Thursday, December 6, 2012

Redshirts Christmas


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

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

Heh.

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

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

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

Here is the timeline, for what it is worth:

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

Ho ho ho!

- Ark

Wednesday, December 5, 2012

The Void Quadrant

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

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

- Ark

PS

Oh yes, a key . . .

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

Okay, that's about it.

- Ark :)

Tuesday, December 4, 2012

Better Mental Health Through DCCRPG


Finally, after a year and a half of waiting, I got to play DCC RPG.  Well, I actually played it back in June of 2011 with Harely Stroh, but that was a mid level beta test one shot.  This time, on Saturday, I got to play THE FUNNEL.

I really don't get people that don't like the idea of the funnel.  That's okay.  I don't have to understand a point of view for it to be perfectly valid.  But the funnel was one of the things that drew me to the game.  Actually, DCC was one of the first games I wanted to PLAY in a long, long time.  Maybe since 1981.  Now, of course, when I say 'play,' I meant, be a players, as opposed to being the DM.  I'd DM anything - at least once.  Heck, I'd DM a game about players taking on the persona of rebellious dust bunnies if it meant that I could chase them with a Dyson vacuum cleaner.

But playing - yeah - the funnel, the dice, and the spell rules really sold it to me.  DCC takes the good parts of D&D and Rolemaster and smooshed them together.  Yeah, I said Rolemaster.  That was my game of choice for a couple of years there after ditching D&D.  Oh, the glorious critical hit and fumble tables . . .

Crazy-Ass Tim ran the game for me, the Boy, Merwyn, and Kaye.  Not content to leave things alone, I had bargained for a slightly different character setup than the standard.  I decided that my characters were all potential initiates into a coven of witches, and the survivor of the first adventure would be the wannabe-witch that was allowed into the gaggle of evocatrixes.  I really wanted to play a wizard class, and the opportunity to cackle madly when casting black magic was too good of an opportunity to miss.

The roster of coven abecedarians was as follows:

  • Petunia the wimpy, clumsy, unlucky Urchin, who had never seen plants growing before,
  • Florence the Healer, build like a brick shithouse with a Stamina of 18,
  • Carly the Minstrel, who bets you think she wrote a song about you, but she didn't, and
  • Sorcha the idiot Alchemist, I mean, like, doesn't know salt from pepper.


Initially, the Covenettes refused to do anything brave at all, three of them standing around and whispering to one another in a field of corn while Petunia gathered up as many ears as possible because this was here first time seeing food before.  They hung back in back and tried to avoid any danger at all.

Then upon entering the dungeon, Petunia, Carly, and Sorcha fell into a pit and died, accidentally killing a few other players in the process, as detailed in Crazy-Ass Tim's blog.

GLORIOUS.

Body count was HIGH in the game.  The four of us players ran through well over 30 characters before the end of the dungeon.  Each time we were getting low, we'd find a cage full of PCs ready to refresh our ranks, just like in Left4Dead 2.

Florence found some other Covenette buddies in a cage too, including:

  • Chardonnay the Gravedigger,
  • Seville the razor wielding Barber (I mean, BEAUTY TECHNICIAN), and
  • Heidi the frail Teutonic Woods(wo)man.


Seville killed most of the rest of the party withe a beautiful fumble on a oil flask lob.  Have you ever noticed that little 'G' on the '1' side of a GameScience d20?  I saw that a lot.  Anyway, her hands were burnt beyond recognition, but she survived for a good long while.  Until Seville's leg was cut off with a giant scissor trap.

OH THE GLORIOUS FUCKING IRONY.

Everyone else also had wonderful deaths too, whether from horrible curses, being charred by flame spitting monsters, or being granted special 'wishes' by a lunatic madman demigod.

I mean, Kaye, really.  What did you expect when you said 'okay, I have my character wish to be raised from a level zero nobody to a level one INSERT CLASS HERE.  You actually said 'INSERT CLASS HERE.'

Eventually, I only had one character left - the Venerable Florence the Healer/Witch Wannabe - and the party had to do this big complex ritual - in three separate rooms at the same time.  I love that we had to split the party in order to complete the adventure.  Well, I figured that if she was going to go out in a blaze of glory, Florence might as well put on a Vampirella outfit and head up the demonic ritual with all the gusto she could muster.

The monsters let loose from that ritual finished off all of the 'extra' characters.  And then, to get out of the dungeon, there was a single SAVE OR DIE roll for each character.

YAY!

