All posts by Tom

Expanded Frontier Map – update 2

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

Names

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Star Scaling

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

Nebulae

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How to make a nebula

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Add in the black background and your done.

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

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

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

Up Next

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

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

A Module Based Campaign – characters

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

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

Guidelines for skill increases

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

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

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

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

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

Starting Characters

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

Name: Yanni

Race: Yazirian, F

STR/STA: 40/40

DEX/RS: 55/55

INT/LOG: 55/55

PER/LDR: 45/45

Racial Abilities: Battle Rage 5%

XP: 0

PSA – Technological

Skills: Technician 1, Beam 1

Notes:

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

 

Name: Mekar

Race: Yazirian, M

STR/STA: 45/45

DEX/RS: 70/70

INT/LOG: 55/55

PER/LDR: 55/55

Racial Abilities: Battle Rage 5%

XP: 0

PSA – Bio-social

Skills: Medic 1, Environmental 1

Notes:

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

 

Name: Dolnab

Race: Dralasite

STR/STA: 55/55

DEX/RS: 65/65

INT/LOG: 70/70

PER/LDR: 50/50

Racial Abilities: Lie Detection 5%

XP: 0

PSA -Techological

Skills: Computer 1, Projectile 1

Notes:

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

 

Name:  Michaella

Race: Human, F

STR/STA: 55/55

DEX/RS: 64/61

INT/LOG: 50/50

PER/LDR: 40/40

XP: 0 

PSA – Military

Skills: Beam 1, Melee 1

Notes:

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

 

Name: K’sta’n

Race: Vrusk, F

STR/STA: 50/50

DEX/RS: 75/75

INT/LOG: 50/50

PER/LDR: 35/35

Racial Abilities: Comprehension 15%

XP: 0

PSA – Military

Skills: Gyrojet 1, Martial Arts 1

Notes:

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

 

Name: T’vor

Race: Vrusk, M

STR/STA: 40/40

DEX/RS: 55/55

INT/LOG: 65/65

PER/LDR: 40/40

Racial Abilities: Comprehension 15%

XP: 0

PSA – Technological

Skills: Computer 1, Robotics 1

Notes:

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

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

After Volturnus

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

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

Name: Yanni

Race: Yazirian, F

STR/STA: 40/40

DEX/RS: 55/55

INT/LOG: 55/55

PER/LDR: 45/45

Racial Abilities: Battle Rage 5%

XP: 70/83

PSA – Technological

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

Notes:

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

 

Name: Mekar

Race: Yazirian, M

STR/STA: 45/45

DEX/RS: 70/70

INT/LOG: 55/55

PER/LDR: 55/55

Racial Abilities: Battle Rage 5%

XP: 70/83

PSA – Bio-social

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

Notes:

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

 

Name: Dolnab

Race: Dralasite

STR/STA: 55/55

DEX/RS: 65/65

INT/LOG: 70/70

PER/LDR: 50/50

Racial Abilities: Lie Detection 5%

XP: 60/83

PSA – Techological

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

Notes:

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

 

Name:  Michaella

Race: Human, F

STR/STA: 55/55

DEX/RS: 64/61

INT/LOG: 50/50

PER/LDR: 40/40

XP: 68/83

PSA – Military

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

Notes:

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

 

Name: K’sta’n

Race: Vrusk, F

STR/STA: 50/50

DEX/RS: 75/75

INT/LOG: 50/50

PER/LDR: 35/35

Racial Abilities: Comprehension 15%

XP: 68/83

PSA – Military

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

Notes:

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

 

Name: T’vor

Race: Vrusk, M

STR/STA: 40/40

DEX/RS: 55/55

INT/LOG: 65/65

PER/LDR: 40/40

Racial Abilities: Comprehension 15%

XP: 68/83

PSA – Technological

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

Notes:

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

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

Going Forward

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

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

A Module Based Campaign – part 2

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

Issues

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

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

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

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

Sundown on Starmist

Location, Location, Location

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

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

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

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

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

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

Starting the Adventure

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

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

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

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

Running the Adventure

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

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

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

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

Not using the Tank

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

Experience Points

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

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

Beyond the Module

Extra adventures

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

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

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

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

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

Aftermath

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

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

Moving on

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

Expanded Frontier Map – update 1

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

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

Corrections

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Moving on to Color

Star symbols from the map generation program

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

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

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

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

Generating the Data for the Frontier Map

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Next Steps

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

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

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

The Code

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

Detailed Frontier Timeline – FY60.084 to FY60.114

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

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

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

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

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

Here’s the full timeline document:

DetailedFrontierTimelineDownload

The State of the Frontier – A Year Complete

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

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

Some Numbers

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

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

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

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

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

Which brings me to

The Patreon Campaign

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

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

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

Projects

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A Module Based Campaign – part 1

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

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

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

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

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

Ground Rules

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

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

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

TL;DR Version

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

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

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

The Grand Campaign

The Great Sathar War

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

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

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

Volturnus

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

SF0: Crash on Volturnus

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

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

SF1: Volturnus, Planet of Mystery

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

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

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

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

SF2: Starspawn of Volturnus

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

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

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

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

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

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

After the Modules

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

The Devil’s Lair

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

Eorna Defense Installation

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

Eorna Lunar Defense Battery

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

Lizard Head Rock

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

Sathar Survivors

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

Returning to the Frontier

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

Tracking down the Star Devil

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

Council of Worlds

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

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

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

Up Next

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

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

Frontier Explorer Issue 24 Available

I’m going to assume that those reading this blog have heard this already from another source but just in case you haven’t, Issue 24 of the Frontier Explorer is now available for download from DriveThruRPG or on the magazine’s website. Here’s the announcement text:

Hello Explorers!

Welcome to issue 24 of the Frontier Explorer.  Now that Spacefleet has cleared out the recent sathar incursion, we can start publishing again.

This issue picks up right where we left off including some articles that were ready to go but didn’t make it into issue 23.  All of the usual articles (Jurak Hangna, comics, etc) are here along with articles about derlict spaceships, and some not so derelict ones along with an small mini adventure in our Warriors of White Light 2 series.

The biggest change is that we’ve moved to a new layout and design for the magazine’s cover, logo, and interior.  Let us know what you think about the changes and any suggestions or ideas you might have to make it even better.

This issue continues and strengthens our support for the FrontierSpace RPG in addition to Star Frontiers. Issue 23 had a conversion of the Star Frontier races to FrontierSpace. This issue contains the details of a star system from the FrontierSpace frontier sector as well as stats in the Jurak Hangna creature article for use in that system.

The full article list for this issue is:

  • Frontier News
  • Dark Shadow’s Revenge
  • Duergan’s Star System
  • Of Lost Ships and Derelicts
  • Exploring a Deserted Spaceship
  • Meet the Crew of the SS Knight Owl
  • Titan Rising: 2299 #17
  • Kdikit Blue Biters
  • Ghostship of the Terran Queen
  • Escape Run #3

Grab your copy today and as always, keep exploring!


Battle of Zebulon

I finally got the Pursale ship deck sketches up last week but then got completely distracted by a number of other things.  One of those was the decision to write up my concept for a complete “zero-to-hero” style Star Frontiers campaign that takes the characters from starting PCs to major players in the Frontier with high level spaceship skills that uses all the published modules.  The first of those posts will be next week. 

While working on that, I talk about the space battle around Volturnus at the end of the first 3 modules.  The modules hand wave it away as, at the time, the spaceship rules weren’t published so there was no way to run it.  In this post, we’ll look at my concept for that battle.  What sathar ships are there, and what the UPF sends to the fight.  If you read my Detailed Frontier Timeline posts, you know the answers as this has already been covered in the posts there, but I thought I’d lay out some of the rationale behind the decisions and set the game up for an epic Knight Hawks board game battle.  And I’ll tell you how it played out when I ran through the scenario to generate the timeline posts.

Sathar Ship Design

In my universe, all the sathar ships of destroyer size or larger are also troop transports.  While the UPF tend to have small crews and lots of allocated space, the sathar pack in lots of ground troops on to each ship. 

You can see an example (and more detailed explanation) of this in my Sathar Destroyer Technical Manual (link goes to product page on DriveThruRPG – it’s a free product) that details the interior of a sathar destroyer.  That ship carries over 500 ground troops packed into its bowels. 

