This is part 2 of the video series outlining the creation of the final Rosegard map. If you haven’t watched it yet, here is part 1.
In this segment, I create a custom pattern to use for the roof tiles of the buildings and then create a few of the buildings in the town to show how it will be done, including one of the buildings around the loop at the top of the map that is not aligned NS-EW like the others.
Let me know if you have any questions, comments, or suggestions below.
This is going to be a multipart video series showing how I use Inkscape to turn my hand-drawn sketch of the Rosegard village map (the map shown in the Outline of the Death at Rosegard Adventure Project) into a final polished map.
It will probably be full of fumblings, mistakes, and other ramblings as I get back up to speed with using Inkscape as well as get used to narrating out loud what I’m doing, as I’m doing it. This is my first foray into this type of presentation so be patient.
In any case, here’s the first video:
I’ve created an Expanding Frontier playlist as part of my YouTube channel. Feel free to bookmark it or just watch for new posts as I make them here.
Please let me know what comments or suggestions you have in the comment section below.
Just a quick status update post. I’m back from vacation and have mostly clawed my way out from under the pile of backlogged e-mails and other detritus that builds up when you are off-line for an extended period of time.
I didn’t get any time on my vacation to work on projects (too busy driving, hiking, playing on the beach, and herding cats, I mean kids, to get anything done) so I don’t have anything immediately available to post (hence the update). I’m probably going to work on a production ready version of my Rosegard map next and record the process to post as a video.
Anyway, it’s time to get back to work.
I was working on the one of the sections of the Ghost Ship Osiris module and it includes an alien robot. I realized that to do the alien robot justice, I needed to know the race that created it. So I busted out the Alien Species rules from the FrontierSpace Referee’s Handbook (p. 98) to give me some ideas. I didn’t need a completely functional race as they are all dead (at least the ones you encounter in this adventure) but only a rough physical description. The write-up below is what I came up with.
The following is the Referee’s write-up on the race to be included in the module. It’s a working draft, hence the work in progress flag in the title. It will probably go through some revisions as we flesh the module out a bit more and Bill chimes in. I’ll also probably add more to the physical description as we go.
The Pursale are a large omvinorous species. They are quite massive, over 3 meters in length (front to back) with six legs, two arms, and a short squat “head”. Their main body is typically 3-3.5 meters in length, 1-1.5m in width and about a meter in height. They weigh in at about 2-3 tons.
The Pursale’s head, which sits at the front of the body, contains its mouth, another set of olfactory organs, and is where the sensory stalks are attached. The mouth sits low on the head which can be bent downward to touch the ground. It has no upward range of motion beyond the horizontal.
Rising up from their head are two slender, long (about 1.2m) appendages that end in their sensory clusters. Each cluster contains an eye as well as olfactory and auditory organs. The sensory stalks are also flexible and can be positioned as high or as low as they can reach. Typically held high and wide, the Pursale have excellent depth perception and directional hearing.
Their legs are relatively short (about 0.7m long) keeping the body low to the ground but each one ends in a four-toed foot.
The Pursale’s brain is not located in its head but rather further back in the body just behind the creature’s arms. The arms themselves are attached just behind the neck. The arms look like longer skinnier legs, 1.2m in length each ending in a hand with three fingers and an opposable thumb. The Pursale’s shoulder joints have a full 360 degree range of motion.
The Pursale are descended from large plains-grazing animals on their homeworld. For millennia, their technology developed slowly and was primarily focused on food-production and medicine. Over time they slowly developed spaceflight and colonized the other semi-habitable planet in their star system which they terraformed into a food production world.
They had just recently discovered FTL travel capabilities when one of their outposts was discovered by the Thazzar, a war-like race bent on conquering known space. Luckily for the Pursale, a ship managed to escape the Thazzar attack and warn the home world of the pending danger.
While not a war-like race, they learned quickly. However, with only a single industrial star system, they were no match for the much larger Thazzar forces. In the last years of the war, Pursale scientists developed a new technology, the phase shield, that allowed material affected by the shield to pass through normal matter and remain unaffected.
Unfortunately for the Pursale, this discovery came too late to turn the tide of war. However, it did provide a way for some ships to escape damage from the Thazzar weapons. In an effort to save their race from destruction, a number of colony ships were built and equipped with this new, although unperfected, technology. These ships were launched in many directions in the hope that some would escape and be able to rebuild the Pursale society.
