State of the Frontier – Sept 2020

I had hoped to be able to do four full articles this month but between kids’ sports activities, running a half marathon, a protracted job interview process (it will probably be a month or two before I hear anything – you’ve got to love the slow academic hiring process), and a few other things, the month got the better of me.

Looking Back

Besides the Detailed Frontier Timeline post, this month didn’t look anything like what I expected. I had planned to do a location post and a game write up but due to complications, my game session that would have completed the adventure (so I could post the write-ups spoiler free) was canceled. Instead, a discussion on the Star Frontiers: Alive and Well Facebook group prompted me to write up my notes on Void Jumping. And then I followed that up with a post that hearkens back to the tag line of this blog (“Creating sci-fi RPG resources”) that provided links to all the maps and counters I use in my games, many of which I created myself.

Behind the scenes, I have started working on issue 30 of the Frontier Explorer. I’m not as far along as I’d like due to all the other things going on this month but I’m quickly catching up.

Also, I was playing in RJ McDonough excellent Second Sathar War Campaign but again, this month’s events intervened and I had to bow out of that game. And then unfortunately, just a few days ago he had to close the game down completely.

And that’s about it. Like I said, this month has been crazy.

Looking Forward

October looks to be much better. We’ll have the timeline post as usual, and by then I should have had the final game session of the current adventure so you can look for a new location, a bio-lab operated by the Greater Overall Development Corporation, that the the PCs have been investigating. I also plan to do an adventure write-up as a second post detailing the adventure itself and how I used the location. I have no idea what the fourth post this month will be. We’ll see how it goes.

The other major item this coming month is issue 30 of the Frontier Explorer. Look for that in the latter half of the month. This will be taking up most of my time until then.

I want to get back to working on the deck plans and 3D model of the HSS History’s Hope from the timeline but we’ll see if I actually get that far, most likely that will have to wait for November.

Behind the scenes, I have a short editing effort that I’m doing for another FrontierSpace adventure by Trevor Holman and it looks like it’s almost time for me to do my freelance writing assignment for the upcoming Space Kids RPG by Nick Landry. The Kickstarter for that funded at the beginning of the year but COVID-19 had impacted the production and we’re just getting to my part in the endeavor.

Final Thoughts

I don’t really have much more to say. September has been rough and I’m hoping October goes a bit better. I should at least be able to get caught up on all my regular activities that have been put off by first the truck issue in August and the extended job interview process in September.

If there are any topics you would like to see my write about, let me know and I’ll try to get them into my queue.

Maps and Counters

It has been a crazy week and I’ve not had any time to sit down and work on anything new. That should change starting today (although I have the next Frontier Explorer next looming over me still). But that doesn’t help for today’s post.

As such, I thought I’d round up all the Star Frontiers maps and counter scans that I have and make them available at one central location (namely this post). Some of these were up before and I took off-line a couple of years ago when WotC had us put the Frontier Explorer on hiatus. Others are ones I’ve done for myself or others over the years. Many of these are linked from various places around the but I’ve never really made a centralized directory.

Counters

Let’s start with the counters. I have scans of both the Alpha Dawn Counters and the Knight Hawks counters at a number of different resolutions. You can download the ones you want to use. Most of these are saved as .PNG files which is a lossless compression format, as opposed to JPEG which is lossy. That means that the files are going to be fairly large, especially at the higher resolutions, and that you get all the detail from the original counters.

AD Counters

I’ve never really scanned in the AD counters. I found a good scan of them years ago and have always just used those. One of these days I’ll get around to making my own scans from like-new, unpunched counter sheet that I have. But until then, this one is quite good.

KH Counters

I’ve also made a zip file (1.1 MB) with all of the KH counters (and a few of the AD ones) cut out at 100 DPI that you can download. Additionally, you can get the individual counters from that zip file (and a link to the file as well) on this page.

Maps

That’s all the counters. Over the years I’ve done a number of maps as well. Some of them are already linked and shared here on this blog. Others, mostly recreations of the original maps from the game, I’ve posted in various locations around the web as I’ve created them.

Scans

First, let’s look at a couple of scanned maps. Namely the cover maps of SF0: Crash on Volturnus that give the deck plans of the Serena Dawn and the surface map of Volturnus. I have both of these as either PNG (full resolution) or JPG (smaller size).

I have scans of the Port Loren map from the Alpha Dawn rules and the station map from the Knight Hawks rules but I’ve also created remastered versions of those which are much better. We’ll look at those below.

I also have a scan of the Frontier Deployment Map which is the outside cover of the SFKH1: Warriors of White Light module and is used in the Second Sathar War strategic game from the Knight Hawks Campaign Book. This one is just saved as a JPG.

Finally, I have the two halves of the Zebulon’s Guide to Frontier Space map of the Frontier. I never actually stitched these two together. These are stored as BMP (bit map) files, another lossless compression algorithm. I don’t think I did the original scans and don’t remember where I got them from.

Remastered

Let’s look at my remastered maps. These are maps that I’ve recreated as original digital creations. Most of these maps were created as scalable vector graphics (SVG) files and then exported as PNGs at 100 DPI which was more than enough resolution for what was drawn. I can always re-export them at any resolution I want.

Let’s start with the big maps. These are all 50 pixels to the square and two squares to the inch. These are faithful recreations of the original maps matching colors, fonts, shapes, etc. as close as I could get them.

  • Port Loren map – (990 kB) – This is the big poster map from Alpha Dawn
  • Station map – (1.68 MB) – This is the big station complex on the back of the space map from the Knight Hawks set.
  • Station Commercial – no cut (1.7MB) – This is the left half of the station map including the bit of the zoo area cut off by the diagonal zig-zag.
  • Station Residential – no cut (175 kB) – This is the right half of the station map including the bit cut off by the diagonal zig-zag.
  • Port Loren Starport map (539 kB) – I created this remastered version to match the same colors and styling as the original Port Loren map, but the design of the map was done by someone else, whose name I can no longer find. If anyone knows the original creator, let me know.

Those are the main maps on the two posters. I’ve also done some of the smaller maps from the posters as well

Finally, I have a set of maps that were created by Tom Verreault. One is a remastered version of the mountain terrain map from the back of the big AD poster map. The others are an expanded area that connect the first one and then a big map of all four together as a single file.

Final Thoughts

I hope you can find these useful. I probably have a few more that I’m not finding at the moment. If I do find others, I’ll update this post or make another one. I do have a number of other image and logos I’ve created over the years. I considered adding them here but decided they really deserve their own post so look for those in the future.

Some day I plan on remastering all the terrain maps from the back of the AD map but I’ve just never gotten around to it.

Void Jumping, Acceleration, and Other FTL Nuggets

This post is going to get a little bit math heavy toward the middle. Just warning you now.

The idea for this post stemmed from a recent discussion on the Star Frontiers: Alive and Well Facebook group talking about the accelerations involved in faster than light (FTL) travel in that game. I’ve written about this many times over the years on forum posts but since I can’t seem to find those posts (I think some of them at least are on the now defunct forums at starfrontiers.org), I’m going to do it one more time here on this blog as a permanent reference. But before I dig into the details of the math and physics, I’m going to share some links to other posts I’ve made that I do still have.

Other Posts

First up we have a post from 2010 on Void Jumping on my Star Frontiers Network site. I don’t think this article is linked from anywhere anymore so this will help to bring it back to life. This essay talks about some of the issues associated with making a Star Frontiers style void jump for FTL travel. This essay was the basis for the sci-fi novel, Discovery, that I published back in 2011 (has it really been that long!).

Next, in 2015, when I was still writing on the Arcane Game Lore blog, I did a series of posts on Void travel that expanded and refined those ideas a little more in the direction of a personal sci-fi game I work on off and on. The first two of these posts were actually part of the November 2015 RPG Blog carnival.

  • The first is an article on Void Travel Sickness. Not really relevant to this discussion but fun none-the-less and falls under the “nuggets” heading.
  • The second, Your Final Destination – Exiting a Void Jump, talks about variations in your arrival at your destination. The blog carnival topic that month was “Surprises” and both of these articles were things that could add surprises or randomness to your FTL travel. I actually recommend you read this one after the next one as it talks about things at the end of the journey but it can be read first.
  • The third (and final) article in that set was part of my “Designing out Loud” series of articles where I talked about game design decisions and ideas. This one was entitled “Designing Out Loud – Void Jumping” and expanded on the ideas in my 2010 article.

While you don’t necessarily need to read those article to follow along with the following, it definitely wouldn’t hurt.

Void Jumping

The concept of the Void Jump was introduced with the Knight Hawks supplement in Star Frontiers. In the original rules (renamed to Alpha Dawn when the Knight Hawks rules came out), there were no spaceship rules and it just said to treat interstellar travel at the rate of 1 light year per day.

So how does it work? According to the rules, you make a jump by leaving your starting point and accelerating until you reach 1% the speed of light. At that point you “jump” into the Void. To get out of the Void, you just have to slow down slightly. While you’re in the Void, you travel amazingly fast, on the order of 1 light year per second (The rules don’t actually so but imply something close to that so that’s the value I use). Once you jump into your destination system, you swing the ship around and start decelerating. Remember, there is no artificial gravity in Star Frontiers so this acceleration and deceleration is what provides gravity in the ships. Most ships make these trips accelerating at 1g.

So how long does this take? For these calculations, we’ll take 1 g to be equal to 10 meters per second squared (m/s/s) of acceleration. On Earth we define 1 g to be 9.82 m/s/s but rounding up to 10 just makes everything easier and its less than a 2% difference.

Okay, here comes the math.

If you start at rest, your velocity at any given time is just:

v(t) = at

where v is velocity (in m/s), a is acceleration (in m/s/s), and t is time (in seconds). Technically v and a are vectors but we’ll just worry about speed, not direction.

Now, the void jump occurs at 1% the speed of light. We’ll take the speed of light to be 300,000,000 m/s. It’s really 299,792,458 m/s but we’ll again round up to make the math easier. The difference is less than 0.07%. Good enough for this discussion. 1% of that is just 3,000,000 m/s. That’s our target velocity.

