All posts by Tom

Expanded Frontier Map – update 4

Okay. I’ll admit that this project has taken over my brain. It’s been fun for me to work on it and dust off some of my programming skills. This will be another small update as I haven’t had a lot of free time this past week but enough to get some work done. If you haven’t read them yet, the early posts are here: original post, update 1, update 2, & update 3

The good news is that I think there will just be two more updates and we’ll have the completed map. There might be a few more after that for upgrades to the software but those will probably be a bit more spaced out. Here’s what’s left to do:

  • Random generation of spectral types (this post)
  • Complete “Alpha Dawn” map (this post)
  • Complete “Player’s Version” of the Extended Frontier map (update 5) – This is the full color version of the B&W map I’ve been posting
  • Complete “Referee’s Version” of the Extended Frontier map (update 6) – This will be a version of the map with all the Sathar system labels and jump routes included.

I’ve decided that to get to the completed map, I’ll just do the nebulae by hand. I already have the shapes drawn on the B&W version of the map so it’s easy enough to transfer them and do the render. Getting the software to do the nebulae will be a future project.

If there is interest, I could also do a remake of the Zebulon’s Guide to Frontier Space version of the Frontier map in this style. While I’ve modified my map to match most of the named systems on the Zeb’s Guide map, they are not exactly the same (for reasons discussed in earlier posts) and the unexplored stars do no match between the two maps. If there is a large clambering for it, I’ll do that as a future project.

Let’s get on with this week’s update:

Random Stellar Types

After I had the program interpolating the colors between the base spectral types, the next step was to sit down and code up the random generation of those spectral sub-types. I needed this to randomly fill in all the “unexplored” systems with a proper mix of spectral types. The explored systems are way too heavily weighted toward the F & G stars and there are a few too many (i.e more than about 3) for the number of stars in the region but that’s okay.

In any case, I wanted the relative numbers to be approximately correct based on real stellar distributions so I busted out data on the stellar mass functions and after a bit of math came up with a d100 table for the various main sequence spectral types (A, B, G, etc.) to determine the relative ratio of their sub-types (A0, A2, A4, etc). Once I had the numbers it was a simple matter to code up a few subroutines to generate the values. There are some refinements I could make in the future but this is good enough for now.

Complete “Alpha Dawn” Map

Once the program was generating random spectral types in the correct distribution, it was time to finish the smaller map corresponding to the Frontier provided in the original printing of the game and the later “Alpha Dawn” reprint (named to distinguish the core rules from the Knight Hawks supplement).

I did this by running a random map and then taking the spectral types generated and applied them to the remaining systems in the original map. Next I took the resulting file and edited it to tweak the positioning of some of the labels so that they weren’t overlapping any of the jump lines or other text. Finally, I took the nebulae I had created for the earlier version and imported them into this map. This gave me my final version of the smaller map.

The full version of this image is 2250×1750 px (1.8 MB). You can grab an even higher resolution version (6750×5250, 9MB) if you want.

I might revisit this in the future and do the nebula with different colors but for all intents and purposes, this one is done.

In making this I realized that the stars in system FS18 are really bright. It’s an M0 Giant and A0 main sequence star in a binary system. Combined, they are ~39x brighter than the sun and only 2 ly from Athor. That means they would appear to be at -5.27 magnitude star in the night sky. For reference, the brightest star in our sky, Sirius, is only -1.46 (small, more negative numbers are brighter). Venus, at its brightest, is a -4.2 magnitude object. That means that this star appears 2.5 times brighter than Venus at it’s brightest and about 30 times brighter than Sirius.

The Full Map

Now that the AD map is done, it’s time to start working on the full Extended Frontier map. I knew I was going to need a lot of random star systems so I generated a big random map with the program to get a good number of star systems with the correct spectral type distribution. I’ll use this whenever I need a random system value.

That done, the first step was to get the data for all the various labeled systems on the map. I already had the ones from the AD map I just needed to add the others. The data for these systems came from a variety of places. For the systems included on the Zeb’s Guide map, I used the spectral types listed in Zeb’s Guide after verifying that they made sense when mentioned in the modules (which usually just gave a color). I didn’t find any real issues so I just used the Zeb’s Guide values.

For the Saurian systems (east of the Frontier), the spectral types were taken from the article “The Sauria Sector” published in the Frontier Explorer, issue 4.

The data for the S’sessu systems (south of the Frontier), the spectral types were taken from the article “Phri’sk Anyone? Detailing the S’sessu Homeworlds” in issue 16 of the Frontier Explorer (p 23 – I haven’t gotten around to putting the individual articles of that issue on-line yet). However, that article only listed spectral types for two of the systems. For the other three, I selected random spectral types in the G & K spectral types from the list of random systems.

With all the star systems in place, I added in all the jump routes connecting those systems. I discovered I had a limit in my code that would not print a jump if it was over 14 light years in length. This was preventing the jump between Gruna Garu and Lynchpin from being drawn so I had to fix that bug. I still don’t let the random process create jumps that long but if you’re entering the data for a map and want a longer connection, the software won’t stop you anymore.

This also required me to change a couple of things. If you’re familiar with Zeb’s Guide, you may notice that the connection between Zebulon and Capella is now a straight line at 9 ly instead of a broken line at 10 ly. The broken line never made any sense given the Knight Hawks rules so I’ve done away with it. The other change was the connection between the S’sessu worlds of Kashra’sk and Minan. The map in the Frontier Explorer lists the distance as 12 ly but it is actually only 11. That is fixed on this map.

The next step is to now add in all the other systems on the map. To do this, I simply pull a system entry from the big random list for each star system on the map and remove the system from the big list so I don’t reuse it. I started in on that process, filling in the systems to the southwest of the Frontier but haven’t finished entering everything else yet. That will be the subject of the next update. However, here’s the big map as it currently stands.

Click for the full resolution version. This map is 4550×5050 px and ~1MB in size

This is just the raw, software generated map, with no tweaking or extra annotations on it. Over the next week or two, I’ll start adding in the rest of the stars and the nebulae. This map covers an area 90 ly wide and 100 ly high which should give your players plenty of area to explore if they need to get out of the Frontier and into the wilds.

That’s it for now

That’s where the project currently stands. If you have any thoughts, questions, or suggestions, let me know in the comments below.

Expanded Frontier Map – update 3

It’s been a fairly busy couple of weeks between family vacation and recovering from said vacation. I’ve been working on the map project but a lot of it has been behind the scenes and not anything that is easily displayable although some progress has been made. Additionally, I took the first steps toward getting the Murder at Rosegard adventure actually written up into a coherent document but again, nothing to display. So on to the map work.

Working on the Nebulae

This first bit definitely falls into the non-visible bit. I began implementing code that will allow me to draw the nebula. Over the past couple of weeks I figured out an good algorithm to use to trace the grid boxes containing the nebula and dived a bit into the code for SVG graphics to understand how to draw curvy lines.

There is nothing to see here yet but the next steps that I’ll be working on are:

  • Write the code that draws the curvy boundaries for a predefined nebula region
  • Write code to read in nebula regions from the data file
  • Write code to randomly generated nebula regions from some to-be-specified parameters.

That will probably be the content of the next update.

Stellar colors

The other major bit I worked on was adding in code to interpolate the colors of the stars based on their actual spectral type. Originally, the code could just handle a few spectral types: B0, A0, F0, G0, K0, & M0 plus a few special types like brown & white dwarfs, black holes, and neutron stars. That is what you’ve been seeing in the maps to date.

The colors for those stars were picked partially to be visually accurate and partially to aesthetically pleasing. Basically I had to exaggerate the color variations between the stars as almost all of them would appear white to the human eye. The interpolated colors will smoothly shift between these predefined colors.

What I wanted was to be able to handle any spectral type, i.e. G2, F3, K7, M5, etc. To do this I needed to interpolate the colors down the spectral sequences. It took a bit of reworking the code to do the interpolation and that’s were I spent most of the time I had this week.

Once that was done, I went back through and put in the actual spectral types for all of the named Frontier sector stars. These were derived from a variety of places. In the original rules, the stars were just given colors which correspond roughly to spectral types. Then there were a few more details in the published modules. Zebulon’s Guide to Frontier Space provided actual spectral type designations for all the stars in the Frontier. However, some of those spectral types in Zeb’s Guide didn’t agree with the previously published material.

This isn’t the first time I’ve tried to do this and luckily, the last time I did it, I recorded all the information. That was done on my Star Frontiers Network Wiki in the Frontier Travel Guide section. So for most of the stars, all I had to do was go through the pages on the wiki and grab the spectral types I had already figured out for each star.

With those code updates, and the updated spectral type values, you get the following map of the Frontier.

Frontier map with the stars of the named systems having the correct colors

There are a couple of things missing from this map. First, I didn’t put the nebula back on as this was a test of the spectral colors. Plus I didn’t do anything for Padda or the star systems labeled with the FSnn designations. Those are still at the “0” spectral types. I will get to those but there is another bit of the code I want to update first (more below).

Oh yea, @Fiddleback on Twitter mentioned he couldn’t see his house and I promised him a zoom box.

The Full Map

The other thing I worked on was getting everything set up for the big map of the full extended Frontier region. This mainly involved just translating the systems in this map to the larger canvas.

There’s no difference between this one and the one above, it is just situated on the canvas is the correct position to correspond to the big black and white map. Over the next little while I’ll be adding in all the other systems as I extract their coordinates from the big map into the data file that generates this map. Watch for updates in the future.

What’s Next?

I’ve already mentioned the work on the nebulae that I have on deck. On the spectral type front there are a few things I want to add there as far as functionality goes.