The ship embedded in the Osiris asteroid is one of these colony ships. Unfortunately, the second system it arrived in, now known as Duergan’s Star in the frontier, was occupied at the time by a Thazzar battle cruiser that detected the ship and pursued it. Using its phase shield, the Pursale vessel attempted to hid inside the Osiris asteroid which they discovered to be partially hollow.
That was when the final tragedy struck. While hiding, the phase shield temporarily failed, fusing the ship with the rock and permanently disabling it, dooming the crew and colonists. Not all of the ship was destroyed and there are portions that are not fused with the surrounding rock. The ship lay dormant and entombed for millennia until it was discovered by the miners on Outpost Osiris.
When the ship was entered, some of its security systems were activated prompting the call for help. The scavengers’ activities on the ship have also activated more of the defenses that are now threatening the lives of the outpost’s crew.
Once I had the physical description of the Pursale, I was ready to create the robots. There are actually two different robots (at least) that the PCs will encounter as part of the adventure. The first is the basic combat robot. The scavengers took one (or more depending on play balance) of these and activate them in an attempt to drive the PCs off their ship. The second is a command and control warbot that is coordinating the efforts of several combat robots within the confines of Outpost Osiris itself.
Frame: Medium
STR: 50
AGL: 45
CRD: 60
PER: 45
INT: 50
BP: 100
INIT: 2
Move: 12, Walking
Docking: 4CU
Skills: Marksman +5, Warrior +0
Equipment: Audio/Visual, IR, motion, & lifeform scanners, communicator, military grade reflec & sonic screens, laser rifle, distruptor, 2x 100 EU backpack.
Weapons: Laser Rifle, Distruptor
Description: This robot is like no other you have ever seen in the Frontier. It has a short squat body with six legs and two arms extending from the sides of the body near the front. Extending up from the front of the body are two long slender stalks, about 1.2 m in length that end in sensor clusters. Attached to the back, are what appear to be power packs. The arms end in manipulator hands that have three fingers and a thumb. Each arm has some sort of weapon built into it.
Referee Notes: The left arm has a built in laser rifle while the right one is sporting a distrutpor. These robots look like miniature, metallic versions of the Pursale and are designed for front line combat.
Frame: Huge
STR: 100
AGL: 60
CRD: 70
PER: 65
INT: 65
BP: 500
INIT: 3
Move: 13, Walking
Docking: 15CU
Skills: Commander +10 (Violent Plan), Marksman +0, Warrior +0
Equipment: Audio/Visual, IR, motion,, vocal & lifeform scanners, communicator, computer link, military grade reflec & ballistic screens, 800EU power source, military grade armor, comm jammer
Weapons: Heavy Laser, Devastator, Grenade rifle with 4 EMP, 4 tangler, 8 smoke, & 8 frag grenades
Description: At first glance, this robot is basically a larger version of the combat robot, roughly the size of the Pursale themselves. It is heavily armored and has a number of large weapons mounted on (and into) its “arms”.
Referee Notes: The left arm has a built in heavy laser while the right one is sporting the devastator and grenade rifle. It has a computer link to allow coordination with a central control point but can operate independently. It can coordinate the operations of up to 64 Combat robots at any given time.
When directing the robots it controls, it has the equivalent of the Commander skill benefit Violent plan (+5 to hit, +2 damage) and uses it effectively during its operations.
It uses its grenades to attempt to disable or pin enemies and reduce visibility for its opponents. The robots can see right through the smoke from the smoke grenades and both the Combat Coordinator Warbot and the Combat Robot are shielded against the EMP blasts from the grenades the Combat Coordinator Warbot carries.
The jury is still out on the final look for the Pursale. I handed off the physical description above to my resident biology artist (aka my daughter) and she came back with a few possible sketches of what these things might look like based on the description I gave her. Here are some possible options:
Insectoid:
Puffy:
Leafy:
(she actually called this one Butterfly)
The interesting thing is that I didn’t give her any direction at all. I was actually thinking more of a leathery, rough body like an elephant or rhino or a smoother leathery body like a seal or hippo.
In any case, work is progressing. I’ve basically finished section 3 of the module and have sent it out to my Patreon supporters. If you’d like to get the early releases, consider supporting me on Patreon.
What do you think about the race and robots? What physical description came to mind when you read the write-up above? Let me know in the comments below and it might get incorporated into the final version.
