Sunday, November 6, 2011

Rahul and the Bobble-headed Ganesh

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

Highlights of the Night:

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

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

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

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

I am still trying to keep a straight face.

- Ark

Friday, November 4, 2011

Dungeonspiration: Beginnings

The start of a campaign can be a very exciting time. As a GM, you get to splash paint around a fictional universe and build the skeleton that will be used to host countless adventures. It can also be nerve-wracking as the players may completely reject the universe and it's premise - yawn, back-talk, fold paper footballs and flick them across the table to score field goals, and give off all those other little signs that the GM failed miserably and needs to go back to GM kindergarten.

I've been running a Labyrinth Lord game for over half a year now. We are getting to an exciting bit - but I'm burnt out. Mervyn runs us a Pathfinder game, and Tim is gearing up to run a 2e AD&D campaign. That's a truck load of D&D. I need a change, and since sci-fi is where my head is at, I'm setting the Labyrinth Lord campaign aside and will be starting a Star Without Number game this Saturday.

As quaint as 'you are all at the Space-tavern drinking Space-ale when a Space-stranger dressed in a Space-cloak approached you from the dim Space-corner' sounds as a beginning of a Space campaign - I just can't bring myself to punt like that. I'm a big fan of in media res - and haven't been using it near enough lately.

So below is the intro to my new game - the New Eden Campaign. If I was telling this to the group at the beginning of the game, it would be a lot shorter - but I have an unlimited amount of space on the blog - so here it goes:

You wake up as a needle stabs into your arm. Clear tubes full of a liquid that glows green like radioactive anti-freeze connect to the needle. Machinery begins to hum and it feels like fire is pumping into your veins. It hurts horribly, but your dulled, fuzzy senses suddenly sharpen to crystal clarity.

After a few seconds, you realize you are in nearly featureless coffin with glowing white walls. More needles come out of the wall, injecting you with more uncomfortable liquids. Suddenly you can move your body again. You notice a glass door near your head. Figures seem to be milling about outside. A shrill noise blares, and a red light flashes.  Somewhere nearby, a baby cries.

Memories pour in from before the interstellar coma was induced. The worlds of your home sector were poor. You grew up in poverty, raised by a destitute family in an impoverished culture. But the sector next door - the New Eden sector - contained rich worlds holding vast resources.

A voice comes from a speaker in the coffin.  "This is Captain Kobayashi of the Freighter Edmund Fitzgerald. We are still in route to Hephaestus, but I've lifted stasis for the passengers in steerage capsules early. We are under fire from unknown forces and are currently being boarded. I have awoken you to give you a fighting chance for life, should you choose to take it."

You open the glass door at the head of the cryo-statsis capsule and tumble out. You are in a steerage room. Glass doors leading to stasis capsules line the walls, with one hatch leading out. There are around thirty people in here, standing around in their underwear, looking confused in the flashing glowing lights.  A mother comforts her baby, swaddled in a pink blanket.  A man comforts the mother.

It was perhaps a month ago - you are unsure of the exact date - but some time ago, you purchased a ticket for the New Eden Sector and boarded the Edmund Fitzgerald. It was not your money. Friends, family, your village, or perhaps a crime syndicate helped fund your trip, with the expectation of being paid back soon. 

While rich, the New Eden Sector has been torn with war for many decades. But recently, a mysterious group known as the Benefactors has created a Ambassadorial Council for the sector, where all worlds can safely discuss issues with one another, giving the potential to avert war, increase trade, and benefit everyone. While it seems a difficult task, the Benefactors appear to have deep pockets - and they have been hiring qualified people in droves.

All of the confused faces in the steerage room signed up to go to Hephaestus to seek a new life and get a job with the Benefactors.  Neither you nor they were expecting to awaken so soon, or to the noises that came from the intercom next.

"The ship has been breached and the attackers refuse the communicate their demands.  We are . . ."  the captain's voice is interrupted by the sound of gun fire.  Several of your fellow passengers gasp.  Then a female voice comes on - speaking a harsh language unknown to you.  As she speaks, you notice the pink swaddled baby's mother stare at the intercom speaker, then she begins to yell frantically at her husband in the same language.  He nervously tries to shush her, but another of the passengers points at them and begins yelling angrily.

The room suddenly erupts in argument in many languages.  A grizzled old man blurts out, "They want the baby!  We should hand it over before they kill us all!"  Someone else punches the man in the face, calling him a 'dirty collaborator.'  Chaos erupts.

