 
  • Professor Ramapudi finally hacks the space ship and is able to drive it out with no problem.

So, after escaping from the giant three legged robots, the scouts ran all the way back to the shuttle and high-tailed it off the planet.


Next session is tomorrow. :)

- Ark

Sunday, November 4, 2012

SWN Factions: The Begining

The key thing about Factions in Stars Without Number is they need to be pissed at one another.  It doesn't really matter if they are a gang in control of a inner city block, or a star spanning empire - they just need the desire to do harm to ANOTHER faction.  The harm could be physical, logistical, or financial.  Someone is threatening their turf, and that somebody must be taken DOWN.

I'm going to go through the steps to create and run a Stars Without Number Faction Game here on the blog, using my Redshirts campaign as a basis.  Now, the factions and the PCs in Redshirts are typically very far from one another.  The main factions are active in the home sector.  The PCs are off in other sectors, exploring and such.  But the two are closely linked, because the PCs are searching for assets that their home faction can use to survive and destroy it's enemies.

First off, it's handy to have a place where these factions can fight.  Chapter Seven: World Creation, has a really nifty sector generation system.  Yeah, it's like Traveller, except where Traveller's sub-sector generation mainly deals with the physical placement and attributes of star systems, Star's Without Number focuses on the adventure potential of said star systems.  Actually, you could probably use the creation systems of both, in concert, and have some pretty nifty results.

But whatever . . .

So, after the dust settles, I stare at the sector map and try to understand the relationship of the worlds I just created, physically and ideologically.  Empires and Federations morph into my head, and a rough history develops.  it's the kind of creation that's hard to quantify, as it just happens in my head.  Call it a Gedankenexperiment.  But if I see the potential for a group to dislike another group, I try to turn up the amp to ELEVEN and make them loath one another.

I'm not going to get into the specifics of each world.  Actually, there are a lot of nifty secrets about the systems that come up in sector creation that the players definitely do not need to know (yet,) and besides, the Faction Game is rather abstract, and we don't  need to know too many specifics other than where worlds exist in relation to one another.

I decided that the Ptolemy Sector had four major factions, two being superpowers, two being minor players. I felt that would be enough to get the ball rolling.  Those factions are the Aquila Union, Skorpios Empire, the Alliance of Independent Systems, and Almagest Rebellion.


Aquila Union - During the Silence, the inhabitants of Aquila fashioned a government using the long gone United States of America as a template.  This was successful, and as they rebuilt and explored the sector, they offered the denizens of other planets egress into their union.  Due to the sheer power and reach of Aquila, it was hard for other systems to say no.  The influence of Aquila continued to expand until the Skorpios Empire entered the stage.


Skorpios Empire - Russian speaking researchers on the fugus infested planet of Skorpios Prime began horrific experiments after the Terran Mandate fell, eventually creating a race of vat-bred neo-humans infused with alien fungal DNA.  Assured by their Scientist-Emperor that theirs was a better way, the Skorpios Legions spread into the Ptolemy Sector to proselytize at the trigger end of a gun barrel.  Needless to say, everyone loves the Skorpions.


Alliance of Independent Systems - Tired of the endless war between Aquila and Skorpios, the systems on the fringe rallied together to break from the warring superpowers and create a haven of peace and economic freedom.  In reality, the Alliance devolved quickly into an area controlled by greedy warlords intent on squeezing wealth from the weak.  The green flag with yellow circle replaced the skull and crossbones within the Ptolemy Sector.
Almagest Rebellion - The quiet planet of Almagest was recovering nicely from the Scream, rebuilding its government, infrastructure, and social institutions.  Then the Skorpios Empire invaded, labeling all inhabitants as slaves and test subject for the greater good of science.  No one on Almagest felt really good about the turn of events, and they have been fighting underground ever since.  The rebellion is tenacious, if not well armed or funded.  They consider the Skorpions insects to squash, and anyone who reminds them that scorpions are arthropods, not insects, gets punched in the nose.

The war between Aquila and Skorpios went on for a hundred years, sometimes hot, sometime cold, but stable, for the most part.  Both sides were equally matched, and brought every world in the sector into the fray.  Neutrality was not an option.  But then the system of Talus lead a unilateral revolt against the two superpowers, forming the Alliance of Independent Systems.  Talus had been allies with Aquila, and it's loss was devastating.

