Used this playlist last session for a starship battle.
Used this playlist last session for a starship battle. I think it’s really good at evoking that feeling of scale that’s crucial for wet navy and space navy alike.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_69o-lYHj-M&index=2&list=PLR3R_-LsCwyCezkdwNB5GmkX8JWE-tyir
Had a fantastic session tonight.
Had a fantastic session tonight. I might be biased since it’s the first campaign I’ve GMed but I’d call it the most fun RPG session I’ve ever played.
I won’t give you the full story because I’m tired but I’ll give you the summarized version. The crew of the Hornet met with the Johnathon Julius of the Capulus mafia and were tasked with abducting the prized pet of a Republican Senator to scare her into line. Naturally, this pet was an eight foot tall space wolf.
So they go in disguised as chefs for an upcoming eclipse festival and (after getting rid of their radioactive cargo) are invited into the senator’s mansion. They find out that the beast is basically just kept in a range of wild forest and summoned with the sound of a whistle broadcast through the area.
They begin their preparation. Captain Vass finds Captain Khal, an old war buddy of his who’s on security detail, and convinces him to temporarily shut down the anti-aircraft defenses. Pilot Kip and Navigator June scout out the forest and it’s security, discovering that most of the security relies on IR, and that the canopy is too thick to land the ship. Meanwhile, Engineer Pierre constructs an IR smoke bomb out of kitchen materials, and sends his AI to hack into the forest’s security.
Now here’s the plan. Vass, Kip and Pierre head into the forest and use the hacked security to play the whistling sound, leading the creature towards a predefined point at the edge of the forest. If they had to, they’d use the smoke bomb to hide from the security (they didn’t). June flies the ship to this point and prepares for pick up.
Surprisingly, the plan went pretty well, but with a few issues. Kip had to kill two security guard who followed them in. Pierre successfully activated the whistle system but he had to leave his AI (Icebreaker) behind, so that will be interesting in the future. Then there’s probably the dumbest thing I’ll ever have to ask a Reckless roll for. The creature stopped well short of the ship so Kip had to reveal his secret weapon. A suit of fresh meat (from the kitchen) strapped to his body, which he would use to lead the creature towards its cage in the cargo hold. One of the dumbest plans I’ve ever heard in an rpg so it should come as no surprise that he rolled a perfect six and easily lead the thing into the cage. Then the crew shot it to hell with stun guns.
But this isn’t enough for the Hornet crew, so they cut off one of the beast’s toes. Then Vass takes it back to the kitchen and slips it into the soup that will be part of the senator’s meal. He directs a server to send the meal to the senator’s table. Then he warns the senator that the Capulus mob are after her, and promises to help protect her under the name of “Romeo Montague” (it’s worth mentioning that his real last name is Montago and he’s a wanted deserter). Then he accuses the poor server of being a Capulus agent just as the toe is revealed, and in the ensuing chaos escapes by a rope hanging from the ship hovering above (the roof was open to view the eclipse). Captain Kahl decides he’s gone too far and tries to stop him but is too late. I’ve got a returning villain out of it though so I’m not complaining.
As the legend of “Romeo Montague” spreads throughout the galaxy the crew make it back to Julius’s ship, The Necessary Evil, and hand the creature over. Vass and June have their debt removed, and Vass even gets a favour for his big show in the dining hall (Julius is a sucker for dramatics). Kip’s debt is not revoked though, and then he makes a big mistake.
He confronts Julius which eventually becomes a threat. Then he goes for his machete and pulls out a dose of combat drugs he kept from the previous mission. Julius sees the drugs, grabs his hand in a flash and twists it out of his hand with unnatural strength, revealing himself to be at least partially cyborg. The two attempt to fight but Vass distracts Kip by ordering him to stand down, resulting in him being disarmed and pinned. Vass immediately expends his favour to let Kip go unharmed, and also has to reveal the location of the rest of the drugs (these things are way more valuable than they look). So they sell out Jibbly Jones, the guy they gave the drugs to in exchange for a medbay (they got seriously ripped off :P). They leave and the Capulus ship immediately jumps off towards Jone’s home base.
A fantastic session, and it even leaves things conveniently open for the future. I was already planning on the factions going after the drugs in the background, and I wanted a foil villain to chase after Vass. I got golden opportunities for both of these so I’m well pleased.
Geeze, that was nowhere near as short as I expected. 😛
Hey, I just had a couple of questions.
Hey, I just had a couple of questions. Firstly, when a character advances and they haven’t used their xp trigger, do they have to discard it for a new one or can they keep it if they want to?
Secondly, if a faction offers a mission for the crew is it reasonable for that mission to clear up debt for several players or just one?