First, (this is the bit I hinted at above) I want to add code to the random system generation to properly generate the 0-9 subtypes. The relative ratios of major types (A, G, M, etc.) are accounted for but I need to get the relative numbers withing the major types correct. I have the data (or can get it) to do that, I just need to crunch the numbers and write the code. Once that’s done, I’ll add real spectral types to the systems labeled with the FSnn designation and really be ready to generate the full map.

With the spectral types the other things I need to do include:

  • Add code for drawing non-main sequence stars. Right now it handles all the main sequence stars (luminosity class V) and some giants and super-giants (luminosity classes III and I) but it may need to handle more when I get the full random generator done.
  • Add some interpolation of stellar sizes for main sequence K stars. Right now they are set to a fixed size but I’d like the later K stars to be a bit smaller than the G and early K stars and approach the size of the M stars. Again, the data is there in the program, I just need to code the interpolation.
  • Fix the color interpolation for M stars. It’s not obvious in the map that there is a problem since I don’t have any M stars that aren’t M0 but as you progress down the spectral sequence I’m interpolating to the colors of the Brown Dwarfs which are a pinkish color (In real life they’d be a really dull red which doesn’t stand out on the map). I want to make the interpolation go to a deeper red instead of pink. This should be a really quick fix. I know what needs to be done, I just need to code it up and test it.

Since I can do the nebula by hand for the Extended Frontier map, this work on the spectral types is where I’ll be focusing my efforts for the next little while. Once those updates are done, I’ll have everything I need to make the full-color Extended Frontier map.

The Code

Again, If you want to play with the code as I’m working on it, you can grab the current version from my StarMapGen repository on GitHub. This is still not the most user-friendly program to run as it it requires coding in all the parameters by hand before running but that’s on my todo list as well.

Detailed Frontier Timeline – FY60.115 to FY60.145

Here’s the next installment of the detailed Frontier Timeline. This month sees the sathar committing to a command structure for the coming war, the UPF begin to prepare for a potential threat, sabotage activities starting to hit important targets, and the Saurians beginning to flea their homeward in advanced of the sathar onslaught.

I’m thinking about increasing the posting frequency of these events on Twitter, and increasing the number of events in each monthly installment. Technically, an Earth month is 36 Frontier days so I should probably be posting at least at that rate. Anyway, it’s something I’m considering. Here’s last month’s events.

Date (FY)Event
60.115 The sathar starship construction center near Kizk-Kar completes construction of a heavy cruiser.
60.116 After nearly a year of investigation and undercover work, agents of the Pale government infiltrate and disrupt a major Star Devil operation in the outer reaches of the Truane’s Star system. Several vessels are seized including a frigate and pair of assault scouts which are added to the militia’s roster.
60.117 The first of the saurian Ark ships is completed in orbit around Sauria.  While initial testing is completed by the ship’s command crew, the colonists to depart on the ship begin assembling on the planet with all of their supplies.
60.118 The first creche of 50 Eorna born from the recovered egg ship are hatched. All of the new babies are heathy and appear to be free for any serious defects. Representing a 33% increase in the existing Eorna population, there is cautions excitement about the prospect for the future of the race.
60.119 Saboteurs strike against the exploration ship being refitted by the Yaziria Heritage Foundation damaging it but not destroying it, setting back their efforts. The Foundation suspects the Family of One to be behind the attack.
60.120 After months of debate and wrangling, Clan X is given control of the current campaign against the Frontier.  Clan Y continues to head the campaign against the Saurians.
60.121 The CDCSS Nightwind arrives in the Madderly’s Star System on its way back to Cassidine.  The ship needs to lay over in the system for several days to complete overhauls on its engines.
60.122 After 14 days of climbing, the Spire Dragon mountaineering team has found a location one quarter of the way up Mt. Spire where they establish their first forward camp.  Work begins hauling supplies up from the base camp while parts of the team continue the ascent.
60.123 Unknown assailants waylay the crew of the CDCSS Nightwind on their last day on station Kdikit. While several of the crew are injured, none are killed.  The assailants are not so lucky and those that are captured are turned over to station authorities for questioning.  The Nightwind gets underway for Cassidine
60.124 Beginning of year 2898 on Hum (Fochrik).
60.125 The CDCSS Nightwind is attacked by a pair of assault scouts as it makes its way out of the Madderly’s Star system. Too far out for assistance from Spacefleet, the ship is damaged but manages to damage its pursuers enough to escape, validating the ship’s design.
60.126 Large bomb explodes on Faire in the Capella system. Several hundred are injured and dozens are killed. It’s not clear who set off the detonation or its purpose.
60.127 The Medical Services Organization issues an alert about the rise is Ixiol cases in the Prenglar system, most notably on Gran Quivera but several cases have been reported on the Gollwin Academy. Cadets found using the drug expelled from Spacefleet.
60.128 The TTSS Destiny arrives in the White Light system on its Grand Tour.
60.129 Spacefleet and Star Law launch a joint investigation into the origin and distribution of the drug Ixiol.  While it’s believed to originate in the Dramune system, the exact source is still unknown.
60.130 Strike Force Nova departs White Light for the Timeon system.
60.131 The CDCSS Nighwind arrives at Triad and is taken into the CDC shipyards there for repairs and inspections.
60.132 Its shakedown cruise completed, the first saurian Ark ship begins to load supplies and colonists for their exodus from the Saurian system.  They don’t know where they will end up but prepare to flee the nearly inevitable annihilation at the hands of the sathar.
60.133 The Zik-Kit (Kizk’-Kar), Kawdl-Kit (K’tsa-Kar), and Ken’zah-Kit (K’aken-Kar) Defense Alliance (ZKKDA) places an order for an assault scout at the Inner Reach (Fromeltar) starship construction center to begin building up a militia for the K’aken-Kar system.
60.134 After weeks of planning and deliberations, Spacefleet initially uses its increased budget to commission two new battleships to be the basis of new Strike Forces. One is to be built at Gran Quivera (Prenglar) while the other is to be built at Triad (Cassidine)
60.135 Pale starship construction center repairs continue and capacity reaches 70% of its original value.
60.136 Another destroyer is completed at the sathar starship construction center in the Liberty system.
60.137 The first of the pirate ships seized in a recent raid (an assault scout) completes its refit and begins service in the Pale militia. 
60.138 The Council of Worlds finally addresses the petition regarding signals emanating from a system beyond Hargurt (Gruna Garu) in the Vast Expanse. After listening to the evidence and hearing testimony, the Council creates a “Beyond the Frontier” subcommittee to analyze the data and present a plan for investigation.
60.139 Inbound to Minotaur Station (Minotaur, Theseus), the TTSS Destiny reports a sighting of an unidentified vessel that carried Spacefleet markings and transponder codes but did not respond to hails.  The vessel matched the one reported in the Gruna Garu system.
60.140 Strike Force Nova arrives at Lossend (Timeon).  It will remain in system for 6 days.
60.141 The CDCSS Nightwind completes its refit and inspection.  It joins the CDC fleet as a regular freight hauler.  CDC commissions the next ship in the series, the CDCSS Mystic, designed more as a passenger liner rather than a freighter. The new model’s profile is identical to the Nightwind’s but swaps out the cargo bays for modular passenger decks.
60.142 The Spire Dragons continue to make progress finding a location approximately halfway up Mt. Spire to establish a second advanced camp.  Two team members were lost in the ascent to this forward camp.  The next three weeks are spend hauling supplies up to this second camp and resting at the lower one.
60.143 Construction of the Spacefleet battleship at the Pan Galactic starship construction center orbiting Gran Quivera (Prenglar) begins. 
60.144 Construction of the Spacefleet battleship at the Cassidine Development Corporation starship construction center orbiting Triad (Cassidine) begins.
60.145 The second assault scout seized in the Star Devil Pirate raid completes its refit and enters service in the Pale militia.  With the frigate and other ships reaching completion as well, the militia mounts a recruitment drive to increase its ranks.

And here’s the full timeline document:

DetailedFrontierTimelineDownload

Expanded Frontier Map – update 2

Okay, this project has obviously grabbed my interest as I’ve spent way too much time on it recently. I’m actually writing this before last week’s post goes live and I had to force myself to write the campaign post rather than this one. If you haven’t read the first two parts of this series, they are here: part 1, part 2. So what’s new?

Names

First up is names. I had mentioned that I needed to do some tweaking on the black and white version of the map before I was ready to release it with all the stars labeled with their designations. I sat down and did that one day while my daughter was at soccer practice. That gives us the updated big map.

All of the systems (and a few just on the edge) of the original Frontier map (from the Alpha Dawn rules) received an “FS” designation for “Frontier Sector” The few beyond were either afterthoughts that I missed the first time around or ones give that designation in the Beyond the Frontier series of modules. There are 56 of those systems.

All the other systems on the map received an “OFS” designation for “Outer Frontier System”. There ended up being 227 systems with that designation for a total of 283 star systems on the map. The OFS designation dates from when I first made this map way back in the 80’s.

After reading the Beyond the Frontier series of modules, I had the idea for a campaign where the PCs ran an operated a series of exploration missions into the region that Zeb’s Guide declared to be the Rim. I created this map and designated the stars beyond the original Frontier with OFS numbers. The numbers on this map do not correspond to those original numbers (especially since I had to move some systems around to match the Zeb’s Guide map) but that’s where the concept came from.

This is the map of the Expanding Frontier. If I ever place adventures or locations in one of these systems, I’ll use these designations so you can find them.