Realizing that they didn't have much time on their hands.  Aquila spearheaded an invasion of a system rumored to have stores of advanced technology, discovered an ancient spike drive capable of a 4 hex jump, and launched the Void Expeditionary Force to secure more technology in a previously unreachable sector of space.

So, that is sector situation for the Redshirt Faction Game.  I'll be getting into the nitty-gritty in later posts.

- Ark

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

Tuesday, October 30, 2012

Redshirts: Failure


Manna 'Doc' Davies - played by Skipper
The first time I saw an RPG run with more than ten players was only a couple of years ago.  Matt Finch, of Swords & Wizardry, was running 14 of us through Mythrus Tower at NTPRG Con.  Matt's DM methodology included standing on top of a chair and yelling, as well as using a giant, schoolroom sized white board for combat diagramming - all to wonderful effect.

There were nine players in the Stars Without Number game last session.  I'm still trying to get use to such a large party.  I think I need a nice, stable chair to stand on – but things have been working out anyway.  Merwyn, the in-game CO, acts as caller – which helps a lot.  And Adelaide has this habit of raising her hand and staring at me with an undying glare until I acknowledge her.

This session saw Kaye with his new psychic combat character – Nick Scryer the grenade teleportist.  A new lady gamer, Skipper, showed up to play as well.   She sketched her warrior, Manna ‘Doc’ Davies, up above.

The title of this blog includes 'Failure,' and so did the game session.  The party was supposed to deposit a flight team onto an ancient starship and leave, but the complications became too great - the main complication being an enemy fleet attempting to secure the ancient ship for themselves.

Lessons learned:
  1. Infiltrating a star system in a snail-slow shuttle is folly, no matter how well cloaked it is.
  2. Grenade teleportation is effective and sneaky.
  3. Resource poor star faring nations would most likely mount Reaper Battery on any of their Patrol Boats.
  4. Calling a Reaper Battery an Ion Cannon saves a lot of time in-game, because everyone has seen Empire.
  5. Kaye has not seen Empire.
  6. Using the terms 'Scotty,' 'Chekov,' and 'Uhura' to describe enemy crew members is a quick and efficient way to get descriptive data to the characters during a loud and hectic combat sequence.
  7. Kaye has not seen Trek.
  8. Kaye will be voted off the island.
  9. Throwing in an electrified bridge floor is a fun way to knock out half the party.
  10. Having a violent fire-fight on a ship's bridge will destroy the controls on said bridge.
  11. All players will violently argue that if a ship's bridge is destroyed, one can easily reroute the piloting controls to engineering because that is how all starships are designed and that everyone knows that, even if they have never watched Star Wars or Star Trek.

Our dear Adelaide has documented the fun below in glorious purple:

Stars Without Number (Bullet Points :D)
  • The team awakes from cryosleep again, lots of vomiting is going on. Again
  • They are joined by a new psychic named Nick Scryer
  • The group swears they see metallic scorpions on the floor with tiny people chasing them but eventually that goes away and they are asked to go to the mess hall.
  • As they are eating lt. Commander Gonzales tells everyone “good job” for the last mission but that Newt, the child that they rescued, is not going under for cryosleep and that she is “creepy.” However, she is also able to operate the ship which is helpful.
  • He also assigns them, excuse me, Lt. Taylor volunteers the group to go back to the hellspawn-Biotonics ship because the commander is interested in the tech on it.
  • They are to drop off two specialists named Brick and Brack
  • There are self-replicating scorpions being taken off the ship the group is about to get on. Yay.
  • Lt. Nathienal Taylor attempts to hack the scorpions and destroys them.
  • Newt tells the ship she’s actually a brain in a jar and the group bolts for the ship quickly and it takes 4 days to reach the main planet.
  • Lt. Taylor finds a frigate floating around in barren space, which seems to be 600 years old, that they choose to ignore.
  • They continue to encounter ships randomly. I think the DM is attempting to bait us onto one of these ships. It’s not working very well.
  • Slices of the ark are missing and seem to have made home on this new Russian planet.
  • Suddenly every scanning system on the planet turns towards their ship and “see’s” them, but they manage to seem nonthreatening.
  • The lieutenants decide it would be best to attempt to fly into the ark and are detected, ship battle starts.
  • They get hit by ion cannons twice and are about to be boarded by the enemy.
  • The enemy ship attaches a “rope” and what seems to be a walking tube to the side of their ship and everyone prepares for battle.
  • Loranzo and Kal Kek fires at the enemy Russians but only Kek hits, it does little damage however.
  • Scryer attempts to teleport one of the men outside of his suit but it fails.
  • Marina “Doc” Davies eviscerated one of the armor suits in the doorway.
  • Everyone else fails at killing things.
  • Owlicious continues to hide in the back because she has learned from previous missions she is NOT a good tank. Survival of the smartest, bitches.
  • Lt. Mark Five gets knocked flat.
  • Three people come in behind the power-armored suits but they are only in normal suits.
  • Scryer shuts down all the power suits and the three guys behind them are dead.
  • There is chatter coming over the groups helmets, they decide to look down the tube to the other ship. They see there is another man down the tube and Professor Ramapudi shoots and kills him.
  • Everyone rushes like Han Solo down the tube to the new ship with the power armored people in the front.
  • Loranzo fires some spikes down the hall and turns it into a bloody mist.
  • “Doc” Davies throws a grenade down the hall at the enemies. Two of them go SPLAT and one guy looks stunned but still has his gun.
  • Kal Kek fires at one of the remaining men after he witnesses “Doc” Davies throw a grenade.
  • Scryer teleports a grenade to the last guys and blows them to pieces.
  • Owlicious is pretty sure she’s found a toilet.
  • Everyone else attempts to kill everyone not friendly on the ship that they come into contact with and one lone man flees for his life.
  • Owlicious makes it past as a door closes but Doctor Daktan and Mark Five get locked out before teleporting in.
  • Loranzo climbs up a ladder and sticks his head in to look around and “Doc” Davies gets impatient and moves him forcibly out of her way to get through.
  • Lt. Taylor and Professor Ramapudi attempt to hack the ship, but it doesn't go so well.
  • Kal Kek pushes “Doc” Davies out of the way much like she did to Loranzo but she quickly recovers and opens fire at the men shooting at Loranzo. She splats another against the wall.
  • Kal Kek fires at the other guy shooting and blows his head clean off.
  • Scryer finally managed to get through the ladder shoot and fires with his spike thrower at the captain and misses, destroying lots of valuable equipment.
  • Professor Ramapudi heads to the engineering room and the rest of the group hears shooting.
  • Lt. Taylor bolts for the engineering room quickly and Owlicious makes it just in time to blow Scotties brains out leaving Doctor Daktan alone in the hallway. He then begins skulking around the ship before heading for the med bay.
  • Kal Kek, Scryer, and “Doc” Davies get shocked unconscious but Loranzo stays standing. The captain and the other guy also get knocked out but Uhura is completely untouched. He opens fire at her with a spike thrower that rips her into a thousand tiny pieces.  Angry Loranzo is angry.
  • Professor Ramapudi attempts to halt the detonation but messes up and the time goes quickly down to just ten seconds. Luckily Lt. Taylor manages to turn the computer off before it counts down much more. 
  • Everybody in the bridge wakes up and “Doc” Davies can smell her hair burning. She see’s Doctor Daktan slit someone’s throat.  She then ties up the unconscious captain and prepares to react if he wakes up. You know, hovers over him ready to bash his brains in with the butt of her gun and all that.
  • Professor Ramapudi loots Scotty's body and finds commands that allows him to give Mark Five control to fly the ship.
  • They decide it is best to just bail as fast as possible out of the area using this new ship.
  • Mark Five attempts to jump the ship back to the three sisters and he nails it with the help of Professor Ramapudi and “Doc” Davies. His “jumping virginity” is now gone.

…to be continued <3


:)

- 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, 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

Monday, October 22, 2012

Redshirts: Make Thee an Ark of Gopher Wood

Awesome blog post ->> here <<-.  Go read.  I'll wait for you back here.  Okay, thanks.

We last left out intrepid adventurers outside of the hulking wreckage of the four mile long Biotonics Ark 3, nervously flying their tiny unarmed reconnaissance shuttle toward a gaping hole it its side. This was really only about thirty minutes into the second gaming session, but I have a tendency to blah blah blah a lot in these session reports, so I didn't get very far last time.