Like I mentioned in the title, I really do think that the Funnel is a kind of mentally beneficial.  It's Flooding, or Exposure Therapy.  Players tend to have a lot of anxieties about their character's dying.  Mine - I had them huddling in back at the beginning, afraid to do anythign lest they breathed wrong.  and in the end, Florence was there screaming on an altar in a skimpy bathing suit while the the forces of hell swirled about her nubile flesh.

I think it also helps the DM.  Each time when I run a game, any game, I am extremely anxious about the first kill.  I mean, it's like a first kiss on a date.  You grope around, copping a feel here and there, rolling a d20 over and over again trying to hit.  With the first kiss completed - you know where you stand and can continue on confidently.  The first kill in a campaign is the same - you know you can kill the PCs, and the player didn't run off crying home to mommy and threaten to never play again.

Um, did I just equate killing PCs to heavy petting?

Yeah . . . I did.

Anyway, yes, DCC is a great game.  Crazy-Ass Tim pulled off a really good session, and it was one of the most memorable ever.  Everyone was very happy.

And now that we have put so much work into our 1st level characters, we REALLY want them to live. :)

- Ark

Monday, December 3, 2012

Bang


Again and again I keep finding that planning a sketch invites dissatisfaction, and only when I am creating by the seat of my pants with my emotions unbound that I make something I like.  That's also true with DMing.

- Ark

Friday, November 30, 2012

Redshirts: Brain Surgery

Why is there a picture of Ricky Martin over there to the left?  We will get to that - I promise.  I wouldn't leave you hanging where Ricky Martin is concerned.

So I'm finally catching up in the Redshirts Recaps.  This one is from Wednesday night's game.  This was one of those games where the players surprised me on several levels.  I mean, not like recent outrageous traitorous behavior, but innovative thinking.

The players were trapped on the bombed out, eternal war planet of Levant, their ship destroyed by airborne nanobot clouds.  They had one mission - find a working spacecraft and get the heck off the planet.  AIs deep within the planet were running the war, keeping each of their pet factions fed and armed with gigantic underground factories.

So, I gave the players the location of the nanobot shooting missiles that prevented safe atmospheric flight.  I gave them the location of a storage hangar full of spacecraft.  I gave them directions.  I gave them mech suits and trained them in their use.

And what do you think the players did?

Yeah.

They started asking how the food and supplies arrived from the underground factories.  They started asking where the AIs were.  They began to fiddle with the pneumatic tubes that delivered the food and ammo.  They put one in maintenance mode and began to decent into the depths of the planet, looking for the nearest AI.  They sought out an old Terran Mandate emergency soldier freeze bank, took the official brain chips out of the mummified remains, found a old nursery and the brain chip resequencer inside, CUT INTO THEIR OWN HEADS AND IMPLANTED RESEQUENCED WIFI IDENTITY CHIPS INTO THEIR OWN BRAINS and proceeded to go talk to nearest AI, pretending to be people that would have authority over the AI.

:blink:

Oh, and the AI in question, named Vicente, presented a holographic image that looked just like Ricky Martin.  See - I didn't leave you hanging about the whole Ricky Martin question, now did I? :)