In addition to adding designations to the larger map, I added the capability into my map generation program to print out the names of the star systems. Currently it randomly generates a name based on the systems coordinates in the random generation portion but reading in data from the file for the Frontier I was able to give the actual names of the systems, either their name or the FS designation. Running the program with that capability results in the following map.

I’m using the Copperplate Gothic Bold font for the text. I just really like the look of that font with its small caps and serifs. It’s the same font I used on the black and white version of the map.

Again, I’ve done nothing to tweak the positions of any of the labeling on this map. That will be a final step that will have to be done by hand. Another behind-the-scenes change I made to the code was to have the output created on different layers. Thus the black background is one layer, the grid is another, the stars a third, the jumps a fourth, and the names on a fifth. That way you can turn each layer on or off as desired when generating the final PNG or JPG file from the SVG file.

Star Scaling

You may also notice that the neutron star jets are larger compared to the one in the previous post. I figured out how to properly scale the symbol for the neutron star to match the others. There were some other internal tweaks to the way I did the scaling in the program that make it more robust and will allow me to do things in a more controlled manner in the future.

Nebulae

With the scaling and the names done, it was time to tackle the nebula.

In the interest of seeing if I could just do the final map if the program drew the stars, names, and jumps (since I have nebula shapes on the black and white map), I decided to sit down and play with Inkscape to see if I could come up with a way to get a nebula effect using the filters built into the program.

I had looked around on-line and there were some examples of how to do a full image, or do make a random nebula and cut it out to paste into your image, but nothing that would take an already determined shape and make something that looked like a nebula out of it. So I was on my own.

This is where I spent way too much time on the project in the past week but I was having too much fun to stop. In the end I did come up with a way to make nebulae that I think I can reproduce within the program itself. It will be specific to rendering the file in Inkscape, but since that’s a free, open-source program, I don’t feel bad about making that a requirement.

Here’s a sample nebula created by this process (which I’ll describe in a minute).

Once I figured out the filter combination to use, I was excited and tried it on the full color map using the nebula shapes from the black and white one. And it failed miserably.

It turns out that the patterns generated depend on the scale of the map and my maps generated by the program were using pixels as the scale while all the test nebula I had been doing were using millimeters, which were off by a factor of almost 4. So I was getting way too much variation across the shapes.

So I had a couple of choices. I could either take the shapes, put them in a document with the correct (mm) scale, generate the nebula patterns, and copy them back into the final document. Or I could figure out a way to make it work in the computer generated document.

I spend a lot of time playing with the filters and making changes to the filter settings trying to come up with something that would work in the programmatically generated maps but in the end I couldn’t find anything that was easy to apply that I really liked. (Or even something that was hard to apply that I liked). In the end I changed my program to output the files, still using pixels, but using millimeters as the scale parameter and things work out just fine.

Using the shapes from the black and white map, and playing with different color schemes to test them out, gave me the following map.

This is first attempt, the final map will have different colors and shapes in the end but I wanted to see what it potentially would look like and play with the color combinations to see what I liked.

The nebulae really bog down the rendering when they are all done so I’ll probably put each of them on their own layer that I can turn on and off as needed to speed things up.

How to make a nebula

So how exactly did I make these? Once I figured it out, it’s actually fairly quick. First, draw a rough shape of the nebula.

Next, apply two Texture filters. The first is the “Crumpled Plastic filter” (Filters->Textures->Crumpled Plastic). Which gives us something like this:

This isn’t the most intuitive filter to apply but bear with me. The various ridges and color variations provide the structure of the nebula when we get to the next step. Next apply the “Watercolor” texture (Filters->Textures->Watercolor). And now we have a nebula.

You’ll notice that it shifts the shape somewhat. That’s fine by me because I’m going for the effect more than the exact shape. If the shape is more important, there’s another filter you can use which I’ll talk about below. It also expands the nebula a bit and can make it go outside the original area.

Next we need to add the color tones. This takes several steps. First duplicate the nebula and change the color of the second one. In this case, I’m changing it to purple (#ff00ff).

Next shrink the “interior nebula” with the new color. I did this using the Path->Inset command ( ctrl-‘(‘ ), applying it 2-5 times. Then select the “outer nebula”, i.e. the original one, and make it a little larger using the Path->Outset command ( ctrl-‘)’ ), again applying 2-5 times. If that makes everything too big, you can leave the outer nebula size alone and just shrink the inner one. You might also play with the opacity of the “inner” nebula and maybe change the fill from solid to a radial gradient. Just play with it to get something you like.

In this particular case, I expand the outer nebula 4 times, shrunk the inner nebula 5 and gave the inner nebula a radial gradient on it’s fill instead of it being solid.

Add in the black background and your done.

One thing I discovered is that if you move the shape around on the image, it changes the shape of the nebula. If you want to move it around without changing the shape, you have to first copy it and then re-paste it back into the image. That locks it’s parameters and you can no longer change it.

Also, another filter that you can use for a slightly different effect, either in place of the crumpled plastic filter or the watercolor one, is the Inkblot filter (Filter->Textures->Inkblot…). This one has some knobs you can tweak so you’ll have to play with it a bit more. If you want to keep the shape of the final nebula closer to the original shape drawn, you might want to use this filter instead of Watercolor with low horizontal and vertical inlay parameters. I just like the combination above a little bit better.

The great thing about these filters is that you can store them directly into the SVG file. So I should be able to make the nebula directly in the files although they will now only work with Inkscape instead of any generic SVG rendering program. To me that’s a small price to pay.

Up Next

The next step on this journey is to get program to read and write the nebula shapes from a file. Eventually, I’ll also want it to randomly generate nebula on the map in places where there aren’t any stars or jump routes. I have ideas on how best to do that, I just need to play around with the code to make it happen.

How do you like the nebula on the color map? Which color combinations do you like best? Are there others that you think I should try? Let me know in the comments below.

A Module Based Campaign – characters

As part of the “Module-based Campaign” posts, I thought it would be a good idea to have a set of characters to go along with the series to demonstrate the skill progression as they go through the adventures. It would also help me gauge the amount of additional XP needed between the modules to prepare them for the next ones.

To that end, I’m presenting a party of six PCs that will travel along on the adventures with us through this campaign. In this post I’ll present their starting stats and the updated ones after the Volturnus series, with XP added for Starmist but not spent. Going forward, I’ll post updates to the characters at the end of each installment in this series of posts.

Guidelines for skill increases

Each of these characters is progressing towards getting a spaceship skill per the standard Knight Hawks skill rules. They’ll need those skills to play in the modules starting with SFKH0: Warriors of White Light. As such, I’ll be developing the prerequisite skills needed.

In addition, I assume that the characters are not laser focused on that goal and will add branching skills to diversify their skill sets. They may not be as good as one of the other players in this other skills but if separated and in a bind, they might be able to pull something off. It’s been my experience that players will typically drive hard on their main skill but also pick up a variety of others along the way and I’ll represent that in the skill lists of these PCs.

Finally, in the standard rules, ability scores don’t really play into the skill chances except with military skills. As such, for Technological and Bio-social skills, there is little to no incentive to increase ability scores to get skill improvements. In the military skills, since the skill computation is one half the ability score plus 10x the skill level, and ability scores are increased at one point per XP, it doesn’t really make sense to start increasing DEX or STR until it costs more than 20 XP to increase the skill. Which means level 6 (the max) for military PSA characters and level 3 for non military characters.

Now this dynamic changes a bit if you have a lot of weapon skills as each point into a characteristic increase all your skills so you might shift a little sooner if you’re a military PSA character. Regardless, I’m going to focus more on the skill levels than the characteristics while improving these PCs. You might do it differently but that’s the fun of the game.

With the preliminaries out of the way, let’s meet our band of heros.

Starting Characters

These are our starting characters as initially rolled up (and yes, I did roll them up randomly).

Name: Yanni

Race: Yazirian, F

STR/STA: 40/40

DEX/RS: 55/55

INT/LOG: 55/55

PER/LDR: 45/45

Racial Abilities: Battle Rage 5%

XP: 0

PSA – Technological

Skills: Technician 1, Beam 1

Notes:

Born on Hentz, Araks. Yanni likes to tinker with gadgets and vehicles.  She’d love to be able to tinker on starships as well.

 

Name: Mekar

Race: Yazirian, M

STR/STA: 45/45

DEX/RS: 70/70

INT/LOG: 55/55

PER/LDR: 55/55

Racial Abilities: Battle Rage 5%

XP: 0

PSA – Bio-social

Skills: Medic 1, Environmental 1

Notes:

Born on Pale, Truane’s Star.  As Mekar will tell anyone who asks, his job is to understand the local critters and keep everyone else in one piece. [Mekar will eventually have a Rocket Weapons spaceship skill but getting a bio-social PSA character there takes a bit of work.]

 

Name: Dolnab

Race: Dralasite

STR/STA: 55/55

DEX/RS: 65/65

INT/LOG: 70/70

PER/LDR: 50/50

Racial Abilities: Lie Detection 5%

XP: 0

PSA -Techological

Skills: Computer 1, Projectile 1

Notes:

Born on Inner Reach, Dramune.  Dolnab loves to tinker with computers and also play flight simulator games. 

 

Name:  Michaella

Race: Human, F

STR/STA: 55/55

DEX/RS: 64/61

INT/LOG: 50/50

PER/LDR: 40/40

XP: 0 

PSA – Military

Skills: Beam 1, Melee 1

Notes:

Born on Minotaur, Theseus. Michaella grew up as the youngest of seven with six older brothers.  She learned to shoot and hold her own with her brothers’ rough-housing at a young age.

