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

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

Friday, October 5, 2012

Redshirt Roll Call! (and Ranks and Ratings)

I do love a good character creation system.  Recently, we played the HERO system, which takes years to fashion a character with, but they are quite awesome characters.  Then we played Twilight 2000.  Okay, yeah, so it is reminiscent of filling out a 1040-EZ tax form.  But geez - that is no excuse for the players to start sobbing and rush to their calculators.  I swear, kids these days.  How do they do their taxes now?  Magic 8 ball?  I feel old.  But the character that come out of Twilight 2000 are very gritty and realistic.  Apocalypse realistic, that is and I quite like them.

But we are back to Stars Without Number now, and everything is right with the world.  Roll up a D&D character, select a background skill package and a training skill package - and WHAM - you are done.  No multiplication or division even.

Here are the members of the Aquila Scout Service so far:
  • Lieutenant Holt McManus - Lt. McManus shot up the ranks quickly to become a detective in the Aquila Naval Police Corp before being transferred to the Aquila Scout Service.  Played by Merwin.
  • Lieutenant Mark Five - Lt. Five was a hot shot fighter pilot when he was approached about joining the Scouts.  Played by Felipe.
  • Petty Officer 1st Class James Loranzo - PO 1st Class Loranzo is a hard core soldier, having seen action in several backwater ground assaults before he was selected for the Scout Service.  Played by The Boy.
  • Petty Officer 3rd Class Owlicious - PO 3rd Class Owlicious was hand selected for this mission because of her focus in xenoarchaelogy.  Played by Adelaide.
  • Spacer Apprentice Kal Kek - Apprentice Kal Kek is not your ordinary jar head marine, as he has ambitions of being an officer one day.  Played by Seamus.
  • Spacer Apprentice XC-OM - Apprentice XC-OM is a 600 year old artificial intelligence, manufactured before the Scream and interested in exploration.  Played by Kaye.
(Note: these descriptions are mine, based on their class, skills, and ranks.  They never really had much time to delve into their past or motives during the intro session.  Oh, and of course, all players names are Internet pseudonyms that I made up to - and no - no one gets to pick their own pseudonym.  So deal with it, players.)

So, those of you who have played Stars Without Number may be asking yourself where I came up with the ranks.  Well, that's random.  Take the 'Summary of Naval Ranks, Rating and Pay Grades' on page 9 of Skyward Steel: Naval Campaigns for Stars Without Number, and do this:

If you are a Psychic, you are automatically an officer.  If you have at least a 14 in Intelligence or Charisma, you can choose to either be enlisted or officer.  Otherwise, you are enlisted.

If enlisted, roll 2d4-2.  If you have an Intelligence or Charisma adjustment, apply it to the roll:

               Enlisted Chart
Roll Code Rate
1- E-1 Spacer Recruit
2
E-2 Spacer Apprentice
3
E-3 Spacer
4
E-4 Petty Officer Third Class
5
E-5 Petty Officer Second Class
6+ E-6 Petty Officer Third Class

Officers just roll a d6, regardless of Intelligence of Charisma:

               Officer Chart
Roll Code Rank
1-2 O-1 Midshipman
3-4 O-2 Ensign
5-6 O-3 Lieutenant

I had thought this set up would have given a nice spread of ranks and a clear leader.  Of course, we ended up with two Lieutenants.  So, in hindsight, the Officer Chart should go something like this:

              Officer Chart
RollCodeRank
1-3O-1Midshipman
4-5O-2Ensign
6O-3Lieutenant

Regarding class and rating/rank, if you do the math on the attributes, Warriors will almost always end up being enlisted.  Expert will always get the choice of being enlisted or officer (but with bonuses, they'll almost always be a higher rating than the warriors if they choose enlisted, on average.)  And those Psychics will always be officers.  Why?  Because people are scared of Psychics.  Best to put them in charge. 

I had thought about making AIs automatic officers as well, but society doesn't trust them much.  Psychics are feared, yes, but AIs are less feared and more . . . held in contempt.  I mean, the Psychic dude over there can read your mind. Be on your best behavior.  But taking orders from a toaster?  Not gonna happen unless that toaster proves itself.