You are not sure what to do at the moment, but you have a sudden, gut wrenching reaction when you remember that all of your weapons were confiscated when you boarded the Edmund Fitzgerald, and that they are all safely locked up in the weapons locker somewhere else on the ship.  The day is definitely not starting out well.

That's what is in store for the dear PCs.  I hope they will enjoy it.  I'm pumped and definitively inspired to run a fast paced thrill ride of an adventure.

So get your thinking cap on and come up with an inventive and rambunctious beginning to a campaign - or just the start of a particular adventure in an existing game.  It can be really fun and refreshing to toss the players into a situation and yell 'go!'

Enjoy the explosions.

- Ark

Wednesday, November 2, 2011

Galactic Proportions

Stars Without Number suffers from the same aliment that Traveller suffers from - two dimensional space.  It's a very understandable affliction.  It's hard to represent a three dimensional stellar map on a flat piece of paper, and even if you do, ho-boy, you have to take out the slide rule to figure distances between the stars.

In order not to upset the hard-core amateur astrophysicist lurking just under my skin, I have to look at the star maps in Stars Without Number as, um, hyperspace maps - maps that are only relevant to the extra-dimensional space that starships hurtle though. This space bears no relevance to real 3d space - just enough pseudo-logic so that the sleeping astrophysicist will not awaken and rain on my parade.

But . . . let's assume that the maps bear 'some' relation to real space.  Kevin Crawford says very little about the 'shape' of human-space, or its dimensions.  The most explicit snippet is this:

"By 2600, the frontier of human space extended almost ten years of spike drive travel away from Terra. Even after taking Jump Gates as far as possible, a fast pretech courier ship required a year to reach the farthest colonial worlds."

That date is just before the end of the Golden Age and the beginning of the Scream, so those dimensions should pretty much be the height of human colonization in the galaxy.  Ship technology was also at it's height, so spacecraft could jump one hex per day.  Ten years equals roughly 3650 hexes.  The author very carefully never states the size of hexes on the star maps, so if we interject Traveller sizing - which if memory serves correctly is one parsec, we get:

3650 hexes X 3.26 light years = 11,899 ly

So, human space has roughly a 12Kly radius.  A little image stealing and circle drawing gets us this galactic map:



That's a fair chunk of the galaxy colonized, but it still leaves ample room for who knows what.  Now, I can start thinking about SWN's 'Known Space' visually - inside my noggin.  Not that I really need to, but it's more comfortable that way for me.

So, that ends my thought experiment for today. :)

- Ark

Chinese Translation

One of my favorites.  Enjoy.  I'm sure it is game related somehow.  :)




- Ark

Sunday, October 30, 2011

Hit Point Survey

Warriors Experience Table, SWN, pg 21
Okay, so this isn't one of those 'click the button' surveys, but more of a 'response requested' kind of thing, involving standard D&D style hit point rolling.

Now, in all my years, I've been under the impression that when you level, you take your Hit Die and roll - then add your new hit points (and perhaps CON mod) to your existing hit point pool.  Everyone I've ever dealt with has been in agreement - it seems to be intuitive.

Stars Without Number has classes, levels, and hit points similar to D&D, but apparently, that's not the way you do it.  From page 23 in Stars Without Number, under the heading Hit Points:
"Don’t worry too much if you roll a low number. As your character gains experience they will gain more hit points and the chance to reroll poor dice. Some GMs may choose to omit the initial roll entirely and simply start new characters with the maximum possible hit points."
Unless I'm misreading, this seems to imply for SWN that, you reroll your hit point every level.  It's an interesting concept, if it is indeed the concept here.  Has anyone heard of such a thing?

- Ark

Oktoberbrawl

Apparently, a couple of weeks of regular gesture drawing is pretty effective.  This sketch actually looks like a human being - at least to me, anyway.


So watch out.  If you spill your beer, Oktoberbrawl Girl will kick your ass with a stick.

- Ark

Thursday, October 27, 2011

Dungeonspiration: Stars Without Number

I used to have a reoccurring dream.  Well, it was more of a reoccuring theme.  I would be in a comic book shop, or a book store, or a flea market in an ancient submarine, or in the Transylvanian basement of a fetid castle - and I'd be looking through boxes.  These were big long white boxes filled with every role playing game imaginable.  I would dig through them, looking for that one science fiction role playing game that had everything I wanted - good combat mechanics, good skill systems, good starship rules, and good universe generation systems.

I'd inevitably find some rpg system that had an awesome cover and everytihng I wanted inside - and I'd rush to the zombie check out girl or the auto-purchase-bot with a big smile on my face.  Then I'd wake up and start cussing - realizing that it was just a dream.