This month did not go as planned. I had really hoped to get a little further along than I did. I managed to get the three Star Frontiers posts from Death at Rosegard out that I had planned for the month but did not get as far along on the FrontierSpace Ghost Ship Osiris project as I had hoped. I definitely made some progress but it was all behind the scenes and not anything that is in any condition to post here. I’ve put the Sathar Assault Transport project on hold for now simply because I know that if I get started on that, it will draw in all my time and attention and I really want to get the other two projects done first.
A major part of the delay is the fact that I’m currently teaching a computer science class at the local university and that has taken up more time than I anticipated (and will continue to do so for another two weeks). It’s the first time I’ve taught this particular class, and while I thought I was well prepared, there have just been a lot of things come up that have taken extra time to deal with and that has eaten up the spare time I had to work on these projects.
Another small part is that I’ve gotten distracted by another project that I’ve been meaning to do for a long time now – create a complete index of all the Star Frontiers articles published in the Frontier Explorer and Star Frontiersman fanzines, as well as all the original “official” article published in the likes of Dragon, Imagine, etc back in the 80’s. Once the initial compilation is done, I’ll be posting it here. After collecting the articles from the Frontier Explorer and up through issue 7 of the Star Frontiersman (of 25), I have nearly 450 articles. There will probably be about 600-700 once I’m all done. Eventually I intend to put all of that into an on-line searchable database. But that’s a longer term project.
And finally, I’ve picked up a commission to edit an upcoming FrontierSpace module by another author and working on the first part of that has eating a small slice of my time as well. Despite that I am making progress and we should see some new material appear this coming month.
So what’s coming up? Well, the very next item on my docket is an alien robot for the FrontierSpace adventure. Although in thinking about that, I realized that I probably need to flesh out the alien race that built it first. Once that’s done, I’ll have everything I need to finish one of the 5 sections of the Ghost Ship Osiris adventure and will get that all written up and shared with my Patreon backers. So the plans for August are:
If for some reason I finish that early, I’ll probably continue working on the FrontierSpace adventure and mapping out the next part of the adventure (literally, I need to draw a map). That section encompasses the PCs’ interactions with the Osiris mining complex.
So that’s were things stand. One thing that has really stood out the last few months is that there is much more involved in generating content for others to use than material just for personal use. I’ve always known this, but the work in getting the Death at Rosegard material ready to go has really driven it home. I’ve been converting bullet points in my personal notes into prose and formatted text and realized it’s going to take a lot of words to get it all down. But progress is being made.
That’s it for now. Remember to always keep exploring and expanding your frontiers!
This article was supposed to come out last week but work intervened and I was severely lacking in free time to get it finished and published. Sorry about the delay.
Trey was born on Lossend in the Timeon system. He came to Pale as part of the liberation force in the Great Sathar War. He participated in a few skirmishes with remnants of the sathar force on the planet but primarily was involved in efforts to eradicate the sathar bio-monsters. Like all members of the liberating forces, he was offered full citizenship if he stayed after the war. Trey decided to accept the offer and remained on Pale.
In the post-war years, he worked a variety of jobs to assist in rebuilding Point True but quickly became disenchanted with the work in the city. Deciding to put his wartime training to use, he joined a bounty hunting group that continued to search out and eradicate the sathar bio-monsters. While most of those he started with either gave up the hunt or became prey to the very creatures they were hunting, Trey excelled at the work and enjoyed it.
Trey has been hunting the sathar monsters for decades now and has been quite successful making a comfortable living from the bounties collected. However, in the last ten to fifteen years, the number of monsters has begun to dwindle, either because of successful hunting or some other process. Either way, Trey was beginning to seen his income drop to levels that he felt was unacceptable.
Rather than embark on a new line of work, he decided on another path. He had often joked with his companions that it would be easier to catch a few breeding pairs and raise their kids for the bounties instead of trying to hunt them in the wild. As his income began to drop, he decided to try just that.
Setting up a remote outpost in the mountains NW of Point True, Trey captured a number of the sathar creatures and instead of killing them for the bounty, began breeding them and raising them. Thus he could kill one of the captive creatures and collect the bounty whenever he needed additional income. He also began offering a live capture service to those who wanted live specimens to study. Since owning and breeding the sathar creatures was illegal, he has kept his operation in the shadows.