Now that I think of it, I should probably increase the requirements for becoming an officer.  Ah.  One of their packages must have the Leadership skill in it.  Makes sense.  Otherwise, officers without leadership skills tend to get fragged.

Oh, and one more little rule that we used - if you make a character without an combat ability whatsoever, your rank immediately becomes E-1 Spacer Recruit.  'Nuff said?

I guess that is it for this post.  I was going to do the play report, but looks like I'll do that next post. I blab too much.  :)

- 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



Thursday, September 20, 2012

Redshirts: A Stars Without Number Campaign



This doesn't really have anything to do with Star Trek, or the John Scalzi novel.  It's more of the working title for a campign idea that I had that just . . . kinda . . . stuck.

I wanted to run a Stars Without Number campaign at the local FLGS - open to anyone who dropped by - at random dates and times. To me, the stardard trope of Traveller-esque 'intergalactic tramp steamer' doesn't seem like it would really work.  Each character is pretty vital to the operation of the ship, and having people disappear and reappear - while doable - doesn't tend to make sense.

So, the idea is to have the PCs be freeze-dried scouts.

Let me explain.  No . . . there is too much.  Let me sum up.

For 100 years, the two major powers of the Ptolemy Sector have been waging war.  The Skorpios Empire, a bunch of Russian-speaking vat grown genetic purists, are pretty sure they have discovered the best way for people live, and enjoy enforcing that way at gun-point.  The members of the Aquila Union are not too fond of their neighbors, and have been keeping them at bay for three generations with their powerful navy.  But due to recent events, including secession by several powerful systems, Aquila faces eventual defeat.

In an ancient bunker deep within the crust of an abandoned planet, The Aquilans found a possible solution to their demise - a spacecraft surpassing any existing technology.  Current spike drives allow for passage between systems 3 hyperspace hexes away (see sector map.)  While all of the systems in the Ptolemy Sector are reachable - the density of systems drops off in neighboring sectors, making travel outside impossible.  Until now.

The Aquilan Navy immediately refits the ship for active use, renaming it the AUS Reprieve.  Its mission is to explore the systems of The Void and find whatever can be used to help defeat the Skorpios Empire, be it technology, allies, or something beyond imagining.  The assumption is that since The Void was unreachable with standard technologies, then the Scavanger Fleets would not have stripped the systems bare during the Silence.

The PCs are members of the Void Expeditionary Force.  They are not crew members of the Reprieve itself, but scouts that are put into cold storage until needed.  The Reprieve is too valuable to be put into danger, so the ship will stay on the edge of a target system, thaw out the scouts, and send them by shuttle to perform reconnaissance and do as they see fit for the benefit of the Union.

Each game session would present a new system and a new set of adventures for the PCs to pursue.  Players could come and go from time to time, with those not attending just spending time in the freezer.  They would be given a wide berth in how they handle situations, as the captain and all of the command staff are back on the Reprieve doing long range scans and filling out paperwork on whatever goofy messes that scouts created during the last adventure.

So - those are my thoughts so far.  I think it will be fun - handled right.  I certainly don't want an atmosphere of railroading, and I think making sure that the PCs actions, and the results thereof, impinge upon the decisions of the command staff for the next adventure, will do so.

Of course, they could just kill the captain and become pirates in the fastest ship in the quadrant.  Hmm.

Any suggestions or thought are welcome. :)

- 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

Sunday, June 10, 2012

NTRPG Con 2012 - Day Three


Even more tired - if that is possible. :)

So, The Boy and I arrived back at the con in the morning to play in the finals of Circus Maximus.  Tim Kask refereed the game.  Regretfully, the rest of The Boy's team did not show up, so he was a solo player.  Everyone on the White Team showed up though.  However, it didn't help.  None of my team made it across the finish line.  it was brutal out there, I tell you - BRUTAL.  Great fun, all the same.

Afterwards, The Boy found a Battletech table.  That was lucky, as I'm sure he would have complained about going to do what I wanted to - which was to go sit in a room and listen to people talk. :)

The Artist Panel was great.  It consisted of Erol otus, Jennell Jaquays, Jeff Dee, Diesel LaForce, and Jason Braun.  During the panel, they drew monsters and answered our questions.  I really enjoyed listen to ALL of them complain about things in art that I have a hard time doing - it makes me feel better as an artist. :)

I was soooo happy that Stars Without Number won the Three Castles Award.  I'm a big fan of the role playing game, and I congratulate Kevin Crawford on his victory.