 

Name: K’sta’n

Race: Vrusk, F

STR/STA: 50/50

DEX/RS: 75/75

INT/LOG: 50/50

PER/LDR: 35/35

Racial Abilities: Comprehension 15%

XP: 0

PSA – Military

Skills: Gyrojet 1, Martial Arts 1

Notes:

Born on Terldrom, Fromeltar.  K’sta’n has always had an interest in weapons, but also in the forms of the various martial arts.

 

Name: T’vor

Race: Vrusk, M

STR/STA: 40/40

DEX/RS: 55/55

INT/LOG: 65/65

PER/LDR: 40/40

Racial Abilities: Comprehension 15%

XP: 0

PSA – Technological

Skills: Computer 1, Robotics 1

Notes:

Born on Gran Quivera, Prenglar.  T’vor used to hang aout at the University of Prenglar as a kid and chat up the tech professors.  He loves to hack computers and robots and can usually get anything working, eventually.  He also has a deep interest in astronomy.

So that’s our team – two yazirians, two vrusk, a dralasite, and a human. They somehow all ended up on Pale and were recuited to go on the Second Voltrunus Expedition.

After Volturnus

They all managed to survive the adventure (I said I was a nice Referee) and made it back to the Frontier with a sizable chunk of change and a bunch of XP points (I awarded them 70 for that bit of adventure). Spending their XP along the way, learning new skills from each other and out of necessity and practice, they have all increased their skills as follows.

Note that on the XP line I’m recording it as NN/MM where NN is the XP spent and MM is the total XP earned. The total earned includes the 13 XP for the Sundown on Starmist module.

Name: Yanni

Race: Yazirian, F

STR/STA: 40/40

DEX/RS: 55/55

INT/LOG: 55/55

PER/LDR: 45/45

Racial Abilities: Battle Rage 5%

XP: 70/83

PSA – Technological

Skills: Technician 4, Robotics 2, Computer 1, Beam 2, Melee 1

Notes:

Born on Hentz, Araks. Yanni likes to tinker with gadgets and vehicles.  She’d love to be able to tinker on starships as well.

 

Name: Mekar

Race: Yazirian, M

STR/STA: 45/45

DEX/RS: 70/70

INT/LOG: 55/55

PER/LDR: 55/55

Racial Abilities: Battle Rage 5%

XP: 70/83

PSA – Bio-social

Skills: Medic 3, Environmental 3, Projectile 2, Psycho-social 1, Melee 1, Gyrojet 1

Notes:

Born on Pale, Truane’s Star.  As Mekar will tell anyone who asks, his job is to understand the local critters and keep everyone else in one piece. [Mekar will eventually have a Rocket Weapons spaceship skill but getting a bio-social PSA character there takes a bit of work.]

 

Name: Dolnab

Race: Dralasite

STR/STA: 55/55

DEX/RS: 65/65

INT/LOG: 70/70

PER/LDR: 50/50

Racial Abilities: Lie Detection 5%

XP: 60/83

PSA – Techological

Skills: Technician 3, Computer 2, Robotics 1, Projectile 2, Melee 1, Demolitions 1

Notes:

Born on Inner Reach, Dramune.  Dolnab loves to tinker with computers and also play flight simulator games. 

 

Name:  Michaella

Race: Human, F

STR/STA: 55/55

DEX/RS: 64/61

INT/LOG: 50/50

PER/LDR: 40/40

XP: 68/83

PSA – Military

Skills: Beam 4, Melee 3, Environmental 1, Thrown 1, Martial Arts 1, Medic 1

Notes:

Born on Minotaur, Theseus. Michaella grew up as the youngest of seven with six older brothers.  She learned to shoot and hold her own with her brothers’ rough-housing at a young age.

 

Name: K’sta’n

Race: Vrusk, F

STR/STA: 50/50

DEX/RS: 75/75

INT/LOG: 50/50

PER/LDR: 35/35

Racial Abilities: Comprehension 15%

XP: 68/83

PSA – Military

Skills: Gyrojet 4, Martial Arts 3, Projectile 3, Technician 1

Notes:

Born on Terldrom, Fromeltar.  K’sta’n has always had an interest in weapons, but also in the forms of the various martial arts.

 

Name: T’vor

Race: Vrusk, M

STR/STA: 40/40

DEX/RS: 55/55

INT/LOG: 65/65

PER/LDR: 40/40

Racial Abilities: Comprehension 15%

XP: 68/83

PSA – Technological

Skills: Computer 4, Robotics 2, Beam 2, Melee 1

Notes:

Born on Gran Quivera, Prenglar.  T’vor used to hang aout at the University of Prenglar as a kid and chat up the tech professors.  He loves to hack computers and robots and can usually get anything working, eventually.  He also has a deep interest in astronomy.

Whether they had them before or not, the team picked up some weapons skills just to survive on Volturnus. They also diversified their skill areas a bit and significantly improved their primary skill.

Going Forward

Now that we’ve met the team. I’ll update their stats and skills at the end of each of module campaign posts in the future.

Do you have thoughts on how you’d develop the skills differently? How have your players advanced their skills across a long campaign? Have they been laser focused on a single skill or broadly diversified? Let me know in the comments.

A Module Based Campaign – part 2

Having survived Volturnus, it’s time for the PCs to attempt first contact with the Heliopes on Starmist. Originally, I had planned to cover the remaining 3 Alpha Dawn modules in this post but in reviewing Sundown on Starmist, I realized I had a lot to say about this module alone. So it gets its own post.

Issues

I started to write up this module like the Volturnus ones, but the more I looked at this module, the more concerns I had with it.  Playing it in the 80’s as a teenager when it first came out, I didn’t think much about it.  You need to rescue your employer who had been kidnapped, you found a cool super tank, and you got to blow things up.  It’s no fun to lose the tank in the end but I understand that for play balance reasons.  Give the PCs a fun toy to allow them to take on harder challenges but take it away so it doesn’t unbalance the game.

But looking at it with older eyes, you see the other side of the adventure.  As part of the adventure, the PCs transgress the social structure of a primitive society, violate and destroy their temple, and eventually completely destroy an artifact central to the religion of that culture.  Granted, the other option is complete annihilation of the species (and the PCs) but it’s still not the best story-line for success.  Especially after just leaving Volturnus where they actually worked to build up and sustain the native cultures.

Now if you’re players don’t care about those issues, you can play it as written.  Or if you want to give them a morally hard situation and choice, maybe it is still okay.  But if you want to avoid that kind of situation in your campaign, you might consider skipping it.  Looking at the pregenerated characters, the PCs are going to be a bit overpowered coming into this adventure if they just finished the Volturnus series.  So skipping it won’t hurt them for future adventures.  And their higher levels might give them some options for other paths through the adventure that don’t require the tank.

In any case, we’ll proceed assuming you do want to include the adventure, so let’s get to looking at it in a bit of detail.

Sundown on Starmist

Location, Location, Location

First of all, we need to figure out where this planet and system is located.  If you look at the beautiful map in the Zebulon’s Guide to Frontier Space, the artist placed Sundown way on the left side of the map by Araks and Scree Fron.  Based on the information in the module itself, this location doesn’t really make any sense to me and since Zeb’s Guide has other issues, I’m going to not use this location for the system.

Now, I thought that the module itself gave an approximate location for the system, but it turns out that if it does, I can’t seem to find it any more.  All the other modules do give locations for their systems, so that’s probably why I thought this one did as well.  In any case, there are clues as to the location of the system in the text of the module that we’ll look at to divine its location.

The module says that Sundown was discovered when a ship that Maximillian was serving on was forced to make an emergency landing on the planet Starmist.  That doesn’t exactly jive with the Knight Hawks rules (And since the module specifically references the Knight Hawks rules, we know they were out when it was published.) but if we take it to mean that the ship misjumped into the system, then we know that it is somewhere near where that ship was traveling.

Looking at Maximillian’s background, he was born in a vrusk enclave in Valentia City, which is on Clarion in the White Light system.  And he went to school on Ken’zah Kit in the K’aken-Kar system.  His ship, the VSS Last Legs, is registered in that same system and he purchased and refitted the ship right after returning from Sundown the first time.  Since he grew up and worked in this part of the Frontier, near the vrusk inhabited worlds, and was in this sector when he returned from the Sundown system.  It makes sense that the system is somewhere nearby.

Astute readers will recognize this map as a cutout of the one I’ve been making in my Expanded Frontier Map series. Even more astute readers will notice that there is a nebula on it. This is a sneak peak of a portion of a map I’ll presenting next week.

To that end, I’ve chosen Sundown to be the star in the triangular region formed by Madderly’s Star, K’sta-Kar, and White Light.  You can see this location represented on the Expanded Frontier Map.

Starting the Adventure

Getting the PCs on this adventure is a bit of a trick.  They are either in Truane’s Star, or if you had them go testify at the Council of Worlds, they are in the Prenglar system.  Neither of which is over in the part of the Frontier where you really want them.

Prenglar is easier.  In that case you could just declare that Maximillian was having his ship refit in the starship construction center there and is looking for a crew.  He can recruit them at some point after their testimony.

If they are in the Truane’s Star system still, you need to come up with a reason to get them to the other side of the Frontier.  Maybe they are invited to talk about their experiences on Volturnus at the University of Clarion, all expenses paid. Or maybe the Pale government gives them a lead and offers transport to chase down someone who works with he Star Devil that skipped town.  Or some other small adventure that appeals to the players’ interests that get them across the Frontier.  Once they are on Prenglar or Clarion, they can be approached by Maximillian.