For decades he had been in contempt of the creatures as aberrations and was more than happy to hunt and kill them. That attitude persisted for the first few years of his captive breeding program. It was just a source of income. He even continued to hunt wild creatures in addition to collecting the bounties on his bred creatures. However, about six to seven years ago, his attitude toward the creatures changed. He no longer saw them as aberrations or with contempt but rather as amazing creatures with positive qualities. While he still bred the creatures and killed some for their bounties, he no longer hunted wild creatures and began to increase the number he raised, releasing those he didn’t kill for bounties into the wild.
Always fairly reclusive, he has become even more so since he started his breeding program and especially so since he started releasing the sathar creatures into the wild. He has had little direct, personal contact with anyone in several years beyond delivering proof when needed of his kills to collect the bounty income that supports him.
Human, male, age 63
STR/STA: 55/45
DEX/RS: 55/55
INT/LOG: 45/50
PER/LDR: 30/30
PS: +3, IM: +6, Ranged: Beam 70%, Projectile 50%, Melee: 53%
PSA: Military
Skills: Projectile weapons 5, Melee weapons 2, Beam weapons 2, Technician 2, Environmental 3, Medic 2
Equipment: Military Skeinsuit, Auto pistol w/ 4 clips, autorifle w/ 4 clips, sonic sword w/ 2 clips, chronocom, toxy-rad guage, sungoggles.
Trey Munden’s change of attitude toward the sathar creatures is not an artifact of his close association with them through his breeding program. Rather it is due to an encounter he had with an actual sathar during one of his hunting expeditions. The sathar caught him unaware and successfully hypnotized him. Upon learning of his already existent breeding program, the sathar shifted his mindset about the creatures and set him on a path of breeding more and releasing them into the wild. Trey has no recollection of this encounter and firmly believes that the ideas and actions he has taken over the past few years are completely his own.
He is directly responsible for the creation of the lesser quickdeath. It was partially intentional, and partially a side effect of the selection of quickdeath to kill and turn in for bounties. Each year he would select the largest of the quickdeaths to kill as the size of the quickdeaths for which he collected the bounties figured somewhat into his reputation. Because of this, he was often breeding smaller and smaller specimens. After his encounter with the sathar, this became even more deliberate and focused. The larger pack behavior of the lesser quickdeath is due to the fact that they were raised together and naturally formed those bonds.
As part of the Death at Rosegard adventure, the PCs will not directly encounter Trey. However, they will have an opportunity to search his breeding compound, recently deserted, and learn about his activities. If the Referee wants to add additional encounters or the PCs want to chase him down, he provides an additional side adventure that they can engage in.
Here’s another critter that the PCs are going to have a run-in with while investigating at Rosegard. It’s a variation on a Star Frontiers classic.
Lesser Quickdeath |
|
| Type: | Medium Carnivore |
| Number: | 2-4 |
| Move: | Very Fast (120 m/turn) |
| IM/RS: | 8/75 |
| STA: | 100 |
| Attack: | 60 |
| Damage: | 4d10 bite, claws |
| Special Attack: | Poison dart S10/T3, (RW 60, 10/20/30/40/50), attacks extra creature with maw (10 points damage) |
| Special Defense: | Immune to needler weapons; ½ damage from laser or projectile weapons, 70% chance will remain unseen until within 100m |
| Native World: | Sathar attack monster bred on Pale – all terrains |
The lesser quickdeath is a smaller version of the full-size quickdeaths which were originally released on Pale during the Sathar War and encountered on Volturnus. Where the full-sized quickdeath is about 5m long, the lesser quickdeaths are only about 3m in length. While individually smaller and less powerful, the lesser quickdeaths hunt in packs of 3-4 creatures instead of the solitary or breeding pair nature of the full-sized creatures.
While not as fast as the full-sized version (max speed is only 72 kph instead of 100 kph) they otherwise resemble their larger ancestors. Its great legs resemble those of a jaguar. They maintain the claws on their legs, keeping them razor sharp. These claws are used to attack prey and for climbing. Three sets of smaller, tentacle-like limbs which end in suction cups grow from the quickdeath’s sides. These limbs are used to catch unwary prey and stuff the victims into the quickdeath’s digestive maw. Any creature in the maw takes 10 points of damage until it frees itself (as if breaking free from a hold).