In the evening, we got to play Empire of the Petal Throne with Victor Raymond.  Jeff Dee also played, as well as John Eric  Holmes's son Chris.  I had read about Tekumel, and had wanted to play the game for decades.  I finally got my chance!

We decided to play a group of characters devoted to 'Change' - kind of like Chaotic in D&D.  We had one alien in the group.  I chose a female priestess named Merla, who was a devotee of Dlamelish.  She was sort of a religious courtesan, I think.  Odd for a courtesan to be dungeon delving, but I played her up as a spoiled rich girl who would throw away the lives of her slaves to ensure her own comfort.  She burned through two of her three slaves that way.

i had a blast playing in Tekumel, and Victor Raymond was great.  I know we frustrated him with out antics something fierce.  More the once he physically banged his head against the wall after we did or said something.  But somehow, we all survived.  Well, we did that buy sacrificing slaves to monsters and running.  Pretty effective, if you ask me.

After Tekumel, it was more Battletech for The Boy - whom I had to physically drag away from the table so we could get home.

One more day in the con left . . .


- Ark

Thursday, May 31, 2012

Dungeonspiration: NTRPGCON 2012

From 2011: A jovial Jim Ward planning to kill EVERYONE IN THE UNIVERSE. 
Next week, The Boy and I will be on Hajj to the North Texas Role Playing Game Convention.  Our long, arduous trek will involve us driving across the city.  Yes, indeed, it will be fraught with dangers - especially if the cherry Slurpee machine at the 7-11 on the way is busted.

Last year's Con was very inspiring.  I think the highlight for me was when Jim Ward offed my son's character in a game of Metamorphosis Alpha.  Eaten by a giant plant in one gulp.  I mean, can life get much better than that?

This year, a big bag of guests will be attending - Sandy Petersen, Tim Kask, Jennell Jaquays, Erol Otus, James M. Ward, Frank Mentzer, Jason Braun, Steve Marsh, Steve Winter, Dennis Sustare, Jeff Dee, Peter Kerestan, Zeb Cook, and Diesel Laforce.  Things might get a little awkward around Zeb Cook.  I mean, I did curse his name loudly for two decades because of second edition.  But now, I PLAY second edition, and am thoroughly enjoying it.  So I should probably just dine on a big plate of crow in front of him.

The Three Castles RPG Design Award is going to be judged by Dennis Sustare, Robert Kuntz, Sandy Petersen, Steve Marsh, and Zeb Cook this year.  Up for the award are Anomalous Subsurface EnvironmentRealms of Crawling ChaosStars Without Number, and the Tome of Adventure Design.  I think we all know I am rooting for Stars Without Number, so I'll shut up about it.

So, over the four days of the Con, I have some things scheduled:

  • Thursday: Urutsk with Kyrinn!  Yay!  Last year, The Boy faced Urutsk's strangeness head on - causing bouts of hysterical laughter.  I'm looking forward to another visit.
  • Friday: OD&D with Tim Kask!  I'm dead.  I'm sure he kills people who make bad puns.
  • Saturday Morning: Aliens?  Like in the Movie? With Alan Grohe?  I there!
  • Saturday Evening: Petal Throne with Victor Raymond.  Yes, time to introduce The Boy to the sweet smell of MUSTY CINNAMON.
  • Sunday: Quicksilver with Jeff Dee.  Did I mention Jeff Dee?  I've got, like, piles of his Kickstarter artwork on my desk.

That leaves lots of unscheduled time to shop, hob-nob, and crash other games.  The Boy and I are pumped, and I'm sure we will be very exhausted, and very inspired, at the end of it all.

If you are planning on attending, I hope to see you there!

