Wanted to share last night’s session due to some LOLs and to just see what peoples’ reactions are.

Wanted to share last night’s session due to some LOLs and to just see what peoples’ reactions are.

Background: Group of guys that have played D&D, Pathfinder, Dungeon World, etc for about 4 years together. We’re now playing Uncharted Worlds in a Star Wars universe around 3963 BBY, so toward the later part of the Mandalorian War. The war is a backdrop; we’ve kicked around the Outer Rim for a few sessions until the group found an ancient star chart which pointed them to Uncharted Space. We talked about mixing in heavy amounts of Star Control 2, Star Trek, Trade Wars 2002, Yankee Trader and Faster Than Light, so I worked that up for this week.

Fade, cut..they started last night’s session on Terrarria Station, a backwater at the far reaches of a hyperspace route, bordering Uncharted Space.

Since no hyperspace routes exist past here, there’s no instant travel…as they explore, they can update their NaviComp to chart safe routes if they exist (my plan is to make them few and far between, I want travel costs to matter so they encounter things as they go between systems).

Starting out the night, I plopped some “get started” plots in front of them…Intergalactic Navigational Technologies (iNavTech) is offering good money to chart the nebulas in the nearby sectors to ensure safe routes, there are several cargo missions, a merchant is looking for someone to move some cargo no questions asked (smuggling), and a research team needs to get to an abandoned research station. The DataNet is accessible from Terraria, and other nearby outposts have posted needed items if they just want to trader for awhile.

This is the first session with some new houserules, so I explain a few things to them. I’m treating Uncharted Space as a hexcrawl, with the concept that they have faster than light (FTL) engines in addition to a hyperdrive. Our house rule is that their engines are considered “baseline” (upgrades avaiable from the Nubian Designs rep!) and can go 5 hexes (1 hex = 1 sector = 1 day of travel) before they need to refuel. Hyperspace routes aren’t mapped in Uncharted Space; that’s the reason iNavTech is out here (difficulty in mapping hyperspace routes from the Star Wars universe being handwaved in favor of fun/exploration). Once they’ve mapped safe sectors (no asteroids, nebula, etc impeding their route) hyperdrive travel will be point to point for 1 fuel measured at 1 hour per sector.

After much debate (and a little GM push for time’s sake), the group picks the nebula exploration mission. Through some RP, they find out it’s somewhat dangerous…two other groups have accepted the mission before and not returned. They demand payment up front, the iNavTech rep refuses, they settle and walk away with their mission. Their Fuel is a Class 0 commodity they can acquire, so they roll an Acquisition (they’d previously found cargo and already had a Class 2 ship) and fill up their 4 cargo holds with extra fuel and take off.

First sector of the nebula is one move away, so we deduct fuel and they enter the nebula and role an assessment to scan…a 4. Their CommLink crackles and a robotic voice begins hailing them. It’s fuzzy, most likely due to interference from the nebula they’re in, and they try to hail it again (Face adversity, helm (comms) roll+expertise) to clear up the signal…another 4. Through the CommLink they hear “Locked On firing…” and a missile can be seen coming straight for their helm. “What do you do?” Evade (face adversity, helm roll+expertise)…a 5. Missile hits, “Shields up!” roll is a 3 (seriously). Critical damage to the helm, shields are down and, we decide, a debility to the ship.

I’ve previously layed out the four ship sections for them and assigned stuff to each (houserule). Each of the helm, quarters, cargo bay and engineering have 8 slots they can assign stuff to. When they take a debility, I roll a d8 and figure out which system takes the hit. In this case, I roll a 1 (the theme of the night was horrible rolls) and the Energy Cannon on their hardpoint (slot 1 in each section) is offline from the damage.