Regardless of where he approaches them, he’s heard of their exploits and is seeking them out specifically because of their experience working with native primitive cultures and he wants assistance dealing with the Heliopes.

Running the Adventure

Once they have signed on, they are off to Starmist.  The trip there should be fairly boring so it can pass by as quickly as you’d like.  It’s a chance to get to know their employer and decided what equipment they might need/want for the trip.  They should have quite a bit a cash from the Volturnus adventure so let them spend it.

The adventure itself is fairly straightforward: Head to the village, poke around to try to find the sources of the metal, learning along the way some of the history and seeing the strange artifacts, rescuing Maximillian, fighting off the sathar robots, discovering the tank, and assaulting the sathar base.

Skimming through the adventure, a few things stood out to me.

  1. Maximillian has plot armor, at least until the tank is discovered.  I thought it was funny how in the very first encounter, the module tells the referee to adjust die rolls as needed to keep him alive.
  2. The adventure is always pushing the PCs to find and explore the tank.  As I said before, this is a possibly morally questionable action and the players may not be comfortable with it.  I’d say if the players want to pursue that, let them but if they don’t show interest in the tank, don’t push it as hard as the module is written.  More on this below.
  3. Getting into the bunker is somewhat of a railroad.  The text says that the only way in is through the elevator and specifically tries to shut down alternate ways in.
  4. There are some inconsistencies in the times specified for the various self-destruct sequences in the bunker.  But there is also a lot of flexibility depending on what you want to do with the approaching sathar ship (if anything) so you can really do whatever seems best as you’re playing

Not using the Tank

I’ve already talked a bit about the issues with uncovering and taking the tank from the village.  That said, it’s not really needed to finish the adventure.  The PC’s already have an explorer that they can use to follow the sathar robots.  And approaching the sathar base on foot actually gives them a better chance of getting in undetected.  So in the end, the tank is cool, but doesn’t seem to be as necessary as the module writers seem to be implying by pushing the PCs toward it.  If they don’t want to take it, they can still successfully complete the adventure.  Especially since they will probably be at a bit higher levels than the pre-gens for the adventure.

Experience Points

Interestingly, this module gives no guidance on awarding experience points.  They don’t seem to be mentioned anywhere, even in the introduction.  I’d award XP at the following points:

  • Making it to the village on friendly terms – 3 XP
  • Rescuing Maximillian with minimal loss of Heliope life – 3 XP
  • Driving off both waves of sathar robots with minimal loss of Heliope life – 3 XP
  • Clearing the bunker – 3 XP
  • If they make it to the bunker without losing a vehicle (war tank or explorer) – 1 bonus XP
  • Not taking the War Tank – 1 bonus XP

Beyond the Module

Extra adventures

The module gives the option of the PCs dealing with the incoming sathar heavy cruiser and using the rocket launcher at the base to damage or destroy it.  It also gives the suggestion of the ship sending down landing parties that the PCs have to deal with.  Personally, I’d probably omit this aspect, especially since I have a different view of the construct of the sathar ships.  At most, I’d make it a destroyer.  That still gives over 500 sathar ground troops that they’d have to deal with and that’s a bit much for a single PC party.

However, if you do want to use those optional adventures, I’d award 3-6 more XP for the subsequent adventures.

There are few other things you could do on Starmist but they would require convincing Maximillian that they should stay on the planet longer.

The background says that Heliopes are spread out in 200 tribes over 5 different rifts.  If you wanted to extend the adventure further, you could develop these other tribes, and allow the PCs to seek them out and interact with them.  Remember that the village Heliopes are the most culturally developed.

Another option is to collect sathar bio-constructs.  These would be of great interest to the UPF and to various private corporations.  There are a lot of them here on Starmist and the PCs could go on a hunt to try to collect various live specimens.  This should definitely be worth a financial reward (shared with Maximillian) and possibly an XP reward as well.

Aftermath

Depending on the way they handled themselves, the PCs may or may not be on friendly terms with the Heliopes.  If the village was seriously destroyed and the war tank stolen, they might not be welcome at all and be run off by a mob and have to flee to their ship.  Or they might be welcomed warmly if they helped to save the village and didn’t disturb the tank.

There might also be repercussions back in the Frontier.  The UPF will eventually send a delegation to the planet and will discover how the PCs interacted with the natives.  This could either enhance or detract from their reputation and if they treated the Heliopes poorly, they might be called before a UPF tribunal for their conduct. 

Moving on

Next up is SFAD5: Bugs in the System.  We’ll look at that and the following modules in the next installment.  What are your thoughts on Sundown on Starmist?

Expanded Frontier Map – update 1

I had planned to to have the next part of the module campaign write-up as the post this week, but that’s taking me a bit longer than I had planned and I spent more time than I should have on updates to the Expanded Frontier Map so I’m writing about that instead.

As I said in my last State of the Frontier post, one of the things I want to work on this year is a full color version of the Expanded Frontier map. So while I was on vacation, I fired up my laptop and started on that. This post will detail some of the things I’m working on and what to look for in the future.

Corrections

The first thing I had to do was fix some errors I noticed in my original expanded map. Mainly, I had left off some labels on a few of the star systems. I haven’t posted a version of the map with those labels yet but will in the future. So I added those in.

The other omission I had to correct was one I noticed in creating entries for the Detailed Frontier Timeline. I was missing a necessary jump route for the sathar. So I added that in as well. Again, I haven’t posted that version of the map so the correction just appears on my “Referee’s Copy” at the moment.

Next, I decided to shift the system I was labeling as Belnafaer (from the SFAD5: Bugs in the the System module) to the same one that the TSR folks did in the Frontier map in Zeb’s Guide. The choice was arbitrary and both my selection and theirs matched the description given in the module. I figured it was better to disagree as little as possible with the “canon” material. (I’m still not moving Starmist or Rhianna though).

Finally, I discovered that the labeled distance from Madderly’s Star to White Light was wrong. The map labels it as 6 but it is actually 8. (The map in Zeb’s Guide has it correct but the one in the Dramune Run is wrong as well.) This was actually discovered in making the color map as described below. So I fixed that. It’s funny, but I’ve been playing Star Frontiers for 35 years now and never noticed that typo.

Those were the corrections I made. While you can’t see two of them, this is the resulting map:

The inner blue box is the original Frontier map area from Alpha Dawn while the larger blue box is the area covered by the map in Zebulon’s Guide to Frontier Space

I also fixed up some internal errors, mostly labels on the wrong layers, but that has no impact on the map itself. I had planned to post the version with all the star designations, but in looking at them, I realized they need some cleaning up on their positioning so it wasn’t quite ready to go for this post. I need to spend about an hour tweaking things.

Moving on to Color

Star symbols from the map generation program

As I mentioned before, I had written a program to randomly generate sector maps. The stars were represented using the symbols in the chart to the right. The second column showing how multiple star systems are represented.

As written, the program only generated random systems and wrote basic map data out to a file. What I needed was the ability to read in that output file and build the map from the data instead of randomly.

So that’s where I started. I had an output format, I just needed code to read that and convert it back into data that could be used for drawing the map. Along the way, I realized that I needed to change some things about the way the data was represented and stored in the program and output file as we well as needing to add storage for things like the name of the system.

Another thing I had to change was the printing of the Z-coordinate. The random map generation process creates star systems in 3 dimensions and labels each system with its Z-coordinate above or below the plane of the map. Since for the Frontier Map (at least initially) everything is on the same plane, there was no need to print little zeros by each star system. So I added a flag to turn off printing that coordinate on the map.

Generating the Data for the Frontier Map

With the code now ready to read data from a file and draw the map. I needed to generate the data for the Frontier map. As I’m building and testing the software, I figured I’d work with a smaller map so I’m just using the original Frontier Map from the Alpha Dawn rules.

There are 51 systems on that map. I determined the coordinates on the map (as the software sees them, currently measured from the upper right corner – that may change), and wrote those into a data file. That was the easy part.

The next step was to get spectral classifications for each of the systems. The inhabited systems were relatively easy. In the listing for each of the systems in the rule book, it gives a color for the star. At this point the program isn’t refined enough to break down the spectral types so a G0 star is represented the same as a G2 or G8 star. So I only had to approximate. Yellow stars got a G0 designation, orange stars got a K0 designation, white stars got an F0 designation, and red stars got a M0 designation. I used those since those are the spectral types that the program currently understands.

Next I went through and added in the spectral types for the stars that host the various planets of the modules and added in designations for them. Then, I had to go in and add in the designations for star systems in the Rim that were labeled in Zebulon’s Guide. Zeb’s Guide give full spectral types (F7, G3, K2, etc.) but for now, I just used the spectral type letter and not the number since the program can’t process those yet. (Note: if you compare the spectral types from Zeb’s Guide for the original Frontier worlds to the colors given in the Alpha Dawn rules, they don’t always agree. That’s something I’ll have to resolve later. For now, AD takes precedence.)

That covers all the “explored” systems. Note that I didn’t use the Zeb’s Guide data for the megacorp systems. I can always go back and add that but I don’t use those systems in my game. Finally for all the other systems, I had to randomly generate spectral types. To do that, I just generated a map with random values and copied the appropriate values over for the binary and single systems, only selecting single systems that were M stars or brown dwarfs. There are already way too many F, G, & K type stars in the region so I wanted a sprinkling of the other types. I also added the neutron star designation by hand for that system on the map.