- Ark

Sunday, April 29, 2012

Stars Without Number: Dramatis Personæ


I just got home and am still basking in the glow of a particularly successful Stars Without Number game.  I've promised some accounts of our gaming sessions on the blog, so I'll start off by introducing the players (even though some of this information is outdated by the sweeping events of tonight's game.):

Reginald Goodnight, 
Captain of the Fat Tuesday
Merwyn plays Captain Goodnight, who started off life as a two-bit computer hacker.  Merwyn's natural sense of initiative tends to have him rushing in where angels fear to tread, and his inborn charisma tends to cause the rest of the party follow him.  When they seized a pirate ship and repurposed it for their own ends, Merwyn was willing to pay the npc crew out of his own pocket, making him defacto captain of the ship.

Jermayne Starace, 
Astrogator Extraordinaire
Ron plays the ship's pilot, Jermayne.  Mr. Starace was a pilot aboard a boring commercial starliner when he ran into the party, who was busy fighting off a bounty hunter/pirate at the time.  Jermayne quit his job and threw in with the ruff and tumble party, never to look back.  He tends to be very lucky, making wild maneuvers in space combat and drilling holes through meta-space that no sane astrogator would ever try.  While Jermayne doesn't have a great deal of statistical charisma, he is also lucky in love as well, finding a warm bed and a soft partner in just about every port.

Darth Nerf, 
Ship's Psychic
Crazy-Ass Tim plays the disgruntled psychic aboard the Fat Tuesday.  Darth Nerf's parents hated him, thus giving him his awful name.  Darth entered a life of crime at an early age, using his skills of persuasion and his psychic abilities to steal, swindle, and coerce.  Having angered law enforcement officials in his home sector, he left and met up with the party en route to greener pastures.  An incident with the strange aliens known as Methans left him with an arm that could turn into a bow and shoot bone fragments at enemies, but with enough chromosomal damage to cut his lifespan in half.

Kevalt Loranzo, 
Head of Security
The Boy plays Sgt. Loranzo.  Kevalt's father once ran with the party, but was killed in action during a casino heist.  Kevalt found the group and joined it, providing all the heavy fire power needed.  He's a no nonsense warrior, focusing on little else in life.  Over their adventures, Loranzo has assembled a trio of npc marines, all female, that the crew have taken to calling Kevalt's Angels.  They are vicious when fighting space pirates, and very loyal to their Sergeant.

AR-50, 
Alien Robot
Kay runs the ship's robot.  AR-50 is a stealth robot created by the Methans, who can take on various humanoid shapes and pass various biometric tests given enough DNA samples of a subject.  AR-50 is obsessed with upgrading himself, grafting various implements into his system, and pushing his components to the limit.  This has caused quite a few problems for him, and the entire party, as his expansions tend to make him vulnerable to being hacked and taken over by enemies.

Minnie Man, 
Ship's Doctor
Kayette plays Dr. Man, who was encountered by the party on planet Amazon.  Minnie was a maltech researcher on the jungle planet, investigating the Amazon Floral Hive Mind before it went berserk and eradicated all humans there, except her.  Dr. Man now works on the Fat Tuesday, helping to patch up the party when it gets injured, and experimenting with dangerous, forbidden maltech on her off hours.  She also enjoy running over people in a grav tank far more than she probably should.

So, there you have it - the six party members that tend to show up the most.  There have been others that make cameo appearances every so often, but I won't mention them here.

- 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

Tuesday, April 24, 2012

SciFiSwag


Two things came in the mail today - a MegaTraveller Referee's Manual and Tomorrow's War.  Yay!

I grabbed the MegaTraveller Ref Guide, not because I want to play it, but for its starship building rules.  I remember using those rules to design ships was the funnest thing about the game itself.  I'm playing Stars Without Number nowadays, and while the abstracted ship building rules are great and simple - they lack some meat.  The players have been wondering about their starship, layouts and stuff, so I think this old book will help me.  It may also give me some ideas for creating a more in-depth ship building system for SWN itself.

Tomorrow's War was kind of a fluke.  I stumbled upon in while on Amazon.  I was very fascinated by the description of it.  It's more of a hard sci-fi wargame, as opposed to the 40K stuff.  It's relatively new, got great reviews, made by Osprey/Ambush Alley, and was only like 23 bucks.  I . . . I impulse bought.  Yeah.  But man, it's in my grubby little hands now and I'm pumped about playing it sometime.  PYOO PYOO!