Speaking of blah blah blah, I was asked about where I get my ideas for the Stars Without Number games.  Well, over four decades of reading and watching science fiction kind of saturates your DNA with ideas, so specific instances can be hard to identify some times. But the recent sessions have been inspired by Arthur C. Clarke's Rendezvous with Rama, about a giant, alien ship that inexplicably zips through our solar system, The Ark In Space, a Doctor Who serial from the 70's that I watched over and over and over again as a child, and Alfonso Azpiri's Heavy Metal story The Ark, staring his busty space-babe Lorna - which has always reminded me of an naked version of Metamorphosis Alpha.  Oh yes, and of course, Jim Ward's horrific science fiction game Metamorphosis Alpha.  

In other words, I rarely have good ideas of my own - I just try to steal them.

I'm sure I had a point here somewhere.  Oh yes - the play report.

The shuttle set down in the blackened, twisted orifice of the ark.  The command staff of Lieutenants Taylor, Five, and Ramapudi, the psychic middie Daktan, petty Owlicious, and leathernecks Loranzo, Kek, and Slate suited up and entered the airless void, guns out and magnetic boots activated.  Creeping around in the dark, they found a hallway guarded by a laser security system.  Disabling it led them to an elevator.

Images from The Ark, by Alfonso Azpiri
Once inside the elevator, air pressure became normal and the lights flickered on dimly.  Along the wall were buttons for 100 floors, most dark and deactivated.  Only three lit up.  One read DESERT.  Another MARSH.  Still another RAIN FOREST.

Lt. Five, the scouts' resident pilot and astronautics expert, figured that the best place to find A3-500 Transducers was near the center of the ship.  The RAIN FOREST level was the closest active level to the core, so away they went.

The doors wooshed open and they were confronted with an array of comfortable chairs on a nice little patio overlooking an enormous alien rain forest with 100 meter tall trees and a dense canopy.  The glowing blue ceiling high overhead emitted a constant drizzle of rain through high-tech sprinklers.

Science Officer Ramapudi and CO/Hacker Lt. Taylor found a nearby data kiosk and broke into it in an attempt to access a computer.  Interfacing was almost impossible, due to the outrageous technology that the ark had been built with, but they did discover that the ecological systems on the spacecraft were being run by a powerful, if unresponsive, artificial intelligence named GAIA.  They also found a map - indicating an engineering egress on the other side of the forest - a good four hours' hike.

As they traveled through the wet, muddy jungle, they discovered stumpy bushes bearing banana-like fruit.  A scan revealed that the fruit had a heavy infusion of arsenic, but they decided to take some anyway.  At that point, they were attacked by eight-armed arboreal hairy monkey things that threw big, heavy balls of poo as weapons.  One hit Petty Officer Owlicioius so hard in the head it knocked her unconscious.  The leathernecks unloaded their weapons into the canopy, scaring off the beasts.  They revived the petty officer and continued on.

The whole quicksand with slurping monster at the bottom event didn't make them very happy, but they all escaped alive coated in mud - thanks to their space suits which they had refused to remove.

Then they met the giant intelligent mosquitoes.  Lt. Ramapudi and Petty Officer Owlicious, the scouts' xenoarchaeologist, began to try to communicate with the SKEETERS, carefully - oh so carefully, convincing them that they meant no harm and were indeed not food, but other intelligent creatures.

One of the skeeters had seen creatures similar to them, so they began to communicate and learn.

Then Spaceman Slate happened.  The leatherneck - perhaps bored - jumped up and and decided to communicate with the aliens as well.

Complete fumble.  Kaye seems to do that only at the worst times.

The skittish skeeters were so freaked out that Spaceman Slate had said he'd like to eat their queen that they snatched him up and flew away with him, saying that they needed to teach him a lesson be dropping him into THE MAW and letting it digest him.

Yeah, so much for a happy ending.  Lt Taylor tried to paralyze them by hacking Slate's suit and emitting a triggering sound, which sort of worked and deafened Slate. Then the leathernecks blasted the remaining skeeters, who dropped Slate, sending him hurtling to the ground.