So were is the breakdown from our own Sweet Adelaide:
  • One night Titus disappears in front of everyone’s eyes. In the morning everyone is brought to the bar where they see their old friend Professor Ramapudi and a new person named Gustav Adler.
  • Gustav has a message for Lt. Mark Five which he tells him soon after meeting him which is “You broke the ship, find a new one, blah blah blah!”
  • Lt. Mark Five shrugs it off with a “sounds about right” and Gustav seems to be accepted unquestioningly. 
  • Professor Ramapudi talks to a random man around about computer things and is told there is none. He searches for “wifi” and finds some from down below, he then tries to connect.
  • Owlicious attempts to open one of the tubes that regularly gives food and supplies and a man warns her against it just in time.
  • “John Smith” casually starts talking to the man trying to figure out a way to get down into the factories below.
  • Professor Ramapudi hacks into a tube and turns it into maintenance mode and Owlicious opens it so they can then see into it.
  • Everyone turns on either their mag boots in their suits or gravs down the tube.
  • As they head down “John Smith” receives a transmission from the man in charge and asks them what they are doing. “Smith” talks him into believing they are doing the job they were ordered to but in another way. Before the transmission ends “Smith” is warned about drones that will come and attack them if they aren’t careful.
  • As the crew rounds a bend Kal Kek see’s that there is a big room up ahead that has a 500ft drop to the floor below and he pauses to consider the options.
  • Everyone decides it would be best to ignore this room and continue on.
  • Once they do everyone notices a drone approach them and ask who they are, they lie about being maintenance crew and it believes them and flies away. 
  • Another AI looking like Teddy flies by looking slightly angry and Owlicious is excited but contains herself.
  • Kal Kek at the front then see’s something floating towards them. Owlicious scans it and see’s that it is an AI riding a Kawasaki grav vehicle towards them.
  • Feeling threatened the wild Kal Kek preps his guns for firing.
  • Owlicious awakens Teddy and questions him about the AI and is informed that it is a more intelligent AI then himself. They hold fire until it approaches.
  • “Smith” starts speaking to it wondering why it’s there if its not a maintenance drone. He tells them he was there hiding from the warchow.
  • They take the AI as a new part of the group and he shares an ass full of information about what goes on around the planet.
  • He leads them to a giant room that looks much like a data room, except there are thousands of bodies instead of data. The AI opens the computer and the team asks him to search for the highest rank. There only happen to be 10 “master chiefs” which the group then tells him to take out so they can loot.
  • “Doc” Davies takes their brain chips out and then attempts to implant it into Kal Keks brain, which at first doesn’t go so well, but she later is able to successfully to do it.
  • She then attempts to do the same thing to Desmond Conners but accidently cuts a part of his brain before fixing it and once again succeeding.
  • She then artfully implants them into the rest of the crew without any problems; she’s an expert neurosurgeon! LEVEL UP!
  • Gustav does her surgery but cuts a part of her brain before getting the chip correctly in. She wasn’t pleased.
  • The new AI goes on a trip with Professor Ramapudi to get a chip remodifier and when they receive it they return to try and remodify everyone’s newly implanted chip, it works for everyone but “Doc” Davies and “Smith” but they remove and replace new ones that are already modified with no problem.
  • The next day they go in search of an elevator that the AI conveniently left out knowing about until now and when they find it they see that it is large enough to fit a large ship. The group decides to use it and head to the warchive.
  • The group reaches a giant data room and in walks a Titan robot who then askes who is in charge, “Smith” lies and makes it believe he is in charge but it does stand down. A holographic image of a man claiming to be AI ---(?) starts talking to them. 
  • The new AI attempts to hack the Titan and fails causing it to aim its guns at him and warn him to stop. He does it again anyway and this time succeeds.
  • The core starts closing itself and Kal Kek opens fire blasting through the window. Gustav moves to stop the closing door and in the process gets his mech stuck there.
  • “Smith” starts bartering with the AI and manages to talk it into letting them go. The elevators behind them open and a ship is waiting there. 
  • Everyone gets into the ship and start feeling like they are moving upward. The AI’s face appears at the pilots seat and calls them all irritating humans. Everyone feels complimented.
  • The Ai then fires a missile at the ship as it leaves but the new team member AI fires an EMT cannon at it and the nanobot swarm dies before it can even start. Lt. Five floors it out of there before something more bad happens.
  • The Aquila come to pick them up and credits roll.
So, the intrepid crew escaped the planet armed to the teeth, and with a brand new shuttle.  Well, a 600 year old shuttle.  But it's new to them.

- Ark

Thursday, November 29, 2012

Revelation Space


I have bags under my eyes because of this book.  Revelation Space, written by Alastair Reynolds, has kept me up for many night now.  It's the story of, well, a lot of things.  There is no one protagonist.  Exactly who is 'good' and who is 'bad' is hard to tell sometimes.  Reynolds has a tendency of pulling the wool over your eyes with glorious mind fucks that make you laugh or groan or just sit there and think deeply for a bit.

There is a lot of exposition in the book.  A lot.  Exposition can ruin a book and make is a boring, lifeless hunk of pulp.  But Reynolds is so good at exposition, it makes the novel.

There is a story.  Actually, a really good one.  It takes place over decades of time with multiple viewpoint characters.  That type of storytelling can get confused and jumbled in the wrong hands, but Reynolds pulls it off very well.  It's kind of hard to regurgitate understandably to someone, else, though.