“The robotic voice crackles through the comms again, indicating it’s coming back around for another shot. It sounds like it’s malfunctioning and isn’t responding to hails; What do you do?” Evade, gtfo of here (face adversity, helm, success), and another crew member comes over to try to patch up the cannon while they swerve around. The doctor (academic/explorer) asks about weaknesses (can’t remember the skill), and I reveal that these things have no shields to speak of, they’re scouts/probes (think Slylandro, or auto-ships from FTL). Their cargo bay hardpoint is mine laying, so they place mines and hope for a hit. They Launch Assault and it goes poorly, but our Mystic (a homebrew class that has some telekinesis abilities) asks if he can use his force/telekinetic powers to pull a mine into the path of the ship. A stretch, but I say sure…roll+mettle, a 12, the probes’ hull collapses and the immediate danger is averted. They still have a critical helm, no energy cannon but they examine the remains of the probe and, finding “something useful”, the energy cannon of the probe looks like it’ll fit if they can successfully harvest it and integrate it (they succeed). Fearing for their helm, they head back to the station to repair before continuing their mapping mission.

At this point I should explain my players. “Murder hobos” is probably a good categorization. I’ve planned campaign arcs before that were glorious and detailed, and they are wont to kick down the door, walk in and stab the first thing that gets in their way. Such is life for a bunch of guys looking to blow off steam on a Thursday. Returning to Terraria, the iNavTech rep seems surprised. “Back so soon?” he asks, whereby our Mystic force grips his nether regions, while our doctor (who has shocking, stunning gloves) grabs him in his debilitated state and renders him unconscious. His team (crew) of medics play it off as a seizure/heart attack and rush him to the stations’ medbay.

We have a player missing for the night, a cyborgish Mandlorian (think General Grievous) who recently received an AI at his last level up. He missed two weeks ago, and we decided his consciousness (“More machine now than man”) would be transfered to a garbage hauler the group acquired (think Gobots). Tonight, the good doctor decides to take our buddy (switched “off” in the ship’s cargo bay), and transfer him again as a prosthesis attached to the iNavTech rep. They roll, we laugh, I mention it’s getting a little crowded in here and figure that my moves in the future are going to involve the rep’s consciousness taking control over my player.

At this point, the station manager (a Hutt out of favor with his kind, but still crime boss-esque) brings them to his office, shows them the video footage of what they’ve done and, liking their style, demands they do him a favor. In exchange, he’ll fix the critical hit on their helm. They try to haggle (bad roll), “This is not a negotiation.” He wants them to accept a courier mission (the smuggling mission, enslaved Huttlings) and redirect it to another station where his people will pick it up. They agree, after their scouting mission is done.

They head back out to continue exploring, find a Junkyard then, while exploring the last sector of the Nebula roll poorly on an assessment. I have a random encoutner table I cribbed from FTL events, so I roll…civilian in distress. Explorers, one of the groups that accepted the iNavTech mission and never returned, are lost in the nebula and out of fuel. My players have plenty (2 cargo bays of refill, nearly full tank). I figure this is an easy decision…help the guys out, maybe get paid with the Class 1 alcohol cargo they’re carrying, safely head back and get rewards for completing the iNavTech mission.

Not these murder hobos.

For the next 45 minutes, they debate what to do (our entire session is ~3 hours). “Make them slaves?”, “Destroy them outright?” “Take their ship?” “Pretend to help them, only to destroy them?” For 45 minutes I’m just smh and laughing listening to their plans. Finally, they settle on a plan…rescue them, force them to do some courier missions for them with an earned favor. They realize they’ve just subcontracted out the work, and spend another 15 minutes figuring out how they can turn the game into Sim Uncharted Worlds by just meta managing missions. I smh again and laugh, noting that, as usual, this is not how things were supposed to go.

The session ends with them turning in the iNavTech mission (the rep being in control of his otherwise unknown alter-ego), receiving some cargo and couriering it to an outpost 5 sectors away. I mess up the bartering rolls, so they trade two quanties of Purple Milk (Class 1, medium alcohol) for two quantities of Land and Air Speeders (Class 2, vehicle parts) at a military outpost that desperately wants alcohol and has lots of old equipment to sell off. The Hutt’s mission, which they neglected to do, will most likely come back and bite them next week, but we ended there for the night.

We’re trying, and often failing, to play RAW, but we’re having a good time. I think we’re coming around to the wealth system and the quick combat is definitely a plus.

#UnchartedSpace #MoreLikeMandalorianBores