Since our acceleration is 10 m/s/s, dividing 3,000,000 m/s by 10 m/s/s gives us 300,000 s of acceleration needed to reach jump speed. That works out to 83 hours and 20 minutes of acceleration. Given that a standard day in Star Frontiers is 20 hours long, that is 4.17 days.

That’s the time to get up to jump speed. It takes that much time to slow down on the other side as well. Which means at a minimum, an interstellar jump takes 8 and 1/3 days, assuming everything lines up perfectly (see the Exiting the Void Jump article for things that might lengthen that).

That’s the time required. What about distances covered? The equation for position is just the integral of the velocity equation above. Again, for starting at rest, and assuming that you measure the distance from your starting point, your position at any given time is given by:

x(t) = \frac{1}{2}at^2

where x is your position in meters. We know what t is from the velocity equation above is 300,000 s. a is just 10 m/s/s. Plugging these in gives us a distance traveled of 450 billion meters or 450 million kilometers. (A lot of people forget that factor of a half and end up with the wrong number.) Now the distance from the Earth to the Sun, called an Astronomical Unit (AU), is 150 million kilometers (again I’m rounding, the actual value is 149,597,871 km so the rounding is less than 0.3%).

So in those 4.17 days of acceleration, you traveled 3 AU. If you started at Earth and headed straight out from the sun, you’d be 4 AU from the Sun. That’s most of the way from Earth’s orbit to Jupiter’s orbit (at a distance of 5.2 AU from the Sun). That distance puts you well beyond the main asteroid belt which ends at 3.3 AU.

Now, these numbers all change if you use a different acceleration. Doing those calculations is left as an exercise for the reader.

ADF and the Board Game Rules

The above all works just fine. The problem comes when you start looking at the rules for the spaceship combat board game and try to rationalize those rules with the math above.

From the board game, we have that one hex is 10,000 km and one turn in the game is 10 minutes of time. Added to that is the ship’s statistic, the Acceleration/Deceleration Factor (ADF) which is described as the number of hexes that a ship can speed up or slow down in a given turn. The fastest ships (fighters and assault scouts) have and ADF of 5.

Let’s look at some numbers. First, what is Void jump speed on the game map. Well, jump speed is 3,000,000 m/s or 3,000 km/s. Since a turn is 10 minutes or 600 seconds, that works out to 1,800,000 km/turn. Given that a hex is 10,000 km across, that works out to a speed of 180 hexes per turn. Since the game map is only 54 hexes wide, you’ll never get to that speed in the game.

The problem comes when people start looking at ADF as acceleration in gees, i.e. that 1 ADF = 1g of acceleration. If you make that assumption, then accelerating at 1 ADF per turn, it would take you 180 turns to get to jump speed from rest. 180 turns at 10 minutes per turn means that it would take just 1,800 minutes, or 30 hours, significantly faster than the 83.33 hours calculated above. Obviously 1 ADF cannot equal 1 g.

So let’s work that out. 1 ADF represents a change of velocity of 10,000 km per 10 minutes in 10 minutes (or 100 km/min/min). That’s an acceleration, just not in the normal units of m/s/s. So lets convert them:

\frac{10,000 km}{10 min * 10 min} = \frac{100 km}{min^2} = \frac{100,000 m}{60 s * 60 s} = 27.778 \frac{m}{s^2} = 2.78 g

So we see that 1 ADF is really 2.78 g of acceleration. You’re not going to sustain that for 30 hours and have anyone in any sort of condition to function unless severe precautions are taken. Heck, even sustaining that for 1 turn (10 minutes) is going to be rough. It’s doable, that amount of acceleration and duration is roughly equivalent of a launch to low Earth orbit with modern rockets, but you wouldn’t want to keep it up for a long time.

That also raises another issue. 5 ADF is actually 13.89 g of acceleration. And Star Frontiers doesn’t have any sort of artificial gravity tech. Pulling those kind of maneuvers is a little unrealistic. (There are discussions about using interia screen tech to help with this but that’s a different article.)

There are a couple of solutions to this. One, which is the one I use and which is probably the simplest, is a willing suspension of disbelief. The board game rules are just that, rules for a board game that simulates (sort of) spaceship combat. There are other issues with the board game physics besides this one, so I don’t expect it to represent “reality”. It’s a fun way to approximately simulate spaceship combat.

Another option, which immediately removes the 1 ADF not equaling 1 g issues, is to change the size of the hexes in the board game. Simply saying that they are 3,600 km in size instead of 10,000 km, makes 1 ADF = 1 g. If you keep the range of weapons the same (measured in hexes as they are described in the game rules, the only thing that really changes is that any planet counters you put on the map have to take up 7 hexes instead of just 1. And it might tweak the gravity rules a bit, but not significantly. This doesn’t solve some of the other problems, however. That’s a whole different post as well.

How I Apply This In Game

So how do I use this?

Basic Application

For most ships, I assume that they have two astrogators that can work in alternating shifts around the clock to do jump calculations. Since the rules say it takes 10 hours of calculation per light year traveled. And since it takes over 80 hours of travel time to get to jump speed. This means that any jump of 8 light years or less takes the same amount of time, namely 8.5 days, which I typically round up to 9 for maneuvering around the station and slight variations in arrival location (see my linked posts). And actually, since I round this up to 9 days, it play it that jumps of 9 light years or less all take 9 days, regardless of distance. Each light year beyond 9 adds a half of day of travel time to allow for the calculations. This is how I calculate the travel times for ships in my Detailed Frontier Timeline.

Again that assumes that they have two astrogators. If not, jumps take significantly longer, namely one day per light year traveled, plus 4.5 days to slow down at the destination, with a minimum of 9 days total travel. So in this case, jumps of five light years or less take 9 days, and each additionally light year adds a day on to the jump time.

Now I do allow the jump calculations to be started before the ship leaves it’s berth, assuming the crew knows when they plan to leave (to within a day or so). But because the planets and stars are always in motion, and the jump calculations have to be done for each specific jump, no more than half the calculations can be done in advance. The rest must be done “in flight.” For me this represents the tweaking and refining of the ship’s course in preparing for the jump that I discuss in the other articles I linked. But that means that even for a ship with a single astrogator, they can reduce the flight time if the astrogator gets started before they leave on the longer jumps.

Traversing multiple systems in a single trip

Another aspect of this is what I like to call the “high speed transit.” This occurs when the ship wants to traverse several star systems but doesn’t need to stop in each one. In this case, the first jump starts as usual, but once they traverse the Void the first time things change.

In each system after the first, until they reach the final system that they want to stop in, they don’t decelerate, at least not appreciably. But rather remain near jump speed, either drifting or, if they want gravity, decelerating for a few hours, flipping around and accelerating, and repeating until they are ready to jump. During this time the astrogators work on the jump and the engineers do any needed engine overhauls. The amount of time spent in system is just the longest of those two activities. Once that’s done, they nudge into the next system and repeat until they arrive at the destination system where it then takes 4.5 days to slow down.

Let’s look at an example: The UPFS Stiletto, an assault scout, is on patrol in Truane’s Star and has orders to get to Dramune as quickly as possible. This route has 4 jumps:

  • Truane’s Star to Dixon’s Star – 5 light years
  • Dixon’s Star to Prenglar – 5 light years
  • Prenglar to Cassidine – 7 light years
  • Cassidine to Dramune – 4 light years

Using normal jumps, these are all less than 9 light years so each jump would take 9 days for a total of 36 days.

Rather than do this, let’s look at what this takes using the high speed transit option. According to the rules, engine overhauls take 60 hours minus 1d10 hours for each engineer level. The rules also say that Spacefleet ships typically have level 4 engineers. That means that on average, it will take 38 hours to overhaul each engine. We’ll assume that there are 2 astrogators and 2 engineers onboard the Stiletto. This is what a high speed transit looks like in this scenario:

  • Accelerate out from Truane’s Star – 4.5 days – plenty of time to do the 50 hours astrogation calculations
  • Transit Dixon’s Star – astrogation calculations take 50 hours (2.5 days of round-the-clock work), engine overhauls only take 38 hours of work, but since there is only one engineer per engine, they have to sleep. So these are the slow part, taking 4 days – so after 4 days, they jump to Prenglar
  • Transit Prenglar – astrogation will take 70 hours (3.5 days of round-the-clock work). This one is closer but the 4 days of engine overhauls is still the limiting factor. After 4 days they jump to Cassidine.
  • Transit Cassidine – Here the astrogation calculations only take 40 hours (2 days of round-the-clock work) and the astrogators get a bit of a break while the engineers finish up. After 4 days, they make the jump to Dramune
  • Decelerate in Dramune – it takes 4.5 days to slow down and arrive at Inner Reach.

All told, this trip takes only 21 days instead of the baseline 36, saving 15 days of travel. The crew might be a little tired, but they made it without taking any risks.

If you only had 1 astrogator and two engineers, one level 3 and one level 2 (more likely on a merchant ship or PC ship), the transit looks like this:

  • Accelerate from Truane’s Star – 4.5 days, same as before. We assume the astrogator got started before they left.
  • Transit Dixon’s Star – Astrogation takes 5 days, engine overhauls take 43.5 for the level 3 engineer and 49 for the level 2 engineer. The level 3 engineer can help the other engineer once they are done so the total time to do the overhauls is five days – Time in system 5 days.
  • Transit Prenglar – In this case the limit is the astrogation which takes 7 days. Time in system, 7 days.
  • Transit Cassidine – This time the astrogators win and the jump is waiting on the engineers – Time in system, 5 days.
  • Decelerate in Dramune – 4.5 days.

Total time: 26 days. Takes a little longer but still faster than the base 36 hours. If there was only one engineer, it would actually take longer than 9 days per system as one engineer just can’t do engine overhauls on two engines in each system that fast (unless they are level 5 or 6). You might as well stop over in the station each time unless you have a reason not to go into a system.

Final Thoughts

That’s it for this post. There are other aspects of the travel that I could talk about such as vector movement, the process of lining up for a jump, what happens to your calculations and alignment when you have to maneuver for a combat or something else, and a discussion on how long those alignment efforts take anyway. Some of those ideas I touched on in the posts I linked. I might look at these again in a future post or two as well.