Based on the ship sizes, I’ve extrapolated that the light cruisers carry about 4,500 troops, the heavy cruisers carry over 15,000 and the assault carriers transport around 10,000 troops in addition to up to 12 fighters.  While I haven’t completely fleshed out those larger vessels, this is a close enough estimate for this article.

How Many Sathar Ships Are Involved

Now that we know how many troops each ship transports, we can come up with a reasonable composition for the invasion fleet that is attacking Volturnus.

The boxed text from the adventure gives us the following clues:

All that can be done has been done to prepare the planet for defense against the hideous worms.  The initial reports arriving at the Eorna complex beneath the ruins of Volkos are good; the Eorna planetary defense batteries have kept the Sathar fleet at bay, and many of the Sathar shuttles have been destroyed attempting to land ground troops on the planet

The successful landing of a large Sathar army has been detected.  After scanning the planet, the Sathar advanced in the direction of Volkos.  They should arrive in full battle array sometime tomorrow morning.  They number at least 30,000 plus robots and other weapons!”

This tells us that there are at least 30,000 troops on the ground and that there were more to begin with as many were destroyed in the landing attempt.

So, we want a mix of ships that can transport something over 30,000 troops.  Based on the mix of ships given in the Knight Hawks campaign book, I settled on the following mix of ships for the fleet:

  • 2 frigates
  • 6 Destroyers
  • 2 Light Cruisers
  • 2 Heavy Cruisers
  • 1 Assault Carrier with 8 fighters

This gives me a total troop compliment of about 52,000 troops plus robots, attack creatures, and heavy weapons.  We can assume that about 40% of the troops were killed by the planetary defense system leaving about 30,000 for the assault on Volkos.

The UPF Contingent

We have to remember that this is not a planned engagement in an on-going war.  Rather it is a sudden call to arms that has to be filled in at short notice with no idea of what the opposing force will be.  In fact, given the overwhelming number of ships that were seen at Pale 50-60 years earlier (in my history), the UPF might be loathe to commit any ships fearing that they are sending them into a deathtrap.  Regardless, the ships are sent, but they are assembled on short notice.

The most obviously available ships are the Pale militia ships, consisting of a frigate and three assault scouts.  They would almost certainly be pressed into service by Spacefleet as they are only one jump away.  If Laco (in Dixon’s Star) had a militia, they too would probably have been involved but Laco is only an outpost.

Streel Corporate logo

Streel is headquartered on Pale, and it is almost certain that they have a number of military or paramilitary vessels at their disposal.  They might be conscripted by Spacefleet or possibly even volunteered as Streel has a definite interest in opening (and exploiting) Volturnus.  Keeping the sathar out of the system and off the planet is just good business practice.  So Streel will probably send some ships along.

That leaves Spacefleet.  Strike Force Nova might be around.  It patrols around the Frontier constantly so there is a chance it is nearby.  The nearest large group of ships with a known location is Task Force Prenglar, stationed in its namesake system.  The problem is that it’s three systems away from Zebulon.  Which means it’s going to take some time to get there and may not arrive in time. 

If you just use the distances between the stars as travel time, it’s only 15 days.  That’s they way the Alpha Dawn rules described interstellar travel.  However, the Knight Hawks rules say you have to accelerate up to 1% the speed of light to make the jump and then slow down at your destination.  That acceleration, at 1g takes a little over 83 hours or just over 4 days.  And then 4 days to slow down.  Assuming some maneuvering at the beginning and ending of the trip and checking vectors and such just before Void entry, a single interstellar hop really takes about 9 days, regardless of distance. Maybe a bit longer on long jumps due to extra astrogation calculation time.

Now we can speed this up a bit by accelerating faster but for a long transit, that has detrimental effects on crew.  If you expect to be coming out of the Void into a firefight, you don’t want to have spent the last two weeks strapped into an acceleration chair at 2-3 gees.