The quickdeath has a long, flexible neck that ends in a snout and large mouth. It has four eyes which are mounted on retractable stalks near the top of its head. The creature’s brain is located at the base of its neck. When the quickdeath strikes, it retracts its eye stalks making it nearly blind. With a successful attack, there is a 50% chance it will actually strike something other than its intended target if that object is roughly the same size as the target and within 2 meters of the target’s position.
The quickdeath also has a long, whip-like tail that can fling a poisonous dart once every four hours. It typically uses this dart as it first engages in melee to strike a secondary, more distant target if one exists.
The quickdeath’s hide is covered by a moist, reflective armor provides excellent camouflage making it nearly invisible until it approaches within 100 meters. Ouickdeaths are constantly on the move, seeking to appease their hearty appetites.
The female can lay hundreds of eggs each year, typically burying them deep in the sand or soil. Egg caches can contain up to 50 eggs (4d10 + 11). The first young hatchling eats the remaining eggs as its first meal, and then sets out to begin its lifelong search for more food.
Ouickdeaths are not native to Pale. The Sathar used advanced genetic manipulation to create them from a common type of cat found throughout the universe. During the invasion of Pale, they released hundreds of these in the area around Point True to terrorize any survivors outside the city. These lesser quickdeaths have only recently been sighted in the areas north and west of Point True in the last couple of years. Originally thought to be adolescents, examination of recently killed specimens show them to be a fully grown subspecies.
There are still many full-sized quickdeaths on Pale. You can use the normal stats for those from page 19 of SF0: Crash on Volturnus for other encounters on the planet. However, the full-sized versions do not figure into this adventure.
The lesser quickdeaths are a newly bred version of the larger creature. They have been bred by a former bounty hunter and recently released into the wild. He originally was simply breeding quickdeaths as a “safer” way to collect the bounties on the creatures. However, about 10 years ago, he had an encounter with some sathar on Pale and was converted to their cause. He has been working on this new version of the creature since then and has been releasing them into the wild for only a couple of years. The lesser quickdeaths are currently only found in the areas around his breeding facility.
Currently there are only about 50 lesser quickdeaths on the planet but their numbers are slowly growing and their range on the planet is increasing.
Life has been a bit crazy recently and I haven’t posted anything for a couple of weeks but progress is being made. I should be getting several post up over the next couple of weeks. We start this month off with an NPC that you might encounter while traveling in the outback on Pale, Carlos Kildare. The Death at Rosegard adventure features an opportunity for the PC’s to meet and possibly work with Carlos. That interaction will be detailed in a different post but for now, here is his description and stats.
Quickdeath hunter
Carlos was born on Minotaur but emigrated to Pale when the planet was first colonized. He is a first-wave colonist but has become a bit of curmudgeon as he has aged. Carlos is the classic “been there, done that and got the scars to prove it” sort of character that you might meet around the Frontier.
He grew up in Point True and was present when the sathar landed at the outset of the First Sathar War. He joined the Aletheia Resistance Band and fought the alien invaders for the duration of the war. With the defeat of the sathar fleets in space and material support from the Pan Galactic Corporation, the government of Pale inducted all the resistance fighters into ad hoc army formations. Carlos attained the rank of sergeant in one of these rag tag militia formations but left the military after the sathar infantry were wiped out on Pale.
Since that time he’s done well collecting bounties on sathar attack monsters that were let loose during the war. He uses a modified Snow Panther track vehicle (stats below) to get around. For a time right after the war, there was a glut of bounty hunters seeking quick cash but the pickings have become slim and only a few hardcore hunters remain in the business. Carlos had his crew quit after a recent run of bad luck and is seeking extra hands for his team.
He has also recently been diagnosed with a nearly inoperable cancer. He could allow the doctors to attempt to treat it but the “cure” will leave him weak and change little or nothing. He would rather spend his time going after bounties and may have a bit of a death wish.
Human, Male
Age: 140
STR/STA: 45/55
DEX/RS: 60/60
INT/LOG: 35/40
PER/LDR: 35/50
PS: +3, IM: +6, Ranged: Beam 70%, Projectile 50%, Melee: 53%
PSA: Military
Skills: Beam weapons 4, Melee weapons 3, Projectile weapons 2, Technician 2
Equipment: Military Skeinsuit, Sonic Disruptor & power belt, Machete, chronocom, ID, sun goggles, and military issue parka and snow pants.