I've had that dream a LOT.  It's representative of my search for a perfect rpg in my younger years - especially a perfect science fiction game.  I've played quite a few - Star Frontiers, various forms of Traveller (black book, mega, 2300,) Space Master, GURPS Space, Star Wars - and read even more.

Okay, I'm not going to say that Stars Without Number is perfect, but damn, it's good.  It seems to fulfil the promise that Traveller made back so many years ago, but never quite delivered.

Traveller had a fun - if nerve racking - character generation system where your character could die before gameplay started.  It was great for generating back-story - but the actual mechanics were - MEH.  Stars Without Number takes good old fashioned D&D mechanics, simplifies them, and tweaks them with a light skill system.

There are just threee classes, Warrior, Psychic, and Expert - but the Expert - like LotFP's Expert class, is highly customizable with skills, allowing you to create anything from a doctor or spaceship mechanic, to a bounty hunter.

The game tosses out the good old hit charts and follows a simple formula.  Twenty always hits, one always misses, and you determine that with a d20 + your Combat Skill + Att Mod + Att Bonus + defender's AC.  Poof.  Beautiful.  I really wish the d20 developer dudes would have thought of this, rather than having to flip AC on it's head.

And you know when your first level psychic has d4 HP and a sniper rifle does 2d8 - only good things can happen. :)

Where Stars Without Number really shines though, for me, is in it's universe creation.  Just like in Traveller, you sit down and randomly roll up a sector full of stars.  In my youth, I loved this, and as other sci-fi RPGs were produced, they had similar creation rules, but they got more specific on the physical characteristics of various solar systems.

I loved the complexity and exactness of some of those systems.  Charting out how many AUs distant each planet was from it's star, calculating the specific density of a planet, determining albedo, etc - all these were great fun - for me - an amateur astrophysicist.

It never really translated into fun during a game.  Even if the players knew what the term 'albedo' meant, they wouldn't have cared to know that planet X925g-U had a rating of 57%.

Stars Without Number tosses most of the physical nuts and bolts and replaces them with - um - for lack of better words - a SCI-FI-TROPE-A-TRON-3000.

The default setting of the game is that humanity expanded rapidly into the galaxy, achieving amazing technology, then something happened to crash civilization and crash it HARD for a while.  Now humanity is rebuilding and worlds are reconnecting with one another.  You know, that old chestnut.

Rolling up a world, you might get something like this:

Atmosphere: Breathable mix
Temperature: Warm (could result in a desert or swampy type place)
Biosphere: Immiscible (i.e., you can't eat the natives)
Population: Hundreds of Thousands of Inhabitants
Tech Level: 4 - Baseline
Worlds Tags: Police State, Hostile Biosphere
Culture Base: Russian

Looking at the results, and the pointers in the book, a hundred idea pop in my head.  The first to come into mind is a place like Harry Harrison's Deathworld - a planet full of jungle animals and plants ready to eat anyone in a second.  But it could just as easily be a world reminiscent of earth in Stephen King's The Mist or frankly, Frank Herbert's Dune.

The creation process wonderfully tosses a bunch of tropes together and lets that pot full of 'kitchen sink' soup cook in your mind for a while until something awesome pops out.  Who gives a flip about the gravity of a world - unless that gravity is different enough to mean something and be a good plot device.

Star Without Numbers also allows for the same type of randomized trope construction of cultures, aliens, npcs, religions, political parties, and corporations. Each of these systems is geared towards creating conflict and issues that will provide ample adventure opportunities for the pcs, wherever they go and whatever they do.  It's a wonderful sandbox creation system, and very fun to work with.

I mean, I would have never thought to make up a low-tech world where the entire society had to hunt down alien whale-like creatures to survive, in some sort of Moby-Dick-gone-viral planet, but with a roll of some dice, my mind began churning along and I was there.

Sine Nomine published the original version as a free pdf, and I bought a physical copy of it.  Enjoying that, I grabbed Skyward Steel, which is a sourcebook for space navies.  I liked that so much, I went and got the updated version of Star Without Numbers from Mongoose - and it was worth it - rules for AI's and mech, and an entire world culture generation system.

I'm really impressed with what Kevin Crawford has been doing with this game.  I haven't been this inspired to run a science fiction game in quite a while.

So if you haven't yet, go grab Star Without Numbers.  It's free, and even if you don't intend to play it, it's chock full of good adventuring ideas that should impress even jaded players.

- Ark