Luckily, Midshipman Daktan, a psychic, teleported Slate to safety.  When the party head 7,000 angry skeeters in the distance, they decided to abandon the RAIN FOREST level.

After camping out in the elevator for a long while and nursing their wounds, the freeze dried scouts decided to try traversing the MARSH level to get to the engineering egress.  There they found endless ponds full of mysterious, glowing bodies, something like the Dead Marshes in the Lord of the Rings.  Inside each pond was a giant crab with 50 foot long claws with giant bio-swords on the ends.  But by that time, they had learned to communicate - in a fashion - with GAIA, who dropped the temperature in the Marsh, slowing the crabs, and letting them trek to the engineering egress in peace.

The engineering section was old and dark and deserted, save for piles and piles of 600 year old human corpses.  Eventually they found a section that was powered up - using a lot of power, mind you - and giving off a whole mess of biological reading.  We left our intrepid crew that night, in an airlock, nervously looking at three entrances to various, threatening engineering areas.

So, it was fun and nobody died.  I know, I know, I'm slipping.  Next time - I promise - there will be some death. :)

- Ark

Sunday, October 21, 2012

Stars Without Number Web Ring

Remember web rings?  There would be some cgi (common gateway interface) code that you'd put at the bottom of your web page (that probably had a tilde ~ in the name) and it would link together a lot of similarly topic-ed pages.  And you'd go to them and clicked NEXT NEXT NEXT and you'd get a bunch of dead or not updated pages wanting to be about the topic in question but never quite were?

This isn't that.

What I've decided to do is to make a page on the blog here with links to people who are interested in Stars Without Number and blog about it on occasion.  No other requirements, other than that.

Are you interested in being included?

So, what I need you to do is to comment down below with the name of the blog, the link to it, your name (alias, whatever) and maybe a little blurb about it in relation to SWN.  Then I'll put it on the page - which will be accessible via a tab thing up at the top - I think that is how those page things work anyway.

Here is an example:

GamersJunk.com - Gamers' Junk - Billy Bob Phaser - I liek da SWN and make da blgo abou tit.

Okay, maybe try to spell words correctly, but it doesn't need to be Shakespeare. :)

So start typing.

- Ark

PS - If you find this post years after it's publication date and still want to be listed, just reply here - most likely I'll still be around and I'll add you - just reply below.

Thursday, October 18, 2012

Telekenesis in Stars Without Number

It seems that when my players imagine psychics in Stars Without Number, they get visions of Jedis dancing in their heads.  What do I get?  I get Bester.  You know, Bester from Bablyon 5.  Yeah.  Chekov.  But not nice Chekov. BESTER - psy-cop and asshole extraordinaire.

Bester hearkens back to a sci fi tradition where psionics were more subtle and had to do with mental activity and perception and all that.  Actually, the original Star Wars trilogy was a lot like that too.  Old Ben didn't go around melting people's heads off, and the pinnacle of power, Yoda, could lift an X-wing - barely - but he certainly wasn't powerful enough to wield an X-Wing like a sword and carve his initials into an AT-AT.

The second Stars Wars trilogy RUINED all that, and apparently has tainted some of my players.  They moan and groan about how wimpy the psychics are and how all of their powers have been nerfed.  I don't really have a problem with it.  Given my druthers, I'd nerf them down a bit more.  But I'm playing them as written.  The problem is that some of the powers, as written, can be lawyered to death.  The key part I'm referring to is the Telekinesis Discipline Track.

So here are my thoughts and rulings on the first four levels of the Telekinesis Discipline:

Remote Manipulation (1) - You have a ghost hand that extends to your unaided line of sight.  It had pick things up and hit people with them.  STR 10, -2 attack.  

Telekinetic Press (2) - Your can pump more strength (STR 18) into your ghost hand, but at the cost of speed and control.  Mobile is the limiting word in the description.  Anything that can move can get out of the way easily, and anything that can be moved will just scoot instead of being damaged.  However, if something is fixed to the floor or a bulkhead, you can exert that 18 STR and cause actual damage.

Complex Manipulation (3) - You can use two ghost hands at the same time, and if you use them to smack somone, you get no negative to attack, and have an 18 STR.