Equipment stowed in the Snow Panther: 2 holo projectors and a type 3 parabattery, a kerosene powered type 1 generator, five 5 gallon jerry cans (for kerosene), 3 electro stunners, two pikes (pole arms), 4 solvaway, 5 tangler grenades, 5 frag grenades, 1 auto rifle, a dozen 20 SEU clips and 6 auto rifle clips, survival food & water, a single wire electric fence (100 m long with 20 SEU clip- acts as a stun stick if anything touches the wire), a depleted med kit (enough Biocort and supplies to perform first aid twice as well as 4 doses of anti-tox), and a half depleted tech kit (50% chance the kit is missing the part you need for the current skill check).
Vehicle: Snow Panther
Cost (Cr): 17,500
Top Speed: 75 kph (125m/turn)
Cruise Speed: 60 kph (100m/turn)
Acceleration: 40m/turn
Deceleration: 30m/turn
Turn speed: 70 m/turn
Passengers: 6
Cargo Limits: 3000 kg, 8 cubic meters
The Snow Panther is a tracked working vehicle designed for the bitter cold of the planet Pale’s environment. Most that are used in the outback are optimized to be lived in with fold down cots, a small camp stove and a space heater. With a full complement of passengers, it can be a bit crowded but is still workable.
Kildare’s Snow Panther has been modified with a roof hatch and the roof has a low railing running around the roof. There is also a winch and swing arm for lifting heavy objects to the roof as well as a power port that connects to the parabattery. On the sides and back of the vehicle is a folding catwalk with railing that is just wide enough for one person to walk on. While the cat walk is deployed it is possible to walk on it entirely around the vehicle (but off the ground) except in front.
Note: The generator will operate for four hours on five gallons of fuel. It has a full tank and the jerry cans are full so the generator can be run for a total of 24 hours producing 500 SEU/hour. The snow panther uses 1 SEU/kilometer to travel. The life support systems and cook stove use 2 SEU/day.
One of the encounters the PCs have while investigating the murder at the mining facility near Rosegard is a run-in with a new Sathar bio-construct, the Sathar Poison Squirrel. Based on a native Pale species, this bio-construct is new in the Frontier, having only been released in the last year or so. The PCs will be one of the first to encounter it. Here is the description and stats for both the native Pale Tailless Squirrel and the Sathar Poison Squirrel.
The Pale Tailless Squirrel is a small rodent, native to Pale remarkably similar to squirrels of the human homeworld but lacking the signature big bushy tail. They can be found all over Pale in any temperate, tropical, and even some arctic climates.
Pale Tailless Squirrels range in color from light tans and greys to nearly snow white depending on their environment. They are generally skittish and shy away from members of the Frontier races although may approach if there is a chance of free food. If cornered these creatures will fight but their small mouths and jaws, primarily designed for eating vegetation and nuts, do not do much damage (1d5 pts).
| Pale Tailless Squirrel | |
| STA: | 10 |
| RS: | 70 |
| Move: | Medium (30m/turn) |
| Size: | small |
| #Appearing: | 1d2 |
| Attack: | 50 |
| Damage: | 1d5 |
This is a sathar bio-construct based on the native Pale Tailless Squirrel. This is a new creature in the Frontier that has just been released in the last year or so and is starting to invade the ecosystem. It was engineered in sathar biolab somewhere on Pale. Although first seen near the village of Rosegard, the bio-lab in question is not near that village.
The Sathar version is more gregarious and will be much more likely to approach members of the Frontiers species. It is more playful than the native version but will inevitably try to bite, typically fingers or toes. While the bite only does 1d5 points worth of damage like the native creature, unlike the native squirrel, the bite is highly poisonous. The Sathar Poison Squirrel’s bite contains a S4/T20 poison. A successful STA check results in half damage. Standard Anti-Tox will treat the poison if properly administered.
Physically, they are nearly identical to the native species. The most noticeable difference is that the bio-construct has a stripe of fur down its back that is slightly paler than the rest of the fur. The native species does not have this stripe. If examined closely there are other small details that set it apart from the native version such as stronger jaws, sharper teeth, slightly more hook like claws on its toes, and a stronger musculature.
| Sathar Poison Squirrel | |
| STA: | 20 |
| RS: | 70 |
| MV: | Medium (30m/turn) |
| Size: | small |
| #Appearing: | 1d2 |
| Attack: | 60 |
| Damage: | 1d5 |
| Special Attack: | poisonous bite, S4/T20, current STA check for half damage. |
Traveling through hyperspace ain’t like dusting crops, boy!