Then it was time to actually run the program and make the map. It worked fine but looking at it I noticed a few problems with the jump distances. Several were too small by one and one was too large. Looking closer, I realized that while I was calculating the distances correctly, it was rounding wrong on display so I fixed that which corrected the distances displaying too small. That just left me with the one jump distance that was too large, now by two instead of one. This is where I discovered the typo on the original map for the distance between White Light and Madderly’s Star. The program was giving the correct distance but the original map was wrong.

I also decided that the symbols were a bit too small. The size I was using worked fine in the random map when there was the possibility of two systems in the same grid box with different Z-coordinates but for this map, where that couldn’t happen, I wanted the symbols larger. So I built in a scaling parameter in to the program allowing me to control the scale.

With those changes, we have the following initial color map of the Frontier.

The grid is there, you just can’t see it at this size. Click for the full size image.

You’ll notice a few things right away. First, there are no names on the map. Second, there are no nebulae. Right now the program doesn’t do those things.

Names will be relatively easy. I have the data, I just need to have the program add them to the image file. I need to research how to set fonts but otherwise, it’s straightforward.

Nebula are a whole different story. And may have to be added in by hand after the fact. Either way, that is going to be a complicated process and require some learning and work (and artistic ability) on my part.

If you look closer, you’ll notice that the positioning of the numbers along the jump routes are not optimal. It works for most of the jumps but for connections that are at an approximately 45 degree angle running from upper left to lower right, the number comes out too close (and sometimes overlapping) the line. I’ll need to fix that. That cleanup will probably be done by hand.

The program generates SVG files where each item is an object that can be manipulated allowing me to tweak things by hand. That was done intentionally as I knew the program wouldn’t be able to get everything perfect. That will be even more apparent once the names are added. I suspect that many of them will have to be moved to not overlap the jump routes.

The other minor thing is that the scaling factor I added wasn’t able to affect the size of the jets coming out of the neutron star. I need to either figure that out or, more likely, reduce the size back down for that spectral type and ignore the scaling. We’ll see how that goes.

Next Steps

The easy next steps are adding in the names of the systems and fixing the scaling on the neutron star.

After that, what I want to do is add in a way to handle all the various spectral types. The colors I picked don’t exactly represent the colors of the stars. They are close, but were chose for aesthetics rather than complete accuracy. Almost everything would be white with just some color tinting if we went for accuracy. I did that originally but didn’t like the result. I want to add code that will extrapolate between the given colors for the various spectral types’ number values to give various shades to the stars.

After that, I plan on tackling the nebula. I want to see if I can programmatically come up with something passable to start and then refine it.

The Code

If you want to play with the code, you can find it on my GitHub repository. It’s written in Python and right now isn’t the most user friendly. I need to add some in-line documentation as well as add features that will make it more usable directly from a command line instead of having to modify parameters in the code itself before running. That is another future project. But if you want to dive in and play with it as is, feel free.

Detailed Frontier Timeline – FY60.084 to FY60.114

Here’s the next installment of the detailed Frontier timeline. I realized that I left off the last day of the previous post so it is included here. The events of the Sundown on Starmist module reach their conclusion and the Council of Worlds start to take the sathar threat seriously.

Date (FY)Event
60.084 After several days of probing, the saurian Battle Rays begin their return to the Sauria system.
60.085 Initial repairs begun on the Pale (Truane’s Star) starship construction center.  Capacity is increased to 60% of its original value. 
60.086 After nearly a month of meetings on Volturnus (Zebulon), the Council of Worlds declares the planet to hold protectorate status but not full membership.  It is deemed that the Eorna population is too small while the other races are not advanced enough for full membership.
60.087 The VSS Last Legs arrives at Starmist.  Maximillian and the scouting party make contact with the planet’s natives. (SF3)
60.088 Patrol Group Wisdom arrives in the Gruna Garu system and begins investigating the sighting of the unidentified vessel with Spacefleet markings.
60.089 Maximillian Malligigg is captured and taken prisoner by the priests of the Heliope village. (SF3)
60.090 – Sathar robots, shaped like Heliopes, attack the Heliope village causing destruction of many of the buildings.  The village temple is partially burned, revealing an alien war tank concealed inside. (SF3)

– SF Nova arrives in the K’sta-Kar system and will remain in system for 12 days.
60.091 – While Maximillian and the scouting party are examining the war tank, sathar robots attack the village again.  Driving the robots off, they follow them in the tank. (SF3)

– The sathar starship construction center in the Liberty system completes another destroyer.
60.092 The retreating robots lead the scouting party to a sathar base.  Infiltrating the base, they discover it is mostly abandoned and defeat the remaining sathar and agents in place.  However, the base is destroyed by an automated self-destruct system. (SF3)
60.093 Saurian Battle Rays arrive back in the Sauria system from scouting the Tischen and Dayzer systems.
60.094 The alien war tank on Sundown (Starmist) begins behaving erratically and alarms and lights begin to flash. 30 minutes later it self-destructs in a small nuclear explosion. (SF3)
60.095 Maximillian and survivors of the scouting party leave Sundown (Starmist) to return to K’sta-Kar on the VSS Last Legs. (SF3)
60.096 The TTSS Destiny arrives back in Prenglar after touring the western half of the Frontier, visiting Truane’s Star, Dixon’s Star, and all the yazirian systems (Gruna Garu, Araks, Scree Fron, & Athor).  Replenishing supplies, it prepares to continue its Grand Tour.
60.097 CDCSS Nightwind turns up in the White Light system under the name TSS Star’s Gift.  CDC immediately dispatches a team to recover the ship. (AR)
60.098 Having completed its shakedown cruise, the UPFS Nexus begins a high speed run to join up with Strike Force Nova.
60.099 Fortress Kdikitt (Madderly’s Star) reaches the 80% completion mark.  Behind schedule and due to the increased sathar activity in the Frontier, the UPF places a priority on operational security and getting the fortress completed.
60.100 After months of work, a petition with over 100,000 names is submitted to the Council of Worlds demanding investigation of signals detected from Hargurt in a system just beyond the Frontier in the direction of the Vast Expanse.  In the intervening months, signals have been detected multiple times from the system.
60.101 Second Volturnus Expedition members testify before the Council of Worlds about events on Volturnus (Zebulon) leading to the Battle of Volkos.
60.102 – The first of a new class of sathar vessels, the cutter, functionally modeled on the assault scout, is completed at the sathar starship construction center near Zebulon.

– SF Nova departs K’sta-Kar for the White Light System
60.103 After months of deliberation, the Council of Worlds votes to increase Spacefleet spending by 10% allowing for the commissioning of several new vessels.
60.104 After many days of debate, the decision is made to abandon the Tischen and Dayzer systems in face of the sathar forces there and focus all efforts on defending Sauria and completing the Ark program (FE004).
60.105 The TTSS Destiny departs Gran Quivera (Prenglar) for the Timeon system to continue its Grand Tour of the Frontier.  Over 100 passengers have been on the ship for the entire tour and intend to visit every system.
60.106 CDC team arrives in the White Light System from the Theseus system to attempt to reclaim the CDCSS Nightwind (AR).
60.107 Assault scout completed at the Gran Quivera (Prenglar) starship construction center to replace the UPF vessel lost at the Battle of Zebulon
60.108 After over a month of struggle through the jungles, the Spire Dragons reach the foothills of Mount Spire and establish a base camp.  Several members of the expedition have perished along the way and people question the wisdom of their approach.
60.109 A new assault scout is completed at the Pale starship construction center to replace the militia vessel lost at the Battle of Zebulon
60.110 UPFS Nexus arrives at Clarion (White Light) to await the arrival of SF Nova and spends the day training with the White Light Militia.
60.111 SF Nova arrives at Clarion in the White Light system and is joined by UPFS Nexus.  It will remain in system for 19 days.
60.112 After sneaking onboard just before the ship departs, the CDCSS Nightwind is recaptured by the CDC operatives and the former employees responsible for assisting in its disappearance are captured.  The ship begins its way back to corporate headquarters.
60.113 After a long and detailed search of the Gruna Garu system by Patrol Group Wisdom, no evidence is found of the mysterious vessel.  The patrol group departs the system to return to Prenglar.
60.114 Attempt is made (but fails) to sabotage Gollwin Academy.

Here’s the full timeline document:

DetailedFrontierTimelineDownload

The State of the Frontier – A Year Complete

I can’t believe it’s been a full year since I started the blog.  More importantly, I can’t believe I’ve managed to maintain at least a weekly posting schedule for that entire time.  For this State of the Frontier post, I’m going to be looking back over the entire history of the blog, not just the last month.  Normally I post this on the last day of the month but since that was a regular post day, this is coming exactly one year after I made the first post.

I’m actually writing this in late April because when it finally posts, I’ll be on a cruise ship in the middle of the Caribbean with my wife celebrating our 25th wedding anniversary.  So most of what follows is based on data at that time.

Some Numbers

It’s interesting (to me at least) to look at the raw numbers for the site.  I don’t really have anything to compare them to, but they form a baseline for the years going forward.  First up, the raw web stats:

  • Sessions – visits to the sites consisting of one or more pages read: 2086
  • Users – number of people that visited the blog: 1360
  • Total Page views: 3388

I couldn’t tell you if that’s good or bad considering I just started, but I’m happy with it.  There’s definitely a rhythm to the visits.  It peaks on the days I make a new post (as I would expect) with 10-25 visitors on those days, a few more visitors on the day after a post, and then only one or two visitors for the rest of the week.  I suspect that baseline number on the non-post days will slowly increase over time as there is more and more back content for people to come across and visit.