What are your thoughts? What questions do you have? Share them in the comment section below.

Detailed Frontier Timeline – FY 61.173 to FY 61.203

This was a rough month for getting the timeline posts out on Twitter. I was doing good and had them all scheduled up through my vacation, but then when I got back, completely dropped the ball for the rest of the month. Mainly do to being swamped by dealing with the loss of my truck and getting it replaced. In fact, I’m still getting caught up and some of the events in this post won’t make it up until later today.

This was another busy month in the timeline with several threads overlapping including the completion of the Dramune Run and Mutiny on the Eleanor Moraes module events, and the beginning of the Face of the Enemy module events. Additionally, the last saurian Ark Ships leaves their home system and the saurians make contact with the Frontier.

Here’s the events of the last month:

Date (FY)Events
61.173– The Osprey departs Minotaur (Theseus) for their jump to the Padda system.

– The sathar vessels overtake the 8th Ark Ship just hours before it is ready to jump.  The escort vessels, combined with the defenses of the Ark Ship, put up a heroic defense. 

– The escort vessels sacrifice themselves to ensure the escape of the Ark Ship and manage to damage the pursuing sathar vessels enough that the Ark Ship, while severely damaged itself, can escape their pursuers and slip alone into the Void.  They arrive safely in OFS191.
61.174– Decelerating toward the inner regions of the OFS191 system, the 8th saurian Ark Ship begins scanning the binary star system. 

– After being sedated and interrogated for 10 days, the crew of the Gullwind is taken to meet with the Malthar.  On the return to their cells, their guards are set upon by chukkahs running free in the station.  They escape to the docking bay where the Gullwind is being held. (SFKH1)

– Next to the Gullwind’s bay, the crew discovers a room with cages of imprisoned chukkahs and transport containers for them.  Loading as many as they can into the transport containers and on to the Gullwind, they then depart the station just as a swarm of combat robots attack the ship. (SFKH1)

– As the Gullwind departs Darkworld station, the Malthar’s ships pursue and attempt to destroy the vessel.  The fight is quickly joined by both the Inner Reach militia and the elements of Strike Force Nova (LC, 2xFF, 4xAS) in the system.   (SFKH1)

– With the Spacefleet ships quickly turning the tide of the battle, the pirate and Outer Reach militia ships scatter.  The Third Dramune War is over. (SFKH1)
61.175– Arriving at Inner Reach, the crew of the Gullwind give a full report to the Inner Reach Government and Spacefleet on their discovery and the events of the Dramune Run.  The crew discovers that Garlus left the Gullwind to them in his will.

– After a quick resupply, the element of SF Nova that survived the battle depart for the Fromeltar system to rejoin the Strike Force.
61.176– Just a few hours before making the jump to the Padda system, the CMS Osprey detects unknown radio signals in the outer system.  The ship’s energy sensors confirm several faint sources in the same direction.  They have passed close to the saurian Ark Ship and its escorts and detected some intership communications.

– The CMS Osprey attempts to contact the unknown radio source but receives no response. They radio the contact back to Minotuar and continue on their way to the Padda system.

– After analyzing the report from the CMS Osprey, the destroyer, frigate, and two assault scouts of the Theseus milita begin boosting toward the location of the contact.
61.177– The HSS History’s hope arrives back in the YS07 system and begins deceleration. Unfortunately, all jumps forward from here are 10-12 light years long.  The team begins weighing which of the five systems would make the most sense for progress beyond it.

– The CMS Osprey successfully jumps to the Padda system.  They immediately begin working on the jump calculations to the Waller Nexus system while not slowing down, only angling their vector toward that system.

– The saurians detect the militia ships traveling toward them. Given their analysis of the radio signals collected so far from the system and the CMS Osprey, they believe the species living here are not allied with the Sathar and decide to risk communication.
61.178– With the militia ships only a day away and now decelerating toward their location, the saurians open communications, attempting to contact the approaching ships.  The Theseus militia receives the communication attempt and responds in kind. They also notify Minotaur of the development.

– While initial communication between the saurians and UPF is difficult, both due to the long light delay as the signals travel between the ships, and the lack of a common language, progress is made as the distance between the ships decrease and the saurians’ computers translate Pan-Gal into saurian.
61.179– The Theseus militia ships arrive at the location of the saurian Ark Ship and its escorts. They are impressed by the design of the saurian Battle Rays and the sheer size of the Ark Ship itself. 

– Rudimentary communications between the saurians and Frontier races are established and the story of the saurians’ flight are related to the crews of the UPF ships.  This information is relayed back to Minotaur.

– The Minotaur government notifies the UPF Council of Worlds via subspace radio of the detection of the saurian vessels and their contact with them.

– The detachment of SF Nova arrives in the Fromeltar system from Dramune.  The remainder of the Strike Force beings accelerating for a jump to the Kizk-Kar system.
61.180– Having found no suitable planets in the OFS191 system, the 8th saurian Ark Ship begins accelerating for a jump to the OFS179 system.

– The Council of Worlds temporarily suspends all other deliberations to discuss and debate what to do about the saurians.
61.181– Having picked a system as their next target, and with deceleration complete, the crew of the HSS History’s Hope begin work on jump calculations for the next leg of their journey, a M5 dwarf 12 light years away.

– The detached ships from SF Nova rejoin the main group as it accelerates toward Kisk-Kar.
61.182– Calculations complete, the CMS Osprey jumps into the Waller Nexus system and begins decelerating toward Mahg Mar.  They radio the UPFS Eleanor Moraes to establish communication with the downed ship.

– The UPFS Elanor Moraes responds to the hail from the CMS Osprey and transmit the survey data they have collected along with coordinates for the Osprey to find the Moraes.
61.183As the Council of Worlds continue discussion, the Minotuar (Theseus) government, under pressure from many of the citizens of their world, invite the saurians to bring their ships into the inner system. 
61.184– While working on jump calculations and surveying the YS07 system, the radar system on the HSS History’s Hope suddenly stops working.

– As the engineers begin to work on HSS History’s Hope’s radar, they realized that they have been out so long that they have missed their annual maintenance.  They discover several other systems that may cause problems in the future.

– With it being about 100 days to make a high speed transit, perform the maintenance, and return to their current location, the HSS History’s Hope crew must decide if they should return or press forward with an increased chance of breakdowns in future jumps.
61.185– After two days of internal debate, the saurians begin accelerating toward Minotaur, escorted by the militia ships.

– The 8th saurian Ark Ship successfully jumps to the OSF179 system.  The immediately detect a beacon left by the 7th ark ship indicating that the system had been surveyed but nothing suitable found.  Deciding that the neutron star in OFS192 is a non-starter, they begin plotting a course to FS58 and shifting their vector for the jump.
61.186– After four days of deceleration, the Osprey settles into orbit around Mahg Mar (Waller Nexus).  After a couple of orbits to orient their mapping systems, they locate the UPFS Elanor Moraes and descend to the planet’s surface, landing just a few hundred meters from the survey vessel.

– With repairs still ongoing on the HSS History’s Hope’s radar system, the crew comes down on the side of caution and decide to return to Scree Fron for maintenance.  The calculations for the jump forward are aborted and calculations are started to jump back to YS06.
61.187With the arrival of the CMS Osprey and the supplies it brought, the repairs on the UPFS Eleanor Moraes begin to progress much quicker.  Captain Dentin takes command of the expedition and begins sending out the survey robots to scout the surrounding terrain.
61.188– SF Nova arrives in orbit around Zit-kit In the Kisk-Kar system.  They will remain here for 6 days.

– The saurian ships settle into orbit around Minotaur (Theseus).  Constant holovid coverage has greatly increased the public interest in these strangely graceful ships.
61.189– The Theseus militia establishes a “no fly” zone around the saurian vessels to keep away all the curious onlookers attempting to visit and observe the ship up close in their small shuttles and private yachts.

– Having discovered what appears to be some sort of village about 30 km away members of the Moraes crew are sent by Captain Dentin to investigate with the Osprey crew continues working on the repairs. (SFKH3)
61.190– The two newest assault scouts for SF Meteor arrive at Gollwin Station orbiting Morgaine’s World (Prenglar).  They are debriefed and join with their fellow assault scouts and formed into Patrol Group Meteor until the capital ship complete construction.

– About 3/4 of the way to the village the crew of the UPF Eleanor Moraes discover a strange, small vehicle containing the bodies of two dead sathar and what appears to be a small, functioning robot.  They radio the find back to the Osprey which sends out another team to collect the vehicle. (SFKH3)

– With about 3 km left to the village, the Moraes crew reaches a tall cliff that their explorer cannot climb.  They need to continue the rest of the way on foot.  They camp at the base of the cliff for the night. (SFKH3)
61.191– The saurians agree to send an envoy to meet with members of the Minotaur government aboard Minotaur station.  They request that the captains of the militia vessels they had met originally be present at the meeting.

– Security is enhanced on Minotaur station in preparation for the historic first meeting with the Saurians.  Several protest groups are dispersed that were threatening to become violent.

– As the crew of the UPFS Eleanor Moraes reach the top of the cliff, a strange, birdlike creature briefly emerges from the underbrush and then disappears again. The crew can see it crouching in the bushes and decide to wait to see what happens. (SFKH3)

– After a several minutes, the creature emerges again from the underbrush and begins trying to talk to the Moraes crew.  Establishing some basic communication with the aid of a polyvox, the creature, Beet-Chest, begins leading them to his village. (SFKH3)

– Meeting with the village elders, the Moraes crew learn that the sathar had arrived on the planet about 3 months ago and 2 sathar attacked a party of the Notui (what the bird-like creatures call themselves) and were killed by the Notui.  The crew spends the night in the village after reporting in.
61.192– Patrol Group Meteor is dispatched to White Light via Timeon.

– The saurian delegation arrives at Minotaur stations.  Large crowds line the passages hoping to catch a glimpse of the visitors, but they are quickly moved away from the crowds.  After several hours of discussion, they return to their ships.

