Considering my players said they want some Battlestar Galactica-ish game (and I’m happy to oblige, limiting them to a Class 2 ship at first), and this will be my first time GMing UW (having 30-yr experience GMing other games, and about 6-month experience GMing AWE games), I’d like to know if anyone has tried to adapt Vipers, Raiders and Cylon ships to UW.
If yes, great! I’d love to see what you’ve done.
If no, it’s great anyway. I’d just need some example starships in order to know if I understood everything about ship building…
Vipers and Raiders are very simple — they’re run of the mill starfighters, as per p122 of the UW book. For weapons, they’re basically LMGs as per p117 of the core book. Vipers and Raiders are, functionally, identical so I wouldn’t bother statting them up separately.
If you’re trying to represent the advanced Mark VIIs from the new BSG series, I’d pin +Agile onto the basic starfighter frame.
On the topic of new BSG, Raptors warrant a build too, and they would look like this:
Raptor [Class-2 Shuttle (Sealed, Workspace: Broadcast Kit)]
Wiki says passenger count for the Raptor is 5 to 10, and the default load for a Shuttle in UW is 6, so I’m willing to say you can cram in 10 if no one wants to be comfortable, which sounds about right for when we see it used as a marine landing craft.
At the end of the series when they turn these things into murder machines, you would slap on the +Armed tag and give them Rocket Launchers (with +Seeking probably).
Cylon Heavy Raiders strike a balance between Raptors and Vipers, but are notoriously sturdy, so they’re something more like:
Heavy Raider [Class-4 Shuttle (Sealed, Armored, Transport, Armed: LMG)]
Basestars would need me to take more of a look at before I ad lib some stats.
Alfred Rudzki, thanks a lot for the help. This is already a great starting point. And I agree with you about the Raptor’s passager count (considering the new series, when Boomer brings some people from Caprica we have a similar body count, no?).
A quick skim of the BSG wiki tells me they let on four children and three adults, and Helo swaps seats with Gaius. So that’s Six adults, and four kids, or 10 “seats” filled. I imagine, in theory, they could have loaded up others, but then you get into the question of mass in space travel and avoiding Cylon shooting at you 😉
There was no room for more. At least if you consider people needed to be seated during the journey. 🙂
My wife is watching the new series for the first time (we halted our Star Trek Marathon – we intend to watch every single episode of all series until the end ot the year) and is fascinated. She was never a sci-fi fan, so I’m pleased to re-watch with her.
To tell the truth, she was the one who suggested pausing our DW campaign in order to start a UW game.
That sounds awesome! Yeah, my wife got addicted to BSG a few years ago, which was awesome for me because I already loved it and was happy to watch it all again, haha.
So some more thoughts: think technically — as written — shuttles and speeders from the Vehicle section of the book can’t perform Jumps. That’s fine for Vipers, but Raptors and Raiders can jump just fine. That might be worth a Tag (something like ‘FTL drive’).
Beyond that, some skimming reminded me that the Raiders are actually really agile. In which case, I might be tempted to give the Raiders +Agile, making them more dangerous in dogfights with Mark II Vipers, and making Mark VIIs barely an even match.
The “FTL drive” tag is a great idea.
In any case, this is just a starting point. I don’t wanna write anything on stone: it’s up to them to follow a more direct BSG-to-UW approach or not. I really want to play to find what happens. 🙂
At first, I want to put them on a situation where they are aboard their ship orbiting a barren planet of sorts (it’s up to them what they are doing there, and this may ensure new adventures) before the attack on the Colonies. It will be one of the Threats, but I want to give them multiple paths to fun.
Factions are something to ponder. The Military, The Cylons, The Colonists, The Presidency, and (maybe) The Terrorists are all options… But as I have four players, I will let them help me designing them asking them lots of questions.
Truth to be told, it’ll be “inspired by BSG” but not a conversion…
I think you could do vipers as normal C3 flyers (sealed, agile, armed?) which makes them sound expensive. Maybe sealed is just free in your setting, so they’re C2. Not sure if it matters.
I’d definitely add in some custom moves for space battles though.
I currently run space combat as a set of discrete jobs – telling the players what they SHOULD be doing then asking them what they actually do. Shorthanding the below as “pick X/Y moves” that have some mechanical stuff to go with it, too.
* Maneuvering: you close the distance; you move out of their range; you’re outside their firing arc.
* Electronics: you jam their communications; you’re able to get a targeting lock; you confuse their sensors.
* Weapons: you inflict harm on their hull; you hit a specific system; you deflect their weapon’s fire with yours.
* Engineering: you seal off a hull rupture; you reduce systems heat; you push the engines harder.
It would be easy enough to add in a stage with fighters in here, plus more options in the above to fiddle with fighters.
My point: if you want space battles to be a big thing, add in some custom moves to reflect that. If you want them to happen in narration only, do it with Face Adversity
Good advice, Aaron Griffin. In fact, at first no players took interest in being a fighter pilot, but a recent conversation points otherwise. I’ll follow the tune they sing: if they want more detailed space battles (I’d love to, but I won’t force them), I’ll think about some movements.
I may even borrow something from other sci-fi RPGs I’ve GMed in the past.
Marcelo Paschoalin Face Adversity is a fun move to ad-lib off of. Just use it as a stakes setting move: the player decides what the goal is and how they’re trying to achieve it (“I’m gonna charge and fire on their engines in my fighter, trying to disable their ship”), then you respond with the possible risks (“there’s a lot of fighters in the way, so you might not be able to defend yourself too well if you’re focusing on the engines. could take some heavy ship damage, you ok with that?”). Let them revise the plan if they’re not ok, but when the risks are fine, just roll Face Adversity.