The next thing to look at is the number of posts and comments received.  This post represents the 72nd post on the site.  Considering I’ve only been doing it for 52 weeks, that works out to 1.38 posts per week.  When I started this blog, I was thinking I’d be making two posts a month and slowly ramping up. However, I quickly got into the one a week habit with some extra posts (like these State of the Frontier ones) thrown in for good measure.  I’m happy with the cadence I’ve set up.  I don’t think I could do much more than that at the moment with everything I’m working on, but we’ll see how it goes in the coming year.

I don’t get a lot of commentary here on the blog.  There have been a total of 52 comments on the first 68 posts and 7 of those were me responding to other comments.  A lot of the others are just cross links (pingbacks) between posts on the site. I actually get more comments on the cross posts in the Star Frontiers Facebook group.  I can’t decide if the lack of commentary is good or bad.  On the one hand, I don’t get a lot of feedback or interaction on the content from those reading it.  On the other hand, fewer comments means I can spend the time that I would be responding on creating new content.  But on the gripping hand, the lack of commentary makes it hard to tell if people are enjoying the content or not.  At some level that latter doesn’t matter as I’m doing it as much for me as for others, but I want the readership to grow.

Which brings me to

The Patreon Campaign

First. I want to say a big THANK YOU! To everyone that is or has been a Patreon supporter of this blog.  I know I’m not a great poster on the Patreon campaign itself, but I hope everyone there is also a blog subscriber as well.  I believe in accountability so I thought I’d take a moment and talk about the funds raised via Patreon. Due to the generosity of my patrons, I’ve earned $532.53 over the past year (assuming no one cancels between now when I’m writing this and when it publishes in a week an a half).  I thought I’d talk a little bit about where that money went.

  • Web hosting – $82 – While the Expanding Frontier site is physically hosted on a server in my house.  I do host several other websites, including the Frontier Explorer website, on a shared hosting server.  With the Frontier Explorer starting production again (with its own Patreon), that may change in the coming year. I also have a fairly high speed connection to my house which comes at a cost.
  • Domain registrations – $64.70 – I actually have a bunch of domains that I own, I use the money from my gaming endeavors (including this Patreon) for those registrations.  They include some vanity domains for myself and some of my kids, the Frontier Explorer, a couple of Star Frontiers domains, and a few others.  All told there are 10 domains.  Several of those I had paid for 2 years of registration last year so they didn’t come due this year.  Otherwise that total would be closer to $110.  Again the Frontier Explorer Patreon will cover some of that in the coming year.
  • Supporting other creators – $61 – I currently support two other creators, Dyson Logos, whose maps I’ve used in my games and in some products I’ve sold (Two Sheet Locations), and the Saving the Game podcast.  I’ve considered supporting other creators but have never actually made pledges.  That may change if my Patreon support increases.
  • Gaming supplies – $178.32 – Not necessarily specific to the content I produce here, but I use the money from the Patreon to feed my gaming hobby.  Purchases this year include a D&D PHB, a bag of 150 polyhedral dice, a copy of The Angry GM’s book on Kickstarter, and support for another Kickstarter of stock Sci-fi art.  That last one hasn’t been delivered yet but when it does, I’ll be able to use the images in my blog posts and the Frontier Explorer and other products I produce.
  • Software – $106.74 – My versions of Microsoft Office were getting pretty old (2010) so this year I bit the bullet and purchased a license for Office 365.  Since I have a number of different computers that I use, I purchased a family license allowing me to install the software on up to 6 computers so my kids have access to it as well.

All told, that came to $492.76 in expenses leaving me $39.77.  Maybe I’ll use that to take my wife out to dinner.  Again, I can’t say thank you enough to my supporters.  Because of you, my gaming hobby is self-sustaining and I can pursue it guilt-free on the financial side. (I still sometimes feel guilty on the time side.)

Projects

I started out the year with three main projects which I had intended to work on.  Unfortunately, I haven’t completed any of them yet although I’m starting to get close.  One I didn’t even get started on.  In addition to those original projects, I picked up a few others along the way.  The projects worked on this year include:

  • Death at Rosegard Adventure – 13 posts (including the 4 how to draw videos)
  • Ghost Ship Osiris Adventure – 12 posts
  • New Starship Construction System – 11 posts (5 about the system and 6 ships)
  • The Detailed Frontier Timeline – 5 posts
  • Calendar systems and star system design – 4 posts
  • PGC Records Vault location – 3 posts
  • Other miscellaneous topics – 5 posts

Looking forward into the new year, I think I’ll be wrapping up several of those projects. 

  • The Death at Rosegard adventure will be completed.  I’m working now on putting the Death at Rosegard write-up together.  There will probably be some more posts on bits and pieces I missed as I string it all in to a coherent form. 
  • The same is true of the Ghost Ship Osiris adventures.  I need to write up the descriptions of the various rooms on the Pursale ship and what the PCs can find there, and then write up the final section of the adventure.  Beyond that it’s mostly art work and making the deck plans for the two ships in the art style for FrontierSpace.
  • The New Starship Construction System is almost done as well.  At least the initial version compatible with Star Frontiers.  That is only lacking some equipment descriptions and some final formatting.  That will probably be released as a Frontier Explorer Presents publication later this year.

The Detailed Frontier Timeline will keep going, one post a month and 1-3 tweets per day for the next several years so that won’t be wrapping up any time soon.  The other project I just started is the complete Star Frontiers campaign based on the published modules of which the first post was yesterday.  That will probably have 2 or maybe 3 more posts and then be put together as a complete document for download.

Another project that I’ve just started on, but which I don’t have anything yet to post about, is an update to the Expanded Frontier Map that I posted back at the end of October.  I’ve noticed a few errors on the map as I’ve been using it over the past months, so I’ll post an updated version.  But more significantly, I’m working on creating a full-color, poster-sized version.  Many years ago (2015), I wrote a program to randomly generate star sectors and produce a map which I wrote about on my old Arcane Game Lore blog (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3).  I’m currently working on that program to not just randomly create systems but read the data from a file and draw the appropriate map.  I’ll use that to create the Expanded Frontier Map in full-color and share the program so others can use it as well.

Finally, in this coming year I want to get back to writing fiction.  I have two books I’m in theory working on.  One is a follow-on to my book Discovery.  The second is a story set on Pale during the Great Sathar War.  I’ve been poking a bit at the latter one in the last few months and will probably pick up steam on that in the future. We’ll see how (and if) that goes.

Beyond that, I don’t know where I’ll head.  I might finally start the Sathar Assault Carrier project, or I might get carried off on another tangent.  We’ll just have to see where we end up on the journey through the ever-expanding frontier.

Thank you for reading my work and again a special thanks to those who have helped support it.  If there are projects you’d like to see worked on, please let me know.

A Module Based Campaign – part 1

As I’ve been creating and tweeting the #SFTimeline on the @StarFrontiers Twitter account, I’ve been thinking more and more about how to string all of the published Star Frontiers modules into a comprehensive campaign. 

As I was writing up this post, I was reminded that the topic for the RPG Blog Carnival this month was “The Art of Customization”. This series of articles falls directly into that topic as I’m customizing the published modules to form a comprehensive campaign and story from the disjointed publications. So this will be an entry in the Blog Carnival. I don’t often do Blog Carnival posts as the topics don’t ever seem to mesh up with what I’m working on (or I don’t want to try to shoehorn them together). This one just happened to line up.

The timeline I’ve been tweeting doesn’t work as I’ve been interspersing the modules into the timeline out of order.  That’s mainly because I’m a bit impatient and wanted to incorporate the modules early to give me some ideas of things to include in the timeline.  I have enough threads running now that I can safely drop the rest of the modules in in their “appropriate” order for set of PCs to be the protagonists in all the events.  Maybe at some point I’ll go back and tweak the timeline to match the one I’m presenting here.

The modules don’t provide enough XP by themselves to move directly between them, so in addition to providing my preferred order to the modules, I’ll be providing some suggestions of additional adventures, either from the fanzines or that the Referee will need to create for their group.  Depending on how much I end up writing, this may end up as a series of posts. 

I’ve posted bits and pieces of this campaign idea over the years on various social media and forums but in this series of posts I’m going to try to collate all of that into a comprehensive document. Let’s get started.

Ground Rules

In the timeline that follows, I’m going to assume that the PC’s start as fresh, new adventurers newly minted with the Alpha Dawn Expanded rules:  a PSA and two level 1 skills. 

I’m also going to be a generous Referee and assume that in the published modules, the PCs earn the maximum (or nearly the maximum) XP possible in each of the sessions.  As we launch into each of the modules in the timeline, I’m going to present what I expect the approximate amount of XP the characters should have earned at that point.  If you are running this campaign and your characters aren’t quite there yet, run a few more side adventures for them to get them up to speed.

I’m also going to assume the module are run as written, warts and all.  You’re free to tweak them as you see fit but I’ll assume the events described occur.

TL;DR Version

In case you don’t want to read all the details, here’s the overall order I’d run the modules in sans, any intermediary adventures to get the XP progression correct.  It’s mostly the order they were published, but bumping Mission to Alcazzar after Dark Side of the Moon.

  1. SF0: Crash on Volturnus
  2. SF1: Volturnus, Planet of Mystery
  3. SF2: Starspawn of Volturnus
  4. SF3: Sundown on Starmist
  5. SFAD5: Bugs in the System
  6. SFAD6: Dark Side of the Moon
  7. SF4: Mission to Alcazzar
  8. SFKH0: Warriors of White Light
  9. SFKH1: Drammune Run
  10. SFKH2: Mutiny on the Elanor Moraes
  11. SFKH3: Face of the Enemy
  12. SFKH4: The War Machine

TSR did a good job in publishing the modules in order of increasing power level.  The exception being the two modules developed by the UK group (SFAD5 & 6) that only require PCs with a power level a little less than Mission to Alcazzar.  I’m sure if more modules had been published, they would have bounced around more but their initial offerings were spot on.