So I got some reading to do.  Like I have time.  LOL.

- Ark





Thursday, April 19, 2012

Dungeonspiration: Group Gestalt

Player dynamics in role playing games have always fascinated me.  Often, a group is made of individualistic players whose goals and modis operandi don't sync up at all.  But sometimes, a gaggle of gamers morphs into a group with a capital 'G.'  I love those times.

Not like this at all.  Really.
At the beginning of our Stars Without Number campaign, the PCs were a group of loners who just happened to be travelling in the same general direction and had a tendency of taking the same two bit, mostly illegal jobs from various criminal syndicates and interstellar corporations.  Then they became involved with a bizarre alien race called the Methans and took a job from them at a backwater mining space station around a extremely radioactive star in the Hard Light system.

The Hard Light system is the subject of Kevin Crawford's Stars Without Number module Hard Light.  The setting has a great claustrophobic feel to it, with cramped space stations and asteroid exploration.  It really reminds me of what would happen if you crammed Keep on the Borderlands into the Sean Connery movie Outland.

For some reason, the group seemed to change at Hard Light.  The characters were sent there to investigate and deal with a mysterious production issue plaguing the station.  Perhaps it was the focus of the mission, the claustrophobic setting, the fact that the group was basically stranded in the system for four months, or perhaps that EVERYONE but the group members themselves were suspects - but the group began to gain cohesion.  They started acting as a unit, investigating the mystery secretly while they pretended to be ordinary workers.  I was really amazed by how they cooperated and quickly put the pieces of the mystery together while actually taking an interest in the setting and the NPCs.

Another strange, and completely unexpected moment of cohesion happened soon after.  The party was working on infiltrating a small pirate base.  They had met a completely inconsequential pilot for the pirates and had convinced him (with force) to smuggle them into the base.  I decided that the pilot should be a blond Rastafarian with dreadlocks named Kingston who said 'Mon' a lot.  They immediately took a dislike to poor old Kingston.

At the base, they met another blond Rastafarian pirate named Pierre.  This further enraged the group.  I still don't quite understand why.

They started calling the pirates 'Franco Aryan Jamaican Nazi Pirates.'

It was deemed that the Franco Aryan Jamaican Nazi Pirates should not be allowed to live and breath in the same universe in which the PCs existed.  Pirate genocide began seconds after that decision.

"Dere be no reason to be shooting at me with your raggedy laser gun, Mon!"

Eventually, the group got their hands on a pirate ship named the Fat Tuesday and re-purposed it to hunt down and kill pirates.  One of the characters declared himself the captain.  The other players didn't argue with this coup d'état, since the new captain offered to pay the NPC's salaries out of his own pocket.  The group suddenly had a leader - Captain Reginald Goodnight.  Now, I've never seen a leader arise in a group without a lot of trouble - but this one grew organically, and oddly enough, helped to solidify the group even more.

The party still has disagreements about their goals, and exactly how to obtain them.  They can be horribly scattered during combat.  But this group - the crew of the Fat Tuesday, really clicks.  It's a group with a capital 'G,' and it's quite fun to watch the hive mind churn.

Case in point - during the last game the group encountered a starship captain named Biff Thadderson.  I modelled Captain Biff's mannerisms and speech off of Captain Zapp Brannigan from Futurama.  I felt this would be a death knell for Captain Biff, especially since I gave the party the opportunity to kill Biff off without lifting a finger.  I mean, the dude is annoying and I designed him specifically to be annoying.

Um . . . not like this, either.  Really.

But the players fell in LOVE with Captain Biff.  Simultaneously.  Like - WHAM!  I mean, I wouldn't be surprised if they go and marry him as a group or something.  And now I am stuck having to talk in an excited radio announcer's voice half the time.

It's an evil plot against me, I tell you.

But that's what happens when a group forges together in that peculiar was that seems to only happen around a table with dice clinking and the swilling of mass quantities of Diet Coke.  It's really inspiring.

- Ark

Thursday, April 5, 2012

Dungeonspiration: My RPG is Full of Stars

I've been running Stars Without Number for over half a year now, and so far, it's the best science fiction rpg that I've played.  What am I comparing it to?  Primarily the sci fi games I played in olden times; Star Frontiers, Spacemaster, GURPS: Space, Gama WorldShadowrun, FASA's Star Trek, and Traveller in its myriad of forms.  I could also throw in Star Wars Saga Edition, as I have ample experience with that game as well.