 In fact, rather than try to sum up a plot or something, it would probably do better to just describe some things in the book:
  • A dead alien planet settled by an entire city of archaeologists.
  • A kilometer long, slower than light spacecraft with a technological biology all its own.
  • A nanitic plague that takes over technological and biological processes.
  • Aliens wrapped in cocoons of space-time.
  • Ancient technologies beyond imagining.
  • Lovecraftian horrors and insanity.
  • Cities mutating beyond control.
  • Brain hijacking.
  • A planet that is not a planet.
  • An assassin, and astronaut, and a novelist walk into a baroque spider, and two get drunk.
And beautiful, beautiful terms that have found homes in my brain:
  • Resurgam
  • Amarantin
  • Melding Plague
  • Conjoiners, Demarchists, and Ultras
  • Triumvirs Volyova, Sajaki, and Hegazi
  • Pattern Jugglers, Inhibitors,  and Shrouders
  • Nostalgia for Infinity
  • Sunstealer
  • Warchive
  • Lighthuggers

I soooo want to take the ideas from this book and fashion a game setting.  Actually, I've been sprinkling the Redshirts games liberally with some of them.  But Reynolds has written quite a few books in this same setting - I need to go digest those as well.

So yeah, I recommend the book highly. :)



- Ark

Redshirts: Nanobots Ate My Spaceship

At the start of each session of Stars Without Numbers, when the freeze dried scouts are unfrozen for duty, I have the players roll a Physical Effect Save to avoid throwing up.  Actually, I don't have to mention it.  They just roll their puke save for fun.  It's an odd ritual, but something they enjoy.

The Thanksgiving week adventure brought the players to the planet Levant, a nanobot infested warzone that looked like Beirut in the '80s.  Unsurprisingly, the group's flying saucer was eaten by a cloud of air defense nanobots while they were still flying it.  I mean, who didn't see that coming?  The players landed the ship in a bombed out soccer stadium just as the nanobots digested the maneuver thrusters, and they bailed out alive just in time to meet the Levant Liberation Front.

The LLF were a group of humans that were fighting a group of Warchou on the planet, and had been fighting for 600 years.  Deep beneath the crust, AIs with factories constantly spat out food, clothing, weapons, and ammo for all sides, keeping the war going on and on and on - forever.

It was an excellent excuse to kit the party up with an endless supply of mech suits, if I do say so myself.  Here is the blow-by-blow from Adelaide:

  • The team wakes back up, O’Brien has been court marshaled for revealing top secret information to the Warchow and shipped out to space in his undies.
  • “Doc” Davies holds Owlicious’ hair as she vomits her intestines out. Again.
  • HerMANdez debriefs the group again and orders them to go to a planet called Levant. Teddy pilots the ship while Lt. Five and Kal Kek defreeze in the back. He then hands over the ship once Lt. Five is fully awakened.
  • Owlicious scans the planet as they approach and see it is vastly polluted and there is movement (vehicles, energy charges, etc.) that make it look like a warzone.
  • They break the cloud bank and two communications open up with their ship. One in German and the other something that seems similar to the Warchow. 
  • A missile gets fired at the group as they are being warned off by the human communications. Lt. Five artfully moves the ship out of the way but when the missile blows up it explodes into a black cloud of nanobots which quickly reaches the ship on its own.  
  • While the nanobots start demolishing the ship Lt. Five lands it into a soccer field on the planet and everyone quickly jumps out. Kal Kek and Owlicious don’t make it out quickly enough and their suits are destroyed leaving them in just street clothes.
  • A giant mech-suited person comes out and start speaking in German to the group, which Owlicious translates to the rest, and after a while 6 other mechs come out and lead the group back to their command post to wait.
  • The command post inside actually looks like a deserted bar and the team nervously looks around while waiting to see what happens. Titus jumps up into the rafters and stealthily hides with his bow and arrows out.
  • Another man comes into the bar, this time speaking English, and tries to get information from the group but “John Smith” confidently lies to him about most of it.
  • The group is then asked to sign up with these peoples military in return for supplies and care or nothing if they refuse. Everyone signs on and many use aliases. 
  • After a day of training the group had already received from Aquila they are given mech suits and set out on a patrol mission.
  • On the patrol they encounter 4 Warchow children in mech suits and the team annihilates them gleefully but not before Desmond gets hit with a chainsaw after he was wrestling with one.
  • Kaye wants to us his gravharness to fly naked at one of the mechs to attack them with his bow and arrows so he is now going to be assigned the name Cupid. Imagine a giant African man with a jetpack wearing nothing and shooting arrows at giant mechs. Laughs were had by all.

So, we left off with the party marooned on Levant.  Will they ever make it out alive?  Tune in next time, for the further adventures of Redshirts!

- Ark