The Grand Campaign

The Great Sathar War

You may or may not have noticed in my other writing, but I will typically refer to the First Sathar War as the Great Sathar War in my writing and “in world” documents that discuss events occurring before the Second Sathar War (SWII) starts. You can’t have a “first” without a “second” so until the SWII starts, and is recognized as such, there would be another term for the first conflict. And while I typically use “The Great Sathar War” as the name, due to its localized extent – only affecting four star systems – using the term “great” is probably a misnomer and I should be referring to it as the “Sathar War”, “The Sathar Incursion”, or “The Sathar Incident”. Although since it affected the two most populated systems (Cassidine and Prenglar) it might be considered a “war”, even if mostly just a naval one.

In my mind, all these adventures take place, and in some cases, trigger, events in the Second Sathar War.  In any case, they have to occur after the First Sathar War as the PCs know of the existence of the sathar even in the first Volturnus adventure which they wouldn’t if it occurred before the first sathar invasion.

I also see the SWII as a much longer and more protracted affair than the First Sathar War with the sathar trying to undermine the UPF and Rim systems and infrastructure before the actual invasion.  This can be seen in the Detailed Frontier Timeline I’m working on and will be reflected in some of the side adventures here.  While the PCs may not be involved in any of the major military conflicts of the war (especially at the beginning of the campaign), those events will be happening in the background and the PCs may find themselves in the aftermath.

Volturnus

We begin the campaign by running though the three published Volturnus adventures.

SF0: Crash on Volturnus

Since the original boxed set included the Crash on Volturnus module, that is where we will start.  This module assumes brand new PCs with 0 XP.  I always tell the players to not spend any of their initial funds on weapons and that they will be issued weapons as part of the start of the adventure.  And then in the introduction I let them choose a weapon and tell them that it is placed in the weapons locker on the Serena Dawn.  That way they aren’t really penalized for the game fiat that their weapons are destroyed. 

In my game, there are quickdeath on Pale from the sathar invasion during the Great Sathar War.  While the PCs may know of their existence and have seen pictures, they probably haven’t seen one in real life as they have been mostly hunted and controlled.  Thus the presence of the quickdeath in the Ul-mor ceremony should be the first clue to the PCs that sathar have been on the planet in the past and may be still here.

SF1: Volturnus, Planet of Mystery

This module follows directly from the events in Crash on Volturnus and so the characters continue in their struggle to survive and escape Volturnus.  If all went well, the PCs will have picked up 18 XP in the previous module and added a couple level of skills.

In this adventure they deal with the pirate threat on the planet and discover the larger sathar history and current presence on the planet in the form of the artifact.  In my universe, the Star Devil pirates are partially supported by the Pan Galactic Corporation.  If you want to provide that level of detail, the PCs can notice that most of the equipment the pirates have are PGC models and not Streel ones, even through Streel headquarters are on Pale in Truane’s Star, the nearest star system to Volturnus.

Another change I make to this adventure is in ending 1.  If you want (as we do) the PCs to play through the next module in the series, I don’t feel that 2 weeks is enough time.  Some of the tasks in the next module can take two weeks all by themselves.  I tend to leave the time frame vague, i.e. “Attack on planet eminent”, or give it a month or so.  Additionally, I want the UPF ships to show up right after the fighting starts and I don’t feel that two weeks is enough time to get any ships assembled beyond the Truane’s Star militia and get them to the Zebulon system.

The PCs can pick up another 18 XP in this adventure.

SF2: Starspawn of Volturnus

At this point the PCs have collected 36 XP and are probably level 3 or 4 in their primary skill and have a smattering of others.  This adventure consists of a series of mini-quests to do something of benefit to each of the sentient species on Volturnus to convince them to join in the fight against the incoming sathar attack.

My players always like the Great Game of the Ul-mor and have a fun time trying to win.  My last group, which happened to be my kids, managed to no only win the game, but do so without a single of the PCs being knocked off their mount.

The retrieval of the Sacred Idol of the Kurabanda is the part of the adventure that could potentially take the most time as part of the travel is through the wilderness on foot or by vehicle.  If they drive all the way there it’s a several day journey each way.  If they fly, they have to make the last part of the trek on foot which can take a few days, and if they happen to get caught in one of the blasts while flying and crash, they have a several week trek back without their vehicle.

The module ends with the massive Battle of Volkos, where the PCs pit themselves and the various species of Volturnus against the invading sathar hordes.  Regardless of whether the PCs win or lose the battle, I have the UPF fleet arrive as the land battle is winding down and drive off the Sathar fleet.  If the PCs win the ground battle, shuttles from the UPF fleet can safely land and possibly take the PCs back to Truane’s Star.  If they lose, the UPF fleet is a naval force only and doesn’t have ground troops to fight off the surviving sathar army.  They will radio back to the Frontier, but it will be some time before ground forces can be assembled and brought to the surface.  The PCs will have to hold out until then.

I described the composition of both the UPF and Sathar fleets in last week’s Battle of Zebulon post.  If you have players already familiar with the Knight Hawks rules, you could run this battle as an evening’s session.  There are a lot of ships, so it takes a while if you use the advanced rules as I did.

The PC’s can earn up to 15 more XP from this module bringing their total up to 51 XP.

After the Modules

As the last module suggests, there are a number of other things the PCs could do on Volturnus before leaving.  I have the UPF sticking around for a while after driving off the sathar so they can get transported home at any time if they do decide to have a few more adventures on planet.   Possible endeavors include:

The Devil’s Lair

In Frontier Explorer issue 7, I detailed a small complex that is the personal hideout of the Star Devil when visiting Volturnus.  I leave clues about the existence of this hideout in the computers of Slave City one for the PCs to discover.  The Star Devil isn’t in the system at the moment, but the PC’s can clear out the hideout and learn more about the Star Devil’s operations.  This small adventure is worth another 3 XP.

Eorna Defense Installation

In Frontier Explorer issue 2, Jim Young detailed a ruined Eorna Defense Installation.  The PCs could have noticed it while flying back and forth recruiting the species for the war or maybe found mention of it in the Mound of the Mechanons or the Eorna Archives.  The article provides two different scenarios for the location’s use depending on the background you want to use.  This would worth another 3 XP if successfully explored.

Eorna Lunar Defense Battery

Jim provided another location, this time on Volturnus’s moon, in issue 3 of the Frontier Explorer.  If you plan on having a Knight Hawks component to the game, you could have the PCs find a way here before the sathar arrive and use the fighters in the base in the battle (which is a bit of bending of the standard rules) or you could have the UPF forces discover the base and send the PCs in to investigate.  The fighters discovered could form the basis of the Zebulon system’s initial militia forces.  This could generate the PCs another 3 XP.

Lizard Head Rock

A long time ago, I did an entire complex under Lizard Head Rock, a location suggested as a possible adventure at the end of the module.  In my teenage years, this complex housed another species, even older than the Eorna, in a large, active, and hidden society.  If I were to use it today, I’d redesign it (I was obsessed with the confines of a single sheet of graph paper) and make it ruins instead of an active area, but it still would make a fun little exploration dungeon crawl.  The Yernoids in the area are a primitive version of the ancient race.  Depending on how big you make this, it could be 3-6 more XP.

Sathar Survivors

Finally, they could track down sathar survivors, another adventure hook suggested by the module.  Spacefleet doesn’t have the personnel and the native species are drifting back to their homelands.  It’s up to the PCs to clean up the pockets of sathar still sticking around.  If the PCs really are in to this, it could go on for a while but assuming they only do a small number of these roundups, they could earn 3-9 XP depending on the number, the complexity, and how generous you are with XP.

Returning to the Frontier

There are a number of events that could happen once the PCs return to the Frontier from Volturnus.  At this point, assuming you’ve done some of the additional adventures on Volturnus, the PCs should have between 60 and 70 XP.

Tracking down the Star Devil

Information collected on Volturnus provided clues to the Star Devil’s operations in the Pale system.  By the time the PCs return, the Pale government has identified the location of a small Star Devil Operation on New Pale.  The PCs are sent to investigate and shut down the operation, capturing the staff if possible.  This should be worth another 3 XP.

Council of Worlds

If your players want to get involved in some political wrangling, you could have them summoned to Gran Quivera in Prenglar to testify before the Council of Worlds as to the events on Volturnus and the state of the species there. Because of the Sathar, the Council of Worlds is interested in the events in the system.

In my game, the Battle of Zebulon (the space battle) and the Battle of Volkos (the ground battle) are the opening shots of the Second Sathar War.  It takes a while for everything to get going but the loss at Zebulon jolt the sathar out of their complacency towards the Frontier and cause them to step up their activities.

The PCs are the Frontier experts on Volturnus at the moment and their words could have far reaching impacts for the future of the planet and the species living there, as well as the Frontier’s response to the sathar.  This should be worth another 3-9 XP depending on how involved you make it.  It also gets them part way across the Frontier where they could be recruited for the next module SF3: Sundown on Starmist.

Up Next

That gets us through the first three modules with the PCs earning around 70 XP (possibly a bit more) from the modules and side adventures.  In the next installment, we’ll look at the rest of the Alpha Dawn modules and supplementary adventures that will get them to the spaceship skills and ready for the Knight Hawks adventures.

How have you strung the modules together?  Have you added in additional adventures on Volturnus? Share your experiences in the comments below.