Why is it my favorite?  Well, mainly for what Stars Without Number is not.  It's not an attempt to lay down physics in game form.  It's not an attempt to weave an entire, pre-built universe.  It's not an attempt to create a rule for every conceivable situation.

Stars Without Number is, frankly, a stripped down old style D&D with a science fiction facade nailed up around it.  The game easily provides me the ability to project my view of science fiction to the players - assisted with simple game mechanics that I already enjoy.  There is nothing in the way of telling the story I want to tell.  Traveller was close, but I was really never fond of the rules.

My view of science fiction comes primarily from the stories I read as a child.  Of course, Star Trek was an influence as well, but I was already on the road to being well read in the science fiction realm before Star Wars came to smother the genre.  When I think of science fiction, my mind always drifts to stories such as these:

  • Issac Asimov - Foundation
  • Ray Bradbury - The Martian Chronicles
  • Arthur C. Clarke - 2001, Childhood's End, Rendezvous With Rama
  • Ursula K. Le Guin - The Left Hand of Darkness, The Dispossessed
  • Harry Harrison - Stainless Steel Rat, Deathworld
  • Robert Heinlein - Stranger In a Strange Land, Starship Troopers, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress
  • Frank Herbert - Dune
  • Larry Niven - Ringworld, Known Space stories,
  • Larry Niven and  Jerry Pournelle - The Mote in God's Eye, Lucifer's Hammer 
  • Fred Saberhagen - Berserker

That's the core of my science fiction, give or take some books that I've forgotten, and that's the feel I go for when running the game.  I make an effort to steer away from Star Wars and Star Trek.  They are too . . . pop-cultury for me.  It's that same attitude I get when I scream - 'Someone scrape the gosh-darn Tolkein out of D&D.  I can't take it any more!'

Interestingly, in my gaming group, I'm the greybeard.  They haven't had the same diet of science fiction that I've had.  They understand the concepts, but largely from a different source.  They understand FTL travel from Firefly.  They understand cybernetics form Deus Ex.  They understand the concept of a ringworld from Halo.  They understand uplift form Mass Effect.

It really hit me when I was helping a new player make a character.

Me: So we've got three classes.  Warriors.  That's a soldier dude, from swords to guns.  Expert.   That's someone who's good at something besides killing.  Doctors, Pilots, whatnot.  And then their is Psychics.  They have psychic powers.

New Player: (Confused look.)

Me: (Trying hard not to make a Star Wars reference.)  They do stuff with their minds.  Ummmm . .

New Player: (Still confused.)

Me: Like a Biotic in Mass Effect.

New Player: Oh!  That's kinda what I thought you meant.  Gotcha.

With great effort, I did not facepalm.  The new guard and old guard just have different words for thing sometimes.

And that brings the conversation around to Mass Effect series of games.  Rather than just being a game about killing alien invaders, it's a tour of a future chock-full of science fiction tropes from all of my favorite books.  It really carries the torch to a new audience.  Time and time again I find myself explaining concepts to the players couched in Mass Effect terms.  It's kind of a Rosetta Stone.

The ending of the Mass Effect trilogy was a let down for me.  I won't get into it much, but the issue wasn't what happened at the end, rather, how the story was told.  It was, frankly, just bad story telling, in my book.  But I highly recommend the other 99% of the franchise - especially to those old grognards who want to interact with the younguns in an old style science fiction game.

I'll leave you with some Mass Effect 3 concept art by Matt Rhodes.  Again, it's concept art, so it's not exactly what went into the game, but there are spoilers.  It's great stuff for getting in the mood for a Stars Without Numbers game.

Normandy Silent Running by Matt Rhodes

Rogue Sheppard by Matt Rhodes

Taking Back Normandy by Matt Rhodes
Red Hallway by Matt Rhodes

Illusive Office by Matt Rhodes

Presidium Hospital by Matt Rhodes

Crashed On Eden by Matt Rhodes

Enjoy, and go get all spacey.

- Ark