Telekinetic Ram (4) - This is the stickler that confuses people.  You can smack things real hard with force of will alone, but the object struck must be immobile.  Okay, so it sounds like it should be fixed and incapable of movement.  But then, later in the paragraph, it describes the power being able to damage vehicles.  Huh?  Well, there are two definitions of immobile - one incapable of being moved, and one not moving.  The second definition seems to fit here.  The words mobile and immobile are not always exact opposites.  So, if something is currently not moving, you can smack it.  If it is moving that round, no - no smack for you.  Back of the line.  Why?  Getting your telekinetic ram on is REAL hard.  Okay, yeah, it prevents your dear character from wiping out the tank platoon bearing down on you with a mere thought - but sorry - suck it up.

Enough lawyering.  That's my take.  But if Kevin Crawford were to wander by and pitch in his two cents, I'd carefully listen. :)

So, to heck with Qui-Gon Jinn.  Bester is awesome.  He doesn't do 40 meter backwards somersaults while killing 50 armored troops with a laser sword - no.  But Bester shows up and ruins your day with his smile.  Now THAT is power.

- Ark

Tuesday, October 9, 2012

Redshirts: Race to the Reprieve!

The new Stars Without Number campaign kicked off last Wednesday, with six players showing up at the FLGS to participate.  While Kaye had already used the point buy system to create his AI character, everyone else sat down and generated their PCs from scratch with rolls of the dice, 3d6 straight down the line.  It's not such a big deal since you characters get to put a 14 in one of their class' prime requisites, so they don't completely suck.

I was feeling particularly menace-ful that day, so I had everyone roll their hit points, rather that have them start off at max for first level.  Well, Felipe rolled a 1, so I let him re-roll   He got a 2.  Merwyn got another 2.  Adelaide got a 3.  It just wasn't looking good for anyone.

The game began with the characters groggily waking up from medical experiments in Infirmary 47 aboard Perimeter Station Nine.  They were all in hospital gowns and somewhat disoriented, but remembered that they were the last of the scouts to be going through cold sleep checkups before the mission began.  Doctor Bengani and Nurse Tendai were looking after them.  Their ship was far away in Hangar 18, being prepped for launch.

That's when the explosions happened.

Nurse Tendai stuck her head out into the hall and suddenly slumped to the ground, headless.

"The nurse is dead.  The doctor is freaking out.  You hear more explosions and gunfire.  The draught you feel up the slit in your hospital gown makes you uncomfortably aware that you are bare-assed and weaponless.  What do you do?"
Feel free to click for a bigger picture.

I love my job.

Well, of course they freaked out as well, trying to understand the situation and wanting to know what they needed to do and where they needed to go.

Before the game I had sketched out the space station and decided to give areas names so that it would be easier to describe to the players.  That sketch is over there to the right.  I divided the station up concentrically into the outer ring, the inner ring, and the hub, then sliced the whole thing up into Alpha, Beta, Gamma, and Delta Quadrants.  There were four spars, which were the standard areas for people and freight to move through, as well as four spokes, which were primarily for structural strength  but also acted as conduits for pipes, cables, etc.

I explained the layout and that they were in the outer rim of the Delta Quadrant, mid decks, and needed to get to their ship in Hanger 18.  (I don't think any of them got those references, but that's okay - I'm really just entertaining myself.)  I was rather amazed at how fast they took to the description and how they began using the terminology as they made their battle plans.

Lt. McManus pulled up schematics of the station and found a nearby armory.  Petty Officer Owlicious poked her head out the door (like the ill-fated nurse) and saw rubble and twisted metal down the corridor to the right, with a hole in the ceiling.  Hidden in the rubble was a laser rifle wielding man in armor with scorpions emblazoned on it.

Aha!  A soldier of the Skorpios Empire.  The bad guys must have found out about the Reprieve and had decided to act against it.  Spaceman XC-OM (the android) ran out after the armored soldier, dove at him, and tripped over the rubble.  Oops.

Spaceman Kek rushed out in his beautifully flower patterned hospital gown and grappled the heavily armored Skorpios soldier.  Thus ensued a bizarrely homoerotic wrestling match.

With things getting all Greco-Roman, the rest of the scouts hustled down the hallway to the nearest armory and began to grab weapons.  Another Skorpios soldier from the level began shooting at Spaceman Kek through the hole in the ceiling and hit him.