We can also speed up the transit by not slowing down in the intermediate systems.  Then we only have the astrogation time to worry about.  That might work for the Dixon’s Star system, but they will have to slow down in Truane’s Star to rendezvous with the ships from that system and coordinate their jump.  So assuming ships from Prenglar blow through Dixon’s Star without stopping it will take them 4.5 days to get to Void speed in Prenglar, 2.5 days in Dixon’s Star to do the astrogation calculations, 4.5 days to slow down at Pale in the Truane’s Star system. Then they need to accelerate and jump to Zebulon which will take another 9 days.  All told, that’s 20.5 days of travel.  Add to that any time it takes to assemble the Task Force and get the ships ready to leave.

What other options are there?  In the description of Spacefleet, it describes the two Task Forces and Strike Force Nova and then says that there are other smaller units as well.  I decided to take advantage of this.

image by Scott Mulder

At the same time as the events are unfolding on Volturnus, Streel and Pan Galactic are locked into what will be known as Laco’s War, the first corporate war.  In my games, this war is just starting to heat up.  Because of that, Spacefleet had recently dispatched a medium sized Patrol Group to the system to attempt put a damper on the rising hostilities.  Patrol Group Virgo, consisting of 2 light cruisers, 2 destroyers, 2 assault scouts, and an assault carrier with 8 fighters, has just recently arrived in Dixon’s Star.  That puts them marginally closer only requiring 18 days to get to Volturnus with the advantage that since they are already out on patrol, they can depart immediately.

So once the call comes in from the PCs, Spacefleet takes a day or two to make the decision and then dispatches Patrol Group Virgo from Dixon’s Star.  In Truane’s Star they pick up the Pale militia as well as a frigate, 4 corvettes, and 3 assault scouts that Streel sends along on the expedition.  With that, the ships arriving at Volturnus from the UPF are:

  • 8 Assault Scouts
  • 4 Corvettes
  • 2 Frigates
  • 2 Destroyers
  • 2 Light cruisers
  • 1 Assault Carrier with 8 fighters

From a campaign perspective, I have the UPF fleet arrive just as the battle on the ground is ending, driving off the sathar ships.

The Knight Hawks Scenario

We now have the order of battle.  The sides are fairly evenly matched.  The UPF fleet has more ships, but the sathar have slightly more hull points.  The UPF’s forces are concentrated into its smaller vessels, lots of little assault scouts and corvettes that can potentially be picked off fairly easily.

This scenario can be played by any number of people.  Simply divide into teams and each team takes a side.  The UPF forces divide fairly easily into three groups, one playing the UPF ships, one the Pale militia, and one the Streel ships.  Although the number of ships and their strength isn’t evenly distributed between those groups.  The sathar ships can be divided up any way that team sees fit.

Setup

A planet counter representing Volturnus is placed in the center of the map.

The sathar are the defenders in this scenario.  Sathar ships, with the exception of the frigates, are all placed in orbit around Volturnus with a speed of zero.  They have just recently finished dropping off all their troops.  Since the frigates are not troop carriers, they can start in any hex within 5 hexes of the planet with a speed of up to 5 hexes/turn.

The UPF are the attackers.  They all start along one of the short sides of the map.  The individual ships can be anywhere on that side, but all the ships have to be on the same side.  They must start within 3 hexes of the map edge and be moving at any speed up to 15 hexes/turn.  All the UPF ships have to start at the same speed.

Special Rules

Escaping the Battle

A ship is considered to have escaped from battle if it moves off any edge of the map with a) no ships in pursuit, or b) is out of weapon range and has a higher ADF of any pursuing ships.

Preserve the Fleet

Heavy cruisers and assault carriers are important vessels in the sathar navy.  If the tide of battle seems to be going against the sathar, they will try to pull back to preserve these larger vessels, sacrificing the smaller ones if necessary (even if it means ramming) to delay the UPF ships and allow the larger vessels to escape.

Victory Conditions

Sathar Victory

The sathar claim victory if they can destroy all the UPF vessels.

UPF Victory

The UPF claim a complete victory if all the sathar vessels are destroyed.  If any of the sathar vessels escape, it is only a partial victory.

When I Played

image by Scott Mulder

I played this out once using the full Advanced Combat rules of the Knight Hawks boardgame.  I wanted to test the plausibility of this mix of ships in the scenario.  Basically I was playing to make sure it was possible for the UPF to win.  I definitely thought the sathar would have the advantage.  It turned into quite the slugfest.  However, the UPF got in some lucky early blows with the assault scouts living up to their hype and taking out nearly half of the sathar fleet by round 3 of the game after losing only a single assault scout.

