Episode 1 of Faraday’s Folly
Dr. Kovacs was waiting in a boarding queue at the Symbaroum* starport, a vial of smuggled mutagen tucked inside his coat. Security guards conducted spot checks along the line. Kovacs tucked the vial into the bag of the woman ahead of him, foiling the guards. The woman sat in first class on the shuttle from the starport to the docking satellite, but Kovacs managed to “stumble” into her later and retrieve the vial.
Aboard the satellite, Zeke Pendergast was attempting to load the legit cargo – three giant stone tablets of dubious cultural relevance – aboard the Faraday’s Folly. A steward representing the Alliance for the Free Movement of Materials hit him up for a bribe. The guileless Pendergast fetched his remote-controlled spidertank to load the tablets himself. In retaliation, the Movers suited up into half a dozen heavy loaders (think Aliens) and flanked the Folly.
In the city, Jason Cho bailed out a former comrade, Specialist Yamato, from a night in the drunk tank. Leaving the Hall of Justice, they were surrounded by the thugs Yamato had offended the night before. Cho made short work of a couple, but the remainder ganged up on Yamato and beat him down pretty hard. Cho hustled Yamato to the starport and fast-talked him aboard the shuttle to avoid further complications with law enforcement.
Aboard the satellite, Cho spotted an old friend among the Movers, and sweet-talked her into letting the crew bribe their way off-system at a reasonable price. The Folly debarked to meet their buyer.
On Caliban Station, Kovacs handed off the vial to Mirada Kith, an arbitrator with the Flotilla. Impressed by his capability, Kith asked a favor of Kovacs: retrieving a highly secure exploratory land vehicle from Chobara Entresi, who’d borrowed it from the Flotilla and run off. So long as the tank was retrieved intact, Kith didn’t care whether subterfuge, persuasion, or force were used. Kovacs agreed.
Pendergast’s attempts to unload the tablets were not as successful. His local buyer pretended to offer him some assets of similar quality, but secretly went to call Tomahna Tomar, a ranking lieutenant in Carnak’s Corsairs who specialized in fine art. When her goons took the tablets without paying, Pendergast attempted to bluff a trade, then tried pulling the pins on two goons’ flash-bang grenades. The net result: Pendergast waking up, concussed, in Tomar’s shuttle.
After Pendergast wrecked Tomar’s shuttle in the process of trying to escape – rigging his pocket torch with a plasma battery – she ordered her goons to drag him off to some alley and execute him. Dr. Kovacs, thankfully, spotted Pendergast and ambushed the goons. The doctor got gutshot in the ensuing firefight, but Pendergast tripped an old fire suppression vent to give them some cover to escape. Cho covered their retreat to the ship with his heavy breaching armor, and the crew made it to the Folly safe, if not intact.
* no relation to the Swedish fantasy RPG of the same name. I knew I was stealing this from somewhere, but couldn’t recall where.
https://fsr2n.wordpress.com/2016/09/13/uncharted-worlds-faradays-folly-episode-1/
GM notes:
* Combat is brutal! I’m tempted to retcon some of their injuries, or at least intervene enough to suggest they find a quality medical kit, before they leave Caliban Station.
* I am so, so grateful that there are a small, discrete number of GM moves in Uncharted Worlds. I know that other PBTA games try to be thorough and offer upwards of a dozen, but really you just need seven or so. It’s easier for me to scan a short list and light on an appropriate outcome.
* The PCs took to Cramped Quarters well. In some other game with more abstract forms of “damage”, like FATE or Cortex+, I can see myself borrowing a variation of that move for recoveries.
* I was worried about the Acquisition move being too powerful. “So the PCs are pretty much guaranteed to get a better asset when they trade one in?” Then Zeke failed his Acquisition roll, so the Corsairs just showed up and seized his assets by brute force. 🙂
* That said, I know the rules say that each asset should be rolled for separately, but I have a hard time seeing the fun in that.
Combat damage is brutal but in science fiction you should expect huge amounts of blazing unholy energies zapping back and forth and the players must compensate with super-armour (British spellings with the U, it is a Canadian game!) and high-tech medical gear.
It is your FIRST session? The space station is crawling with detail (and probably space cooties). How much of that was GM background and how much came up as questions to players?
Pierre Savoie : to the best of my recollection:
Provided by the players:
– the illicit cargo (mutagen) and who it was for (the Flotilla)
– the legit cargo (stone tablets)
– Cho’s friend (Yamato) and the crime he’d been arrested for (drunk & disorderly)
– name of their destination (Caliban Station)
– Pendergast’s botched means of escape (flash-bangs)
– Pendergast’s second botched means of escape (rigged plasma torch)
– name of their second destination (Carthage)
Provided by the GM:
– the name of the first planet (Symbaroum)
– the layout of Symbaroum starport (terminals on the ground, similar to a 21st century airport, and shuttles to the stardock)
– names of various NPCs (Mirada Kith, Chobara Entresi, Tomahna Tomar)
– which factions showed up to cause trouble (AFFM; Corsairs)
– the asset the Flotilla wanted retrieved (a rugged tank, inspired by a G+ thread in this community 😉 )