Thanks.
Ran my first session a couple of days ago.
Ran my first session a couple of days ago. Our club had to deal with some troublesome democracy so we didn’t get much time, but we did get a fair bit of Session Zero done. We’ve got a classic sci fi set up with a war between a big expansionist government and a smaller band of independents. The crew are all deserters in one way or another. We didn’t actually plan that it just worked out that way. Our heroes:
Captain Vass Montago: Crowded Military Commercial
An ex-navy trader who deserted and stole the ship from the expansionists. Tough in a fight and a cunning merchant.
Navigator June Kato: Galctic Starfaring Explorer
Deserted with Vass and helped steal her own ship. A skilled explorer both in space and on the ground.
Pilot Silph “Kip” Kipler: Impoverished Starfaring Scoundrel
A rogueish fighter pilot who used to work for the independents. He ran off with the crew after literally bumping into them shortly after their escape.
Engineer Pierre Lyon: Advanced Industrial Academic
Escaped after being framed for some kind of “accident” at a starship manufacturing laboratory. Took an AI and a handful of students with him.
The ship is going by the tentative name of “The Unicorn” since it’s got it’s one laser cannon sticking out from right above the helm. Though personally I’m more partial to “The Narwhal”.
There’s one thing I was looking for help with. I allowed Vass to take cargo (class 1 coffe beans) as one of his starting assets but now I’m not really sure if that’s legit. What I’m thinking is I might just give them the cargo as part of the jump point I throw at them next session and let him have another asset. Thoughts?
Anyway, I’m loving the game so far and very much looking forward to next week.
Some lovely ambient space music from Elite Dangerous. Part 3’s got the music for dramatic space fights.
Some lovely ambient space music from Elite Dangerous. Part 3’s got the music for dramatic space fights.
Hot damn.
Hot damn. So I’m looking at the vehicle rules in the marketplace, and I’ve noticed that if you can stack plated and reinforced (I don’t see any indication otherwise) you could make a class 3 ground vehicle with 8 armour and still have room to spare for a gun.
Not only does this give you the rare chance to roll a pbta move with a +8 (+9 if you could work a data point in), it makes the vehicle ludicrously resilient. Rolling Brace for Impact with +8 means you’ll definitely get at least a 10+ on your roll, and gives you a 5/6 chance of getting a 13+. Because it’s reinforced the tank automatically reduces the severity of damage from anything less than breaching weapons by one stage. Therefore, our supertank will typically reduce the severity of non-breaching attacks by 3 stages, and breaching attacks by 2 (that’s if I’m understanding the description of the Reinforced tag correctly).
This means that the tank will completely shrug off even destructive firearms like grenade launchers without breaking a metaphorical sweat. Heavy weapons like rocket launchers fare a bit better, being typically reduced to minor damage. So a 70mm rocket full of space explosives will still only dent the armour. Bring 5 of them and you might be getting somewhere. Replace the war-heads with shaped explosives (Breaching) and you’ll only need 4.
And then there’s spaceship weapons. These are listed as lethal damage, and I presume they count as breaching since they’re intended to fight other spaceships. As a result, a direct hit from a massive ship mounted laser cannon firing from low orbit will still only do severe damage. It will take 3 hits in total to destroy the supertank. Now because this is a class 3 vehicle we still have room for a turret, in which we could fit a heavy weapon. Let’s give it a class 3 high-velocity cannon with the tags Breaching, Shock, and Detonation being represented by the different types of shells it has available. Breaching allows it to damage a spaceships hull, shock allows it to cause all sorts of malfunctions, and detonation allows it to shred external modules as well as deal with ground threats.
Yes that’s right, what we are making here is a ground vehicle capable of going toe-to-toe with spaceships, for the admittedly expensive cost of two class 3 assets (though make an explorer/military type and you can actually start the game with this tank). The only other downside is that it’s slow, but does this thing sound like it would ever need to run away?
I’ve just been reading through the game, can’t wait to play it.
I’ve just been reading through the game, can’t wait to play it. But I just had a few rules clarifications I was hoping for.
Firstly, with the custom flyer/vehicle skills it says “claiming a new vehicle as your Custom Vehicle, adding an extra upgrade to it.”. I read this in two ways. One is that you claim an existing vehicle as your new custom and add an extra upgrade to that. The other is that you claim a whole new vehicle identical to the one you lost but with one more upgrade. I was wondering which one was intended.
Secondly, if you start the game with a vehicle and choose for it to be armed/turreted, does its weapon count as one of your starting items (e.g. I choose an armed vehicle for my class two and its gun as one of my class ones)?
Thanks.