- Han Solo, Star Wars
While a little out of context (Han was actually referring to astrogation calculations), the quote still applies – faster than light (FTL) travel is not just a walk in the park.
In this post, I want to look at a mechanic for FTL induced illness, which I’ll be calling Void Sickness. The name comes because I created this mechanic for my Star Frontiers games where FTL travel is accomplished by traveling through “The Void” or “Void Jumping”. In that game, you accelerate up to speed (1% the speed of light) and then make a nearly instantaneous transition into and out of the Void to cross many light years. The rules are a little vague on the actual duration but I’ve always used 1 second per light year. When you re-emerge you are in a new star system (hopefully your destination if you got the astrogation correct).
But what happens physiologically when you make the transition? You are entering, even if it is briefly, a dimension your body wasn’t designed for. It’s natural that your body may have an adverse reaction to the transition.
First there is the physical manifestations during the brief time in the Void. I always describe this as a confusion of the senses. You can feel colors, hear tastes, see sound, etc. And it could be different for different species or even individuals within a species. I often use this picture to describe the visual sensations.
But what I want to talk about today is what happens after you exit the Void.
Many games don’t worry about this. They just assume that the PCs and others can experience FTL travel with no worries or side effects. And that is absolutely fine. If having potentially negative consequences of FTL travel is not something you want in your game, then you don’t have to have it. But if you do, this is a possible mechanic you can use.
In my case, I wanted to add a potential downside to FTL travel that starts out fairly benign and uncommon but becomes worse the more and more you travel. Until it possibly reaches a point that you simply don’t want to make any more interstellar trips unless you absolutely have to. Here’s what I came up with.
Void Sickness is not an uncommon effect of FTL travel and some people are more susceptible to it than others. But even if you are susceptible to it, it doesn’t affect you on every trip. It is also a condition that worsens, with both increased susceptibility and symptoms, the more times you engage in FTL travel.
I’ll present this as a percentage based system (since that is what Star Frontiers, which I originally developed it for, uses) but you can easily convert this to a d20 or other system if you want.
This is the original version of Void Sickness I developed. It’s actually pretty harsh, I’ll present a much milder version below.
To see if you are susceptible to Void Sickness you need to make a check against your Stamina (or CON or the equivalent from your system). Since STA in Star Frontiers typically ranges from 30-70, you make a STA+20 check the first time you make a Void Jump. If you make the roll, you do not suffer from Void Sickness on this trip and your base chance to avoid Void Sickness on all other jumps starts at 95% (i.e. if you roll a 95 or lower on d100 you are not sick).
If you fail this roll, you are susceptible to Void Sickness. You suffer from the sickness on this trip and your base chance to avoid it on future trips is equal to your STA score. Thus you are much more likely to succumb to it in the future.
On all future FTL trips, you make a roll against your resistance score. If you succeed, you do not suffer from Void Sickness for that trip. If you fail, you do suffer and your resistance score is reduced by one.
The impact of the Void Sickness is determined by the amount you failed your roll. The difference between your roll and your resistance score determines both the strength of the effect and its duration. This value becomes the penalty you suffer on all skill and ability checks and it lasts for that many hours.
For example: Drod, a dralasite, has a STA of 50 and is making his first interstellar trip. He checks for his susceptibility to Void sickness by rolling a d100 and rolls an 76 which is 6 points higher than this initial check (50+20 = 70). He is susceptible to Void Sickness and going forward his resistance score is only 50. For this trip he suffers a relatively mild case and only has a -6 modifier to his skills and abilities for the next 6 hours. If on a future trip,if he were to fail the resistance roll again, his resistance would drop to 49.
In its original form, the Void Sickness is something that everyone will succumb to eventually if they take enough interstellar trips and if you have a string of bad luck, you could succumb to it fairly quickly. If you want the effect to be fairly rare, and slower acting when someone does have it, you can use the following variation. With this form, it is probably something the PCs will never have to deal with but you could have Void Sickness in your campaign as setting material to use on NPCs.
In this form, the base chance the first time you make a jump is a flat 95% on a d100. If you roll less than that you don’t have the sickness and never will. You never have to roll again. If you do fail the roll, you have a mild case this time (you are not going to fail by more than 5 points) and your resistance roll going forward is equal to whatever you rolled this time. (i.e. if you rolled a 98, your resistance chance for all future trips starts at 98). The effects and increase in susceptibility are as before.