– Having determined the general direction of where the sathar’s ship landed (roughly in the same direction from the village as the UPFS Eleanor Moraes), the Moraes crew return to their ship to confer with Captain Dentin.
61.193– Calculation and course corrections complete, the 8th saurian Ark Ship jumps to the FS58 system.  They again detect a beacon from the 7th Ark Ship and realize they are still following the previous ship.

– Having completed jump calculations and gotten the radar system fixed, the HSS History’s Hope begins accelerating toward YS06, they plan to make a high speed transit back to Scree Fron spending only enough time in each system to overhaul engines and make jump calculations.

– The saurians of the 7th ark ship return to Minotaur station to continue their discussions with members of the UPF and Minotaur governments, returning once again to their ships at the end of the day.  This continues for the next several days.
61.194– After much deliberation the saurians of the 8th Ark Ship decide that jumping through the nebula again (which would take them to the Tristkar system) would not be the best plan, and like the 7th Ark Ship before them, start plotting a jump to the Theseus system.

– Strike Force Nova departs Zit-Kit (Kisk-Kar) for the K’aken-Kar system.
61.195After three days of detailed survey by the robots, no trace of the sathar ship can be found on land and Captain Dentin suspects that it landed in the water of the nearby river.  The Moraes’ crew sets out to try to find some trace of it along the river.
61.196A delegation from White Light, including Crown Princess Leotia Valentine Leotus, arrives at Minotaur station and joins the deliberations with the Saurians. 
61.197– Jump calculations complete, the 8th saurian Ark Ship begins accelerating toward the Theseus system.

– After two days of careful search along the riverbanks, the Moraes crew discover a metal cable attached to a stake in the ground, partially buried in the sand, and extending out into the river.  Investigation shows some sort of small craft submerged in the river at the other end of the cable.
61.198– HSS History’s Hope jumps into the YS06 system and begin immediately working on the engines and jump calculations for a jump to YS05.

– Using spacesuits with improvised weight belts, the Moraes crew investigate the submerged vessel.  It is a hull size 2 ship of sathar design never seen before.  They locate the airlock at the other end of the cable but do not attempt to enter.
61.199Descending again to the sathar ship, the Moraes crew breach the security system on the airlock and enter the ship.  Fighting through the ship’s defenses, they gain control of the ship with only minor damage to the ship and no serious injuries to the crew.
61.200After a day of examining the sathar vessel, the Moraes crew discover what appears to be a sathar base of operations for the ship located in the FS30 system and astrogation data to get there.  They send a report back to the Frontier Expeditionary Force HQ on Clarion.
61.201PG Meteor arrives in orbit around Lossend (Timeon).  They plan to spend two days here before continuing on to Clarion (White Light).
61.202– The 8th saurian Ark ship successfully jumps into the Theseus system and immediately detect radio signals from the inner system.  A few hours later they detect the 7th Ark Ship and establish communications.

– The UFPS Eleanor Moraes and CMS Osprey receive orders from the Frontier Expeditionary Force commander to select a crew to man the sathar scout ship.  The three ships are to jump to the FS30 system and attempt to capture the sathar base.

– PG Meteor’s time in Timeon is cut short and their orders are changed to proceed immediately to the Theseus system to support Frontier Expeditionary Force operation in the FS30 system.  They leave immediately for the White Light system.
61.203– Strike Force Nova arrives at Ken’zah-Kit in the K’aken-Kar system.  They will remain in this system for 18 days patrolling the outer system.

– Engine overhauls and jump calculations complete, the HSS History’s Hope jumps back to they YS05 system and begins working on the jump to YS03.

And here’s the full timeline file:

DetailedFrontierTimelineDownload

State of the Frontier – August 2020

As has been par for the course this month, this post is coming a few hours late. I had always intended to do this post on Sept. 1st as the first post of the month but it’s still not coming at the usual time slot in the morning. (I wonder how many of my readers actually read it when it first drops. Probably very few if any.)

Looking Back

This has been a rough month for me. I managed to get my regular posts out but it was a close thing. I partially looked at this in my post last week for the RPG Blog Carnival where I summarized all the projects I’m working on. That’s really nothing new as all of those projects have been going on and off for years, but they still contribute to everything I have to think about each month as I work. The funny thing is, after I published that post, I thought of a few other things that I had forgotten. I updated the post to add the podcast stuff, but I thought of other things later that probably should have been in the list.

The other posts for last month were the regular Detailed Frontier Timeline post, a detailed post on Brekstoone Manor in Myha’s Beach on Pale, and an outline of the Skills for Hire adventure I ran last month. There should have been a second session of that game but life intervened and I had to cancel.

The month started well as we took the family up to Glacier National Park in Montana for an 8 day camping trip. We had a lot of fun and it was quite relaxing.

The problems started on the way home. As we were driving we needed to stop. As I was making a left hand turn, a car came up from behind (in the on coming traffic lane – he was apparently passing people in the line of cars behind me on the two lane highway) and clipped the front of my truck. He went flying off into the ditch with a big dent in the side doors of his car and my front bumper was bent in. Luckily no one was hurt. We were able to drive our truck home (another 650 miles) without any real problems. The only real issue to driving was that making a right turn caused the tire to rub against a bit of plastic on the bent in bumper. However, it turned out that the damage was enough that the truck was considered totaled (it was an 18 year old truck).

Dealing with that – taking the truck in for repair, finding out it was totaled, getting a rental car (with 6 drivers we could not manage on only 2 cars), and looking for a new truck – used up all my spare time this month. So there really was no “behind the scenes” game work done. I’ve even fallen way behind on the timeline posts on Twitter and have about a week and half of them to complete writing and catch up on. The good news is we found a new truck we’re happy with and all that is now officially behind us. I’m turning the rental car in later today.

Looking Forward

Beyond the Detailed Frontier Timeline post next week, I really don’t have a clue what is coming down the pipe. This month has five Tuesdays which is why I moved this post to today. I think I’ll be posting another location. I have the maps all sketched out, I’d just need to do the write-up and make nice versions of the maps. This is the next location for my Skills for Hire game which I am hopefully running tomorrow. So you might get a write-up on that adventure as well. Beyond that, we’ll see.

Behind the scenes I’m starting work this week on the next issue (#30) of the Frontier Explorer to be released in October. That will take up a bunch of my time as well but I’m going to focus on getting started early so it is more manageable and more spread out to allow me to work on other things as well.

I still have a bit of real life stuff to catch up on now that the truck purchasing is out of the way and that will probably use up any extra time I have left. School has started for my wife (she’s an astronomy professor) and kids so we’re starting to get back into a regular routine. Hopefully the schools don’t shut down again and throw a wrench in that.

Final Thoughts

It’s not a long post but there really hasn’t been a lot happening this month related to the blog. I just managed to squeak by. I looking forward to September being a little less stressful. As always feel free to share your thoughts and ideas in the comments below.

August RPG Blog Carnival – What we need is … more focus

This is going to be a bit of an introspective post (and a bit late again).

RPG Blog Carnival Logo

I’m a bit behind in reading through all the posts on the blogs I follow and finally read the kickoff post for August’s RPG Blog Carnival which is being hosted by Campaign Mastery. The topic is “What We Need Is/Are …” When reading the post, I had to chuckle at the comment that “more prep time” wasn’t a good answer given the current COVID-19 situation.

But to be completely honest, that really is one of the things that I need. Since the pandemic shutdowns started, I’ve actually had less free time to do gaming activities than I had before this all started. I already worked from home full time before the pandemic. My wife was still going to work every day. And I had all of my kids home full time, many of them still in school and even over the summer, trapped in the house without friends to distract them and keep them out of my hair. I could definitely use more time. But since that is off the table, I have something else to write about.

To be honest, I hadn’t planned on doing a blog carnival post this month, but as I was driving to pick up one of my kids from work (the joys of having 6 people working and only 3 cars), I was mulling over the topic and the thought hit me that what I really need, more than more time, is more focus on what I spend my time on.

And that got me thinking about all the irons I have in the fire.

Myriads of Projects

Not counting my full-time job, plus my wife and seven kids and all the things that go along with that, here’s a list of all the different hobby projects that I’m involved with or have on-going.

Obviously, the biggest part of my distraction revolves around the Star Frontiers RPG. For many years now, I’ve sort of been the primary torch bearer for the game in the on-line communities. With that comes a number of projects.

Websites & Social Media

To start I host all of the following websites on my personal server here at my house:

I didn’t initially create all of those sites (just 3), but have inherited them over the years as the original owners have drifted off to other things.

With the exception of possibly this site (which is relatively new) and the Star Frontiersman site (which I rebuilt when I inherited it), the others are all in desperate need of of updating. Two of them date from 2007 and one from 2012. I have standing projects to update all of those sites to new technologies. But those are daunting tasks and require a lot of dedicated time.

In addition to the websites, I’m a founding member or admin on multiple social media platforms including a Facebook group and a Discord server. There are a few others but they are not nearly as active (or were shut down as in the case of the Google Plus group). Each of those also compete for some of my time.

Fanzines

Circling back, the Frontier Explorer fanzine is still active. With the exception of the year we took off at the request of Wizards of the Coast (due to the attempt to acquire the trademark by Evil Hat), we’ve put out an issue every 3 months. I’m getting ready to start working on issue 30. This takes up a significant chunk of my time the 6 weeks prior to each issue being released.

Related to the Frontier Explorer, I’ve done two starship technical manuals in the past that were full products by themselves and released in the “Frontier Explorer Presents” line. I’ve been asked about doing another one on the HSS History’s Hope which I’m considering. We are also in the editing and art stage on another Frontier Explorer Presents” publication that will be a short story collection based around the Khad’dan, a fan-created Yazirian honor weapon.

And we are also looking at resurrecting the Star Frontiersman magazine to be a vehicle for publishing adventures in, separate from the Frontier Explorer. I have several submissions from authors that might end up there.

Another project in this category waiting for my attention is an on-line index of all the articles from all of the fanzines and the old Dragon, Imagine, Polyhedron, and Ares articles. I have that list mostly compiled (it was complete up the the hiatus), but still need to make it searchable on-line.

Finally, there is the project to get all the articles on-line in HTML format as opposed to just the magazine PDFs. Some of that is done and we had the intention of doing that for all the Frontier Explorer articles originally, but that fell by the wayside early on (issue 7) and I’ve never gotten back to it.