In the end, the sathar fleet was routed, escaping with only 1 frigate, 2 destroyers, and a heavy cruiser. The other heavy cruiser and assault carrier were lost on that fateful round 3.  The UPF only lost a Pale militia assault scout, and a light cruiser and assault scout from the Spacefleet contingent, but almost no ship escaped unscathed.  The die rolls favored the UPF and it ended up being a very lopsided game.  I suspect if played through several more times, it could go either way.

Last Thoughts

Do you like these Knight Hawks game scenarios?  Would you like to see more of them?  Should I include the statistics for the ships?  If you play this scenario out, let me know which rule set you used (Basic or Advanced) and how it turned out.

Pursale Colony Ship Sketches

It’s taken me a long time to get to this point but I finally have sketches of the ship embedded in the center of the Outpost Osiris asteroid. These are my initial roughs that I will fill in with details as I complete the write-ups.

The scale on the images is 5 meters to the square. This ship is quite large with a “wingspan” of nearly 200m and a length of over 300m. It consists of five decks each of various sizes. I’m going to try to do a 3D render of the shape of the ship at some point.

The bold outer outline in each of the following images represents the outer hull of the middle deck (deck 3). It is shown on each of the images to allow you to compare the other decks to the overall size of the ship.

Only parts of the ship are going to be physically accessible in the module. Other parts are fused with the rock of the asteroid or crystalline structures piercing through the body of the ship in the central cavity of the asteroid. I’ll be deciding exactly what is obstructed and what isn’t as I work on the module details. I know for sure that the engines are not accessible and that the phase shield room (deck 3) and power core (deck 4) are undamaged as is the starboard airlock. Some of the robot storage areas will be accessible as will at least one cryo bay (so the characters can find some desiccated Pursale remains) but beyond that, I haven’t decided what to make accessible. That will come at a future date.

So here are the five decks of the ship, from bottom to top.

Deck 1 – Shuttle bays

This deck primarily contains 8 shuttle bays, a storage area, and the ship’s two underbelly laser batteries. The large engines out on the wings also extend down to this part of the ship but are not accessible from here. The large storage area here contained colonization supplies.

Deck 2 – Robots and Tech

This deck has another large storage area for colonization supplies, as well as the robot storage areas and a tech shop. There are also two more shuttle bays on this level as well as the first of many cryo bays containing rows and rows of the (once) frozen colonists.

Deck 3 – Crew Deck

This is the largest deck of the ship. It contains the engineering section, access to the engines and the crew quarters for the active crew. There is a large garden area, dining an food storage, as well as several cryo chambers. There is also an aft observation deck, forward sensors, and the ships two forward facing laser batteries. The airlocks are also on this level as are some of the ship’s workpods. The phase shield generator is located on this deck in the very center of the ship.

Deck 4 – Cryo Bays and Power

This deck consists almost completely of cryo storage bays containing colonists in frozen storage. The only other ship system on this level is the ship’s power core, which amazingly wasn’t destroyed when the ship unphased into the asteroid.

Deck 5 – Bridge

This deck contains the ship’s bridge and medical facilities, a few more smaller cryo bays, as well as the ship’s launches and some more workpods. It also has the upper laser battery.

Next Steps

This is the ship as built when fleeing the Pursale homeworld and fully functional. By the time the PCs discover it, it has been embedded in the asteroid of millenia. Many of the parts of the ship are fused with either the rocks of the asteroid or crystalline structures in the central cavity. All of the crew and colonists are long dead however some of the robots, along with some parts of the ship’s machinery has survived.

The next step is to figure out which parts of the ship are still accessible and create the actual maps for the game along with the description of the various areas.

The intention of this part of the adventure is for the players to make their way onto the ship, overcoming the last of the ship’s defenses, and attempt to obtain the phase shield generator off the ship and install it on their own. They then need to feel the outpost as their tampering has caused the ship’s power core to enter a self-destruct mode that cannot be stopped.

The details of the ship are still fairly malleable so let me know if there are any major ship systems or details that you think I missed.