The newly armed scouts, with Petty Officer Loranzo, then jumped out from the armory and blasted the soldiers to bits.  Lt. McManus dug through the local Net and found the CCTV feeds.  Investigation showed Skorpios soldiers marching down the Alpha Spar towards the Hub, and twisted metal being all that remained of the Delta Spar between the Outer and Inner Rings.

Hacking away, Lt McManus took control over the environmental systems in the Delta Spar and vented the atmosphere   This did not deter the soldier as they were in EVA capable armor.  The party then discussed using the maintenance conduits in the Alpha-Delta spoke, but instead decided to perform their own EVA through what was left of the Delta Spar.

Past a few bulkheads, Petty Officer Owlicious found a Gravitation Propulsion Manned Maneuverability Unit, which I like to call a Grav Ski-Doo.  She mounted it while everyone else connected tether lines, and away they flew through the airless void of twisted metal through what had once been the Delta Spar.  While en route to the Inner Ring, a pair of soldiers having lunch on an exposed beam felt it would be funny to snipe at them.

The return fire from Lt. Five's heavy machine gun make short work of the soldiers, but the recoil in zero G almost smashed the whole party into the incredibly sharp, twisted wreckage - but - yanno - TPKs are just part of the adventure, right?  Well, Petty Officer Owlicious' piloting skills saved the day - but I would have other chances.

While Spaceman XC-OM was using his blowtorch to open up the Inner Ring airlock, the party noticed a sizable enemy fleet battling their own defenses, and saw that a large troop transport was approaching.  Lt. McMannus began to hack the Transport's Wi-Fi in order to take control of the ship.  Regretfully, the ship's crew noticed and fighter squadron was dispatched to bombard the party's position.

Lots of shrapnel later, and Lt. Five's colon was exposed to the vacuum of space and decided to take a little EVA of it's own.  The party busted into the Ring proper, carrying the poor Lt. Five, and got him to Infirmary 34, where a Happy Brand Med-Bot-1000 cheerfully stitched the officer up.

Eventually they made it to the hub and Petty Officer Owlicious hot-wired a fork lift and the party raced off to   Hangar 18.  They went to the control room and found Drago there.  Drago was a big, muscular, mean, cigar smoking vat born Skorpios soldier ready to stomp the PCs into tomorrow evening.

However, much like that scene in Indiana Jones, they all opened fire, shredding him to pieces.  In the control room, they could see down into the hangar.  Twenty soldiers were inside, all around the Reprieve.  They were operating a laser drill, trying to carefully bore their way into the players ride.

Hatching a plan, they secretly contacted the crew of the Reprieve, left Spaceman XC-OM in the control room to coordinate, boarded the forklift, and charged the twenty soldiers.

It was a bloody and short battle, aided by the fact that the crew of the ship ignited their thrusters, charring many of the soldiers to cinders.  However, in order to pull it off, the safety clamps had to be removed and the hanger doors open.  The crew of the ship decided to leave without securing their wayward scouts.  Luckily, the party engaged the forklift's magnet, which slammed and locked it against the outside of the Reprieve.

Spaceman XC-OM tried valiantly to jump from the control room to the ship before it left.  Regretfully, he missed, was hit by the backwash from the engines, and was slammed into the hangar wall, shattering into a million pieces.

So, imagine this - a slightly damaged an wobbly experimental spacecraft racing through the area where two naval fleets are trying to pummel one another, dodging rockets, explosions, shrapnel from blown up spacecraft, and an occasional screaming, spaceshipless fighter pilot on fire.  And image a forklift magnetized to the side of that spacecraft, with five screaming scouts hanging on for dear life, hoping that their tethers are not shredded by the G forces.

That kind of thing makes players really nervous. :)

Eventually they got inside the ship, where Lt. Mcmanus beat the first Lieutenant he saw down to zero hit point.  Then the ship's marines forced the scouts into jump seats, and the Reprieve rode out of Dodge of a metadimensional spike.

In the end, I had killed one character and reduced everyone else to 1 hit point, or had hit them so hard they needed Lazarus patches to stay alive.  So, all in all, a good little short intro adventure, to get the players used to what will be happening on a weekly basis.  Nine people want to play now, so I'll try to accommodate.  Fun - no?

- Ark