Blogging

Then there is this blog. The writing of each article takes 1-2 hours, sometimes more, depending on the topic and length. And that doesn’t count all the time that goes into making the content that I’m writing about.

Which brings me to the next list. Namely projects that I’m working on related to this blog.

  • Detailed Frontier Timeline
  • Death at Rosegard adventure
  • Ghost Ship Osiris adventure
  • 3D ship models
  • New starship construction rules
  • probably others I’m forgetting

Long time readers should recognize the items there. Newer readers can peruse the archive to find my posts on those projects.

I have a couple of other blogs that are no longer active. One of the things I’ve been meaning to do is consolidate all the writing I’ve done on those blogs into a sort of “blog archive” on my personal site (thomasstephens.info)

Active Games

Next there are the on-line Star Frontiers games I’m either running (Skills for Hire) or playing in (a Second Sathar War game from the Knight Hawks Campaign Book). The SSW game doesn’t take up a lot of time but it does consume some. Prepping for the Skills for Hire game, on the other hand, does take a fair bit of work as I need to prepare adventure outlines, maps, etc. for each adventure. The goal was to have a weekly session. I quickly discovered that I didn’t have time to prep for that and so dropped back to bi-weekly. But recently, as my players can attest, even that hasn’t been possible. On the flip side, this prep does give me items to share as blog posts here.

Podcasts

Addendum: I completely forgot about the podcast projects until after I posted the article originally. I want to start a podcast as well a post the audio from my on-line games on-line. The game sessions are recorded. I just need to convert them into an audio format and get them posted.

As for a regular podcast, I have several ideas (and did one a decade ago) but with all the other projects, this has just never gotten off the ground. Maybe it won’t happen. But it is definitely something I want to do. One idea I’ve had is to do a discussion of the Star Frontiers rules. Start at the beginning and go through them discussing the rules, how they work, and various fan-created variations.

Other Projects

In addition to all of that, there are a few other projects kicking around. One is my Second Sathar War computer game. I started that a long time ago. It’s about 90% of the way to the full base functionality. It works (except for seeker missiles and repairs) but needs a lot of polish (and a few bug fixes). I haven’t really worked on it recently (other than to get it working on Windows 10 a couple of years back) but it’s always sitting there in back of my mind begging for attention.

Another project is a pair of books I’m writing. One is a sequel to my book Discovery. That is roughly outlined and has one small section written. The other is a Star Frontiers story set on Pale when the sathar attack that planet. That one is outlined and I have about 1/4-1/3 (~56000 words) of the first draft done. Both of those are projects I’d like to get back to.

Next, there is some freelance stuff I do including indexing games for DWD Studios (publishers of FrontierSpace), editing FrontierSpace modules for Trevor Holman, and I’m on tap to do some science nuggets to include in the upcoming Space Kids RPG by Nick Landry. Those are hit and miss but when they come up, they can take most if not all of my free time for any given week.

Finally there are my other blogs and website, most notably my personal site (thomasstephens.info) and my game company site (newfrontiergames.com) Both need a lot of work.

I’m sure there are other things I’ve worked on (and probably not finished) that could go here but this list is already long enough as it is.

Gaining Focus

As you can see from the list above, I have a lot of irons in the fire. While I’m not necessarily actively working on all of those things, they are are there hoping to gain my attention. And because there are so many options, I can get easily distracted bouncing between them all. Hence the need for more focus.

I’m not sure what the best path forward for me is right now. The Frontier Explorer and this blog are definitely my highest priorities. Mostly because I enjoy them, but partially because they actively generate some income (through their respective Patreon campaigns) that I use to keep the websites going, cover my time spent working on them, and reinvest into time or resources for other projects. If you like the magazines and the blog, and want to encourage me to keep them going, consider supporting the Patreon campaigns for the Frontier Explorer (per issue) or this blog (monthly).

Even just the blog suffers from a bit (okay, may a lot) of a lack of focus. There are a lot of topics I’ve covered and would like to continue covering. To focus on fewer of them may mean that I don’t post as often as there won’t be anything to post about. So I could see the blog slowing down if needed. I’ve been consistently getting out at least a post a week (even though some, like this one, don’t get out on time at 8am on Tuesdays) for over two years but maybe I need to scale that back a bit. The real question is where to put my focus.

For all the other projects, I think what I need is to sit down and really prioritize them. Then focus on one until it’s done and move on to the next. I think part of the problem is that the huge number of projects creates a large cognitive load as they are all vying for attention and so I can’t pick just one and I spend a lot of time thinking back and forth and don’t make any progress.

The only other thing is the on-line games. As much as I love them, they are a huge time sink and I often find prepping for the game I’m running takes all my free time and then some. Maybe the option there is to fall back to one session a month. Although they do help generate content for the blog that are inline with my original goal for the blog, namely to create and provide resources that others can use in their games.

What’s Next?

I’m not sure. This is going to take some more thinking. I might have more to say about this in my next State of the Frontier post next week. Or it may take a bit more time to sort all of this out. School just started and that might free up time (as I have the kids around less during the day and so get less distracted from work that I have to make up later) or if they shut down due to COVID-19 again, it may mean less free time like it did last March and April.

But this is a chance for you, dear readers, to chime in. Which of all the projects I’ve listed above would you like to see more of? Which should I focus on? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

Skills for Hire – Rescue

I always forget how long it takes me to get back into my regular routine after a big family vacation. Which is why this post is going up a little later in the day than normal.

Two weeks ago the players in my Skills for Hire game finished this adventure so it’s time to post up the adventure notes. This time around, I’m going to post them as is, exactly as I have them written down, so you can see what I was working off of. I’ll also provide a quick summary of the way it actually played out. Hopefully in the next few weeks I’ll get the audio of the session on-line as well.

Adventure Outline

What follows are my notes for the adventure, as I had them written down for me to use. As you’ll see, there isn’t a lot there, just some basic notes and names and general events that I wanted to happen. These are literally my crib notes.

The setup

The daughter (Brandi) of a prominent politician (Carter Albach, wife: Melody) has been kidnapped by organized crime bosses that the politician won’t bow to.  The police, probably in the crime lord’s pay, are taking too long and not making progress.  The mercenaries are being hired to get the young woman (22 years old) back.

Major segments

This list was my original idea of the major segments of the adventure, the PCs pretty much skipped over 2 and 4 was really short as well due to the actions they took.

  1. Finding the location
  2. Surveillance
  3. Springing her free
  4. Getting safely home

Details

She’s being held in a manor house in Myra’s Beach.  The manor is owned by a yazirian, Gornar Welnat, who owns several of the larger hotels/resorts in the city.  He is also the head of a local organized crime operation, the Tristars. 

Tristars are a known organization in the city but no one knows exactly the extent of their operations.  Some members are known for generally bullying but there are other members that are more into more sophisticated endeavors including controlling some of the local police and businesses in town.

Brandi and her friend (Jula Keray) were visiting Myra’s Beach for the weekend and met up with a group of others their age.  Heading back to their hotel from the beach with two young men (Karl, tall blond, & Christian, shorter, dark haired), they were accosted by a group of thugs who hit them with a doze grenade.  Jula woke up alone a few minutes later in the small street where they were ambushed.  Neither Bandi nor the two young men (who are part of the gang) were anywhere to be seen. 

This list was the breadcrumb trail that I had envisioned for them finding the location of the Julia at the manor. They mostly skipped over #2 but otherwise this was the path first session of the adventure took (except for #6; they didn’t find that out until they were in the manor).

  1. Jula can describe/identify the tattoo of the three stars the young men had (https://starfrontiers.info/pics/SkillsForHire/TriStarLogo0.png)
  2. Showing that mark around will identify the Tristar group but people won’t say much about it beyond that it’s a local group/gang.  They either don’t know anything or are afraid to talk.
  3. After poking around, the team will get accosted by a group of young thugs from the Tristars
  4. Capture of one of the members will point them to a bar where they hang out.
  5. At the bar they can catch a middle level member of the gang (dralasite, Garzdan) that can point them to the manor.
  6. Brandi is being held in the upper rooms of the left tower.

The manor

As I noted in my write-up of the manor, a lot of specifics were left unstated so the Referee could customize it as needed for their adventure. This section was my specifics for this adventure and the PCs I had on hand. I didn’t want it too tough as they are early level characters but I didn’t want it too easy either.

Level 2 locks on offices

Level 1 locks on bedrooms except on master bedroom – level 4 there

The door to the room where Brandi is being held is level 3

During the day, there are typically 15-20 beings in the manor.  Mostly business men or staff with a five being security detail in the manor and five more about the grounds.   There are 2 security robots, 4 maintenance robots, and 2 service robots.

At night, there are 8 people living at the manor, Brandi, and a 2 man security detail in the building and four on the grounds.  Plus the 2 security robots.

Running the Adventure

That was everything. Combined with the work I had done on the city of Myha’s Beach, the Brekstoone Manor, and the Tristars, that was what I used to run the adventure.

When I was creating the adventure, I suspected that in this case, the challenge was going to require to sessions. I just didn’t see a way for them to get through it all in a single 4-hour block. And it turned out I was right.

I had my biggest group yet for the first session with 8 players. However, due to audio difficulties, one of the players had to drop out. The PCs got to their start point in Myha’s Beach, and after talking with Jula, investigated the location of the attack. They correctly surmised that the two young men were part of the organization that had captured Brandi.

A pair of characters then went looking for groups that were rivals of the Tristars (something I hadn’t anticipated and had to make up on the spot). However, their investigation rolls went so badly that they found a group of Tristars instead and a fight ensued (#3 from above). They wounded several of the thugs and drove three of the four off. The fourth had been knocked out so they took him back to their base of operations for questioning. Under Telol, he revealed the location of a couple places that the Tristars liked to hang out (#4) as well as some other information about the organization including his contact up the line.

They picked one of the locations (the closer one), a restaurant/bar near the old town and planned a raid. Three of the team members went in and got a table to scope out the establishment and try to identify the upper level member identified. The others took up positions around the building including Joey, the humma, watching the back door.

Only about 1/3 of the beings in restaurant were members of the Tristars but they were are clustered to a side of the dining area. With their target identified, the three PCs in the building all tossed doze grenades into the area where the Tristars were seated. At this point pandemonium ensued as the diners all tried to get out of what appeared to be a battle scene. Luckily for the PCs all but 3 of the gang members succumbed to the doze gas. Unfortunately, their target (a dralasite) was one that didn’t. They waded in with stunsticks and electrostunners while other PCs tried to get into the building through the outflow of panicked diners.

Despite several successful attacks on the target, he hadn’t be knocked out, although they had knocked out the other two gang members. At that point, one of the PCs who had gotten in from the outside, a vrusk, fired his laser rifle into the ceiling (set at 1 SEU) and bellowed “Stop!” A very successful (rolled a 1) Leadership check and everyone in the building froze, including their target as he was about to slip out the door into the kitchens. The other PCs hit him once again and he collapsed. Scooping the dralasite up, they slipped out through the kitchen and the back door. They made their way to a place they could be picked up by aircar and flew back to their base of operations.

Questioning the new prisoner with Telol, they learned that he was not involved in any way with, nor had any knowledge of, the kidnapping but that if it had happened, they would probably be holding the girl in Brekstoone Manor. They also gained a bit more information about the organization. That ended the first session.

The second session opened with them trying to decide how to best assault the Manor. Calling several different pizza parlors to schedule a delivery to the manor gates at the same time to create a diversion, they went around to the forested region of the grounds and used the trees, the yazirian gliding ability, and some rope to get them over the walls and onto the grounds. Slipping through the forest, they watched the house from the edge of the trees where they discovered two security robots making rounds around the manor and the occasional random patrol by a human guard as well.

Timing the robot patrol, the roboticist dashed across the open space and attempted to disable the lead robot. Failing to remove the security lock on his first attempt, the robot smacked him with it’s hands doing a good amount of damage. The roboticist got the security lock off on the next round and after taking some more damage, disabled the robot. They dragged it into the garage and everyone else joined them there. In the garage they found a nice sports car, and explorer, and two hoverbikes. I considered having the robot sound an alarm, but since they were doing so well, I decided to give them until the second robot came back around and would have it sound the alarm. But they got under cover before it spotted them.

When the second robot came around they jump it in the same manner. The only complication was that just as that was happening the human guard came walking around the manor from the opposite direction. Luckily, one of the PCs was waiting for this and hit him with anesthetic needler darts and knocked him out. Dragging him in the garage along with the other robot, they relieved the guard of his id card and keys and the roboticist went to work reprogramming the robots to go patrol the outer wall instead of around the manor (They didn’t have time to do anything more complicated and didn’t want the robots completely off-line.

Using the guard’s keys, they entered the manor from the back on both the main level and the first floor balcony. Carefully working through the rooms of the manor, they found someone in the library who they stunned and tied up. They heard noises coming from the stairs to the basement and posted a guard there. They also heard noises from one of the offices on the second floor. Tossing in a doze grenade, they knocked out the occupant there. That turned out to be the security offices and since the occupant didn’t have time to react, the computer was still logged in. They were able to turn off all the door locks and alarms.

Checking the rest of the rooms they discovered that this floor was just offices and took the elevator up to level 3. While one group covered the hallways, a couple of PCs opened on of the doors to discover a bedroom. The noise of the door opening woke the person sleeping and the first PC took a shot with his needler rifle and while he hit, it did not knock the occupant back out. Kneeling down so the person behind him could take a shot as well, he discovered that it was the humma who only had a laser rifle and no non-lethal weapons. The humma took a shot (3 SEU) and hit the occupant squarely in the chest who cried out from the injury. They asked th injured occupant where the girl was and he told them across the hall. The first PC then took another shot with the needler and this time knocked out the occupant. However, the occupant’s chronocom came to life asking if he was okay. They texted back that he was fine.

Quickly moving across they hall, they tried the door into the tower and found a small sitting room with stairs going up. Ascending the stairs they found Brandi sitting on her bed in the room at the top of the tower. First thinking that they were more Tristar goons, she gave them a bit of lip but after discovering who they were, she went with them.

While they were in the tower getting Brandi, Gornar, the owner of the Manor and head of the Tristars, came out of his suite, electrostunner in hand to investigate the noises come from the room right below his bedroom (and he didn’t believe the text). However, the group watching the hall were ready and got the drop on him. Hitting him with an electrostunner of their own and knocking him out.

They left him lying on the floor and made their way down to the ground floor of the manor. While they were searching the building, the roboticist had finished reprogramming the robots, parked the explorer blocking the front door with the explorer’s side door open, and then went into the building. They made their way to the front door and loaded Brandi and part of the team into the explorer. The others went out the back door to the garage and some took the sports car while one of them climbed on a hoverbike.

They they headed for the main gate of the grounds and back into the city. They were expecting to have to ram the gate with the explorer but the gate’s sensors recognized the vehicles and opened for them. They ducked into the the first public parking area near the grounds and the beach and called for their aircar pickup. Being the middle of the night, there was only one other car in the parking lot and no one to be seen nearby. They dumped the keys to the Tristar’s vehicles in the lone car, loaded into the aircars, and flew back to Point True.

Amazingly, they managed to do the entire adventure without actually killing anyone. It was a close thing in the manor and they definitely roughed up a few people but no one was actually killed. It was a fun adventure and I enjoyed seeing how they PCs handled the various situations.

Brekstoone Manor

In my post on Myha’s Beach back in June, I had this little snippet:

Front view of the manor (click for larger image)

The city’s growth northward was effectively halted in FY18 with the construction of Brekstoone Manor. The manor is simply referred to as Observatory Manor by the locals, due to the large observatory dome on the manor’s north tower. The Brekstoone family secured a large tract of land that ran from the sea several kilometers inland on which they built the manor. With no more room northward to grow, the town continued to grow southward.

This post is going to detail out that Manor.

I’ve had the maps done for a while, but I was waiting for the most recent adventure of my Skills for Hire game to finish as the Manor was where they had to go find the young lady they were rescuing. I didn’t want to give away the details of the manor to my players so it had to wait until the adventure was complete. They successfully rescued the prisoner and managed to do so without killing anyone. (Although that was a close thing as the humma in the group didn’t have a non-lethal weapon and almost blew someone’s chest out with his laser rifle. But now the adventure is done and I can post the details of the manor.

History

As mentioned above, the manor was built in FY18 by the Brekstoone family north of Myha’s beach. Their land included both beach-front property as well as some forested property back away from the beach.

Manor Grounds. The black lines are 5m high walls around the property, grey is road, and yellow is a footpath. This was drawn with Inkarta which doesn’t have good sci-fi tokens in it’s free version.
Back view of the Manor (click for larger image)

In FY 41, the Brekstoone family decided to move their operations off of Pale to New Pale and sold the manor to a local businessman, a yazirian by the name of Gornar Welnat who you might remember from my post about the Tristars organization. He runs his commercial (both legal and illegal) enterprises from the offices in the Manor.

While Gornar has upgraded some of the features in the manor, most of it still retains the original systems and structures from its construction. The telescope dome still houses an operating 1 meter telescope that Gornar lets the local schools use for projects and star parties.

Floor Plans

Including the observatory dome, the manor has five levels above ground and a full basement. Each level (with the exception of the dome which is a little larger) is 4 meters high. Ceilings in the manor are just over 3m high with nearly a meter of space between the levels for ductwork, piping. and other infrastructure.

We’ll look at each of the levels in turn from the basement up. In these descriptions, I’ll be presenting the manor as I used it in my game. Feel free to adjust it as needed for your game.

All of the maps are 1 meter per square and 70 pixels per square for use in VTTs. At the end of the post will be a zip file with both labeled and unlabeled versions of the maps. Also, all the maps are on the same grid so that they overlay each other to show relative positions between layers.

Basement

This level contains exercise and workout rooms, a small theater, a food storage area, and the robot storage area where they go to recharge when not working.

Ground Level

This is the main level of the Manor. Most of the space is taken up by a large open main hall that is also used as the dining room. The main doors are to the front of the house and there is a salon for discussions on this level. The bottom levels of the towers are used for storage of tables, chairs, and other furniture for the main hall. There is also a kitchen and pantry on this level. Stairs by the front door (behind a door) go down the basement, and a pair of stairwells on either side of the main hall ascend to the 1st floor.

1st Floor

This is the main working level of the manor. The center of this level is open to the level below with a small balcony running around the main hall. This is also where one accesses the outdoor balconies in both the front and back of the house.

This level also houses the manor’s library, several offices, and a small tech/robotics shop and the manor’s computer system. There are stairs going up to the 2nd floor along the back of the house.

2nd Floor

This is the level with most of the bedrooms. Each room has its own small bathroom with a shower and toilet. Additionally, the room in the observatory tower is a small study. The center back of this level is the beginning of the master suite; on this level is a sitting room.

The room in the left tower is a sitting room and bathroom for a small bedroom suite that takes up the top two levels of that tower. There is no stair access to the 3rd floor in the public areas of this level but there is a spiral staircase in the master suite that goes up.

3rd Floor

There are three offices on this level that are accessible by the right (north) elevator. This is also how one accesses the observatory control room which is also on this level. On the top level of the left (south) tower is the bedroom for the small tower suite reached via a small staircase within the suite. The rest of the master suite is also on this level with a private study above the sitting room, and then a master bedroom and master bathroom only accessible from within the suite. Finally, there is a small secret passage connecting the Master Study to the public hallway on this level and the elevator. In both the Master Study and the Hallway, these doors are concealed as part of the wall.

Observatory Level

The only thing on this level is the observatory dome itself and the telescope. This room (and level) is accessed by a stairwell in the observatory control room on the floor below.

Things I Left Out

I realized after I made these maps and was creating this post, that I left a couple of things off.

One is a garage. That was actually intentional. The garage is a detached building (to the right and a bit behind as you look at the front of the Manor) that can house three vehicles. It has three garage style doors and one regular access door.

The other bit I realized that I forgot was a mechanical room for the buildings water heaters, furnaces, air conditioners, and other systems. I left room between the floors for the duct work but forgot a room for the equipment. The other was a laundry room. However, that oversight is fairly easy to fix. All that is needed is to convert the food storage room in the basement into two or three different rooms. One for the mechanical equipment, one for the laundry, and if a bit of storage is desired, reserving some of the space for that as well. You could also covert the weight room, sauna, or robot room on this level if you wanted to exclude those from the manor.

Details, Details, Details

I’ve left the exact details of the individual rooms unspecified to allow those using the manor to add the details that they want based on how the manor fits into their world. I also didn’t specify things like security systems, locks, alarms, etc. Again to allow flexibility in use. Feel free to fill in those details as they best fit in your particular game.

I’ll be posting a write-up of the adventure I used this manor in, probably next week. In that post I’ll give the details I used for my game, which was geared toward early level characters.

Wrapping Up

That’s it for the Brekstoone Manor. Here’s a zip file with all the maps and the front and back view of the manor: ObservatoryManorMaps.zip. (It’s about 650 kB).

What do you think about the manor? What other features did I forget to include? I’m always trying to build better maps and can use suggestions. Share your thoughts in the comments below.

Detailed Frontier Timeline – FY61.142 to FY61.172

This was a busy month in the timeline. There are a number of threads that all piled up on each other. The Dramune Run (SFKH1) is nearing completion, the Mutiny on the Elanor Moraes (SFKH2) occurs, the HSS History’s Hope continues it’s journey, the sathar make their final push on the saurian worlds to eliminate them, and we see the completion of the first ships for the new Strike Force Meteor come out of the shipyards.

In some cases, I had six different events on a single day. That definitely wasn’t planned. If I was really planning this out all in advance and not just doing it a bit at a time, I probably would have spread some of these things out differently. But, given the way I add in events and work out their consequences, this is how they fell out and it probably is more organic and accurate that way anyway. Sometimes events all pile up on each other.

It was also a tough month on the posting side. Because there were so many intertwined and detailed events happening, I had to make sure I wasn’t missing anything and so got behind in writing the updates and getting them posted. If you’re following along on Twitter, you would have noticed that there were large gaps of no daily posts followed by floods of posts over several days as I worked on getting caught up.

In any case, we made it through the month. Here are the events happening in the Frontier over the last 31 days.

Date (FY)Events
61.142The last shipment delivered by Obar Enterprises to Triad (Cassidine), a shipment of rubies from Pale (Truane’s Star), triggered a flag in a resource tracking system on Triad due to the speed of the high profile delivery. It is flagged for future investigation.
61.143The UPFS Eleanor Moraes successfully arrives in the Waller Nexus system and begins scanning the system for planets.
61.144The Gullwind successfully jumps into the Cassidine system and begins deceleration toward Triad station.
61.145Strike Force Nova leaves Cassidine and begins accelerating for a jump to the Dramune system.
61.146– Calculations nearly complete, the HSS History’s Hope begins accelerating for a jump to YS06. If successful, this will complete the jump route between YS06 and YS05.

– Initial scans by the UPFS Eleanor Moraes detects a potentially habitable planet orbiting Waller Nexus.  An atmoprobe is launched toward the planet. They adjust  their deceleration vector to take them into orbit around the planet which they dub Mahg Mar.
61.147– After scanning the OFS179 system for 20 days, the 7th Saurian ark ship has identified all the planets near the star and none are suitable for colonization.  They begin working on jump calculations to their next system.

– Results of the atmoprobe sent to Mahg Mar indicate that the atmosphere  is breathable but contains trace toxins. Breathing masks will be required at all time when outside on the surface.

– The 8th Saurian Ark Ship is completed.  With sathar ships in the system and suspecting that the ships that razed Rock (Sessar) will be joining them, the shakedown cruise is skipped and loading begins immediately.
61.148– Arriving at Triad station (Cassidine), the crew of the Gullwind replenish supplies and spend a day decompressing from their recent encounters before making the final leg of their trip to Inner Reach (Dramune).

– Having confirmed the destruction of the saurians on Rock, the Sathar fleet in the Sessar system begins accelerating toward the Sauria system to join with the other fleet there.
61.149– The UPFS Eleanor Moraes settles into orbit around Mahg Mar and begins preparation for landing on the surface of the planet.

– Fearing that this might be the last Ark Ship launched, the Saurians move all of the remaining cultural artifacts that were planned to be spread out across the remaining 12 Ark Ships under construction to this one.  All resources are dedicated to getting this ship underway before the expected sathar attack occurs.

– The Gullwind leaves Triad station (Cassidine) and begins accelerating for the final jump back to Dramune.
61.150– The HSS History’s Hope successfully jumps to the YS06 system and begins decelerating while planning their next jump.

– A day out from Triad station, the Gullwind is intercepted by an assault scout, the MESS Maltharia.  In the ensuing battle, the assault scout is damaged but takes out the Gullwind’s engines.  It disengages, leaving the freighter adrift. (SFKH1)
61.151– The first two ships for the new Strike Force Meteor emerge from the Pan Galactic shipyards orbiting Gran Quivera (Prenglar).  They depart to Morgaine’s World (Prenglar) to begin exercises with elements of Task Force Prenglar.

– Unable to repair the engines outside a spacedock, the crew of the Gullwind call back to Triad for assistance.  The UPFS Melinda McCoy (destroyer) and UPFS Dirk (assault scout) respond to their mayday.  (SFKH1)

– After hearing the Gullwind’s crew’s story, the Melinda McCoy’s captain, Commodre Klat-tic M’tal, a vrusk, arranges a tug to take them back to Triad.  He also radios ahead to SF Nova, current decelerating toward Inner Reach (Drammune) with the story. (SFKH1)
61.152– After three days in orbit generating a preliminary map of Mahg Mar’s surface, the crew of the UPFS Eleanor Moraes selects a preliminary landing site and the ship descends to the planet’s surface.  Work begins immediately on overhauling the ship’s engines.

– The HSS History’s Hope begins accelerating for the jump to their next target system, a binary M dwarf system 7 light years away.
61.153– The sathar attack fleet from Sessar arrives in the Sauria system.  The remains of the sathar fleet still in the system begin accelerating toward Kischen, the saurian homeworld.  The Battle Rays tailing this fleet radio the news home and begin accelerating home as well.

– The Gullwind arrives back at the CDC shipyards around Triad. Luckily there is room available in the shipyard and the Gullwind is immediately admitted for repairs.
61.154– Calculations complete, the Saurian ark ship begins accelerating for their jump to the FS58 system, an F3 start, probably too hot for them but more likely than the M0 star they are currently at.

– Strike Force Nova arrives at Inner Reach (Dramune),  they only spend a day at the station before continuing on to Fromeltar.
61.155– The decelerating fleet from Sessar is detected by the saurian forces, three days away from the planet.

– Fully repaired, and short on cash, the Gullwind departs the CDC shipyards and once again begins accelerating toward Dramune. (SFKH1)
61.156– Overhaul of the first engine complete, the captain of the UPFS Eleanor Moraes, Winston Marlboro, authorizes an initial scouting expedition to survey the surrounding area.  Preparations begin for an expedition that will leave in the morning. (SFKH2)

– After a day of acceleration, the crew of the Gullwind have noticed that they have a shadow, a pair of ships following their course but always remaining just at the edge of radar range.  They suspect it is the UPF Melinda McCoy and Dirk but cannnot confirm this. (SFKH1)
61.157– With the sathar fleet less than a day away, loading of the last Ark Ship is aborted with only 90% of the material goods and 50% of passengers loaded.  The ship departs Kischen with a small military escort and heads toward the Precipice system, the last remaining saurian system.

– A small detachment of the sathar fleet breaks off from decelerating and begins accelerating in an attempt to catch the departing ark ship.

– The HSS History’s Hope successfully completes the jump to the new system, which they designate as YS07.  Decelerations commences as they prepare to plot the return leg of the jump.

– Shortly after Captain Marlboro, along with most of the ship’s crew, departs to begin surveying the surrounding area via airship, Bill Terry, first officer of the Eleanor Moraes, turns on the remaining crew and stuns or otherwise incapacitates them, taking over the ship. (SFKH2)

– With the ship secure, Terry remotely orders the survey robot accompanying the airship to attack and destroy the airship.  The captain is injured as is the chief engineer. After a brief message from Terry explaining that he is abandoning them on the planet, he cuts all communications between the survey party and the ship. (SFKH2)

– Salvaging what equipment they can, the uninjured members of the survey party are ordered by Captain Marlboro to take the survey robot and proceed overland to recapture the Eleanor Moraes.  There is still 45 hours of work to do on the ship’s engines before Terry can leave so they must hurry. (SFKH2)
61.158– Battle of Kischen – The remaining saurian forces engage the attacking sathar vessels.  After hours of battle, the saurian forces are destroyed but the sathar vessels are similarly devastated. 

– The remaining sathar forces around Kischen begin bombarding the planet, paying particular attention to heavily industrialized areas.  The remaining ark ships under constructions are destroyed.

– Three days out from Inner Reach, a small group of ships breaks off from SF Nova and begin decelerating back toward the inner system.

– The crew of the Eleanor Moraes continues their travel back toward the ship.  Bill Terry uses some of the survey robots remaining at the ship to attempt to ambush the party while en route but they manage to defeat both of his attempts and overcome the natural obstacles in their way. (SFKH2)
61.159– The 7th saurian Ark Ship successfully jumps to the FS58 system.  They begin decelerating and scanning for planets.

– Strike Force Nova makes the jump to the Fromeltar system and begins decelerating toward Terledrom.

– Realizing that he won’t get the engine overhaul completed before the rest of the crew arrives, Bill Terry begins preparing the Eleanor Moraes for liftoff anyway. (SFKH2)

– The Eleanor Moraes crew arrives at the ship before Terry is ready to lift off.  Breaching the defenses he has put in place they gain access to the ship.  In a tense standoff on the bridge, the crew convinces Terry to surrender. (SFKH2)
61.160– The Gullwind makes the jump to the Dramune system and begins decelerating toward Inner Reach. Almost immediately, their shadow reappears and hail the Gullwind, identifying themselves as the Melinda McCoy and the Dirk. They begin decelerating with the Gullwind, slowly closing the gap between the ships. (SFKH1)

– With the ship secured, and the captain and chief engineer recovered from the airship crash site, the crew of the UPFS Eleanor Moraes send a subspace message back to Theseus informing the Frontier Expeditionary Force HQ of the recent events and their status. (SFKH2)
61.161– The last saurian Ark Ship successfully jumps to the Precipice system.  They immediately radio ahead to the outpost there to prepare for a full evacuation as they begin decelerating toward the planet Edge. The sathar ships pursuing them return to the main force orbiting Kischen.

– Two assault scouts, part of the new Strike Force Meteor, are completed at the Triad starship construction center.  The UPF crew takes command of the vessels and begin accelerating for a jump to Prenglar.

– The UPFS Eleanor Moraes receives a response from the FEF HQ that the CMS Osprey is being dispatched from White Light with material and personnel to effect repairs.  The Moraes crew is to continue their primary mission of surveying the planet until the Osprey arrives in 28 days. (SFKH2)
61.162– Deceleration complete, the HSS History’s Hope begins accelerating for the jump back to YS06.

– After two days of deceleration, just as they are approaching the orbit of Outer Reach, the Gullwind and it’s escorts are enveloped by a powerful jamming field preventing all communications.  They are assaulted by 9 vessels (3 frigates, 2 corvettes, & 4 assault scouts) that include the Outer Reach militia. (SFKH1)

– After a brief but intense battle, the UPF vessels are destroyed and the Gullwind is disabled and taken in tow.  The Gullwind and UPF ships manage to destroy one of the corvettes and an Outer Reach militia assault scout as well as severely damage one of the frigates. While under tow, the jamming field is maintained to prevent communication. (SFKH1)
61.163– Strike Force Nova arrives in orbit around Terledrom (Fromeltar).  They will remain in the system for 16 days while it waits for the ships detached in the Dramune system to catch up.

– The CMS Osprey begins accelerating for Theseus and the first leg of their mission to rescue the UPFS Eleanor Moraes. (SFKH3)
61.164– Now slowed in the inner system, the 7th saurian Ark Ship discovers a habitable planet.  However, due to the intensity of the star (F3 vs their native G8), the high gravity (1.5g) and slow rotation (40 hours), they deem the planet unsuitable.  Preparations are made to depart the system.

– The Gullwind arrives at Darkworld station, home the Malthar who orchestrated their capture.  The crew is overwhelmed my the Malthar’s robots when whey refuse to leave the ship.
61.165– The 7th saurian Ark Ship begins accelerating for their next jump which will take them to the Theseus system.

– Having destroyed all visible traces of the saurian population on the planet Kischen, the sathar fleet begins accelerating toward the Precipice system.
61.166The 8th saurian Ark Ship arrives in orbit around the planet Edge (Precipice) and immediately deploys shuttles to start loading the population.
61.167The HSS History’s Hope successfully jumps back to YS06 completely charting the route between the two systems.  They relay the jump data back to their home foundation on Histran via subspace radio and begin the return journey back to YS07.
61.168After incorporating lessons learned from the false start and several weeks of successful operations, Synthcorp’s “Muffin Button” is declared a success and begins to roll out in other locations on Inner Reach.
61.169With the population and as many supplies as possible loaded from Edge, the 8th saurian arkship begins accelerating out of the Precipice system.  They decide to follow the general direction of the 7th Ark ship and begin accelerating toward OFS191. 
61.170– The two new UPF assault scouts arrive at Morgaine’s World (Prenglar) and join up with their sister ships exercising with Task Force Prenglar.

– The 7th saurian Ark Ship successfully jumps into the Theseus system where they immediately detect radio signals from the inhabitants and ships in the system.

– Vectoring their deceleration to stop deep in the outer system, the saurians begin studying the signals coming from the inner system.  They are not detected by the system’s inhabitants.

– The sathar ships make the jump to the Precipice system.  They detect the saurian ark ship beginning its acceleration out of the system.  Several ships are detached at high speed to try to intercept it.
61.171The CMS Osprey arrives at Minotaur station (Theseus) where they are briefed on all the details available about their jump route and the Moraes crew and status.  They take on additional supplies for the stricken ship. (SFKH3)
61.172Two more assault scouts, destined to be part of Strike Force Meteor, are completed at the Streel shipyards orbiting Pale (Truane’s Star). The UPF crews take possession of the ships and begin accelerating for a jump to Dixon’s Star and then to Prenglar.

And here’s the full timeline to download.

DetailedFrontierTimelineDownload

State of the Frontier – July 2020

I can’t believe July is already over. I was sitting and thinking about what I would be doing for my next regular Tuesday post and realized that I had this one to write before then. That was last night (the 30th, I’m writing this just before it goes live). I think the month flew by because I’ve been busy working on the Frontier Explorer all month.

Looking Back

Normally, I start this section with the blog posts I made but this month they seem almost ancillary to everything that has been going on that I’m going to start with the behind the scenes stuff.

First and foremost, my time this month was taken up by getting issue 29 of the Frontier Explorer ready to go. I really struggled with this issue and procrastinated working on it until the very tail end of June so most of the work was done this month. But I managed to get it all finished just a couple of days later than I planned. If you haven’t already gotten a copy, you can get it either at DriveThruRPG or on the Frontier Explorer website.

I only ran one session of my “Skills for Hire” game on-line this month as the first session got canceled due to lack of players (we only had one). So I put out a reminder call before the next session and had a bunch of new players show up for that session. We had eight players total, although one had to drop out due to connection issues. They got through about half of the adventure I had planned, which is where I expected to get to, and everyone had a good time. We are looking forward to finishing it next week.

I also joined another game, as a player this time, were we are playing through the Second Sathar War game from the back of the Knight Hawks Campaign Book. We have several people on each side with someone playing referee between the two sides. He’s added in some twists and a bit of fog of war which makes it interesting. I’m playing the militia and unattached UPF ships. The game is played fairly asynchronously, with the players on each side of the battle taking turns moving and firing on Roll20 with the referee, but otherwise independent of the other players. There is also a forum were we post strategic movement orders. If you want to follow along, we have a Facebook group were we post updates. I think we’re also still looking for a 4th sathar admiral so if you want to play as well, jump over to the Facebook group and volunteer.

With all that going on, I also managed to get my regular blog posts out, although sometimes just barely (like this one). The first, as always was the Detailed Frontier Timeline post. If you follow the timeline on Twitter, you will have noticed that it was only coming out in batches this month and not daily as it has in the past. That was partially due to all the above going on and partially as I would be so busy with other things that I forgot to post for several days at a time. I also have gotten a bit behind in writing the updates so I’m always right on the edge of what I’ve worked out and that would sometimes cause delays as well. I’m hopefully over that and will get back to a regular schedule of tweeting this month.

Next up was a background piece discussing my ideas about the enlisted crews of Spacefleet vessels. That one had been sitting in my todo list from day one of the blog and in my mind for several years before that. After that came an update post on the HSS History’s Hope with some of the material provided by Mathew Crymble, a long time Star Frontiers fan that contacted me about helping flesh out the ship. It that post, I described the ship a bit more (using material provided by Mathew), provided its game stats, and an update on its travels to date in the detailed timeline.

Finally I ended the month’s posts with a new organization, the Tristars, an organized crime group based in Myha’s Beach. I had actually planned to write about them earlier in the month but since that one is a direct off-shoot of my Skills for Hire game, I couldn’t post it until we played through the adventure and that got delayed this month. But it’s out now.

Looking Forward

We’ll do this section slightly reversed as well. The first major thing happening this month has nothing to do with the blog. And that is my family and I are going camping and I’ll be completely off-line for nearly a third of the month. So if you see some disruption in posting, or lack of response from me, that’s why.

Rough HSS History’s Hope model next to a Swift Class assault scout for scale.

Otherwise, things will look pretty normal. I’m currently working on deck plans and a 3D model of the HSS History’s Hope. I teased the model on Facebook and Twitter with the image to the right. I don’t expect to finish this all up this month so it will probably be September before you see that post. I’ve also been asked if I’m going to turn this into another one of my Technical Manuals. The answer to that is probably yes, as I’ve been thinking about that as I work on it, but that is going to be even further off.

Another behind the scenes item that I’m working on is editing a new Frontier Explorer Presents product. This time a short story collection. We’ve been sitting on this since we first conceived the Frontier Explorer back in 2012 and we’re finally getting to it. It is a collection of stories based on the khad’dan, a yazirian honor sword created my Mathew Crymble back in the 90’s. Some of the stories are from that era and some are newer. If by some miracle we get all the art and editing done quickly that might come out in August but more likely, you should look for it in November, after the next Frontier Explorer issue.

As to this month’s blog posts, we’ll start as usual with a Detailed Frontier Timeline post. Assuming that the next session of my game doesn’t get canceled, that will be followed by a post on the Brekstoone Manor in Myha’s Beach. The PCs have determined that that is their next destination so once they’ve been through the manor I can post the details. You can also expect an adventure write up for the scenario they’ve been playing through once they’ve finished.

Related to the game, I’ve been recording the sessions and planning on releasing them as an actual play podcast, but haven’t had time to get that all set up with all the work on the Frontier Explorer going on. With issue 29 out of the way, I have time to focus on that so you will most likely see those sessions showing up here, probably with a kick-off post to talk about it. And maybe that rules review podcast will kick off as well but no promises there.

I didn’t do anything for the Blog Carnival this month due to lack of time. I don’t know what August’s topic is (I just haven’t looked) but there might be a related post there as well. We’ll just have to see what happens.

And I think that’s it for August. My kids start back in to school this month as well. They are starting at the school in person, but we’ll see what happens relative to COVID-19 when everyone starts getting back together. That could have an impact on events at the end of the month or, more likely, next month.

Your Thoughts

And that’s it. I’ve got eight minutes before this is supposed to go live so I just squeaked in before my self-imposed deadline. 🙂 As always, if you have suggestions on things you’d like to see me write about, let me know in the comments below.