If the occurrence of this illness is common, there will probably be a number of ways to deal with it from drugs that boost your immunity to other drugs that mitigate the effects. If the occurrence is more rare, there may only be drugs to mitigate symptoms and there may not be anything specifically for Void Sickness but only the use of regular drugs to treat the symptoms. Here are some that I use in my game. All these are required to be administered by someone with the Medic skill.
Cost: 25 credits
VoidBoost is designed to improve a being’s immunity and resistance to Void Sickness. If administered prior to the Void Jump, VoidBoost raises the recipient’s resistance to Void Sickness by 20 to a maximum of 95%. Only a single dose of VoidBoost can be administered for any given trip. Additional doses have no effect.
Most starliners stock this medication for their passengers. It is either provided for free as part of the passage fare or at a discounted cost.
Cost: 40 credits
VoidBlock is a broad spectrum medicine designed to reduce the effects of the symptoms of Void Sickness. It has no effect on the duration. It works by reducing the penalty to ability and skill checks due to Void Sickness. VoidBlock reduces the negative modifier associated with Void Sickness by 1d10+10 for 20 hours. No more than one dose can be taken in a 20 hour period. Any doses taken beyond the first in that time automatically have no effect. VoidBlock cannot be taken in conjunction with VoidReduce. If it is, neither drug has any effect.
Most starliners stock this medication for their passengers. It is either provided for free as part of the passage fare or at a discounted cost.
Cost: 35 Credits
Void Reduce is designed to reduce the duration of the effects of Void Sickness. It has no effect on they actual impact of the symptoms. A dose of VoidReduce decreases the duration of Void Sickness by 1d10+10 hours. Only one dose of VoidReduce can be taken for any given occurrence of Void Sickness. Any additional doses automatically have no effect. VoidReduce cannot be take in conjunction with VoidBlock. If it is, neither drug has any effect.
Most starliners stock this medication for their passengers. It is either provided for free as part of the passage fare or at a discounted cost.
Depending on your game system there may be other medications already in the game that can mitigate some of the effects of Void Sickness. You can make a judgement based on the effects of the drugs in your game. For Star Frontiers, I allow the following:
Side note: Due to the way Neutrad affects Void Sickness, scientists believe that Void Sickness is some form of temporary radiation poisoning but the exact form of radiation is unknown and not reproducible outside of a Void jump. Many companies contract with ships to carry small micro experiments that run during the Void jump in an attempt to understand the cause of this illness.
Adapting this to another system is fairly straightforward.
If you want to use this in a d20 or 3d6 based system, You could simply multiply the relevant ability score by 3, 4, or 5 to get the initial base percentage for Void Sickness resistance if you wanted to keep with the d100 percentage system outlined. The multiplier would depend on how likely you want the occurrence to be but by default I’d use 4 as that maps the closest to the ability score range that I designed against. In any other system just use a suitable modifier.
If you don’t want to use the percentage based system but use the core mechanic from your system, simply reduce the percentage by the appropriate multiplier. e.g. for a d20 based system simply divide the resistance chance by five (and subtract that from 20 for a roll-over success system like D&D to get the target number.) Penalties can still be just the difference between the roll and the target and the duration becomes the difference times the modifier used. If you are using a 3d6 system the percentages don’t map as closely but it still works. The net effect would be for a slower initial deterioration followed by a very rapid final decline. If you are using a game with a dice pool system, a little more work would be required to convert the mechanic.
The hardest part to adapt would be the slow deterioration of the resistance chance. Instead of a reduction on every failure, you could implement a reduction after every N failures, where N is probably the multiplier used elsewhere. Or you could require a CON (or equivalent) check each time they suffer from Void Sickness. If they fail, their resistance weakens. If they succeed, their resistance doesn’t change.
I created this illness primarily as background flavor for my setting. It’s not something I ever expect the PCs to suffer from. Unless they want to. If the PC’s background is such that they would have taken interstellar trips before the game starts, I give them the option to automatically select susceptibility if they want or to just roll. It was more designed as something that NPCs could suffer from and that the PCs would have to deal with in that manner. I also intended to use in some of the stories I was writing at the time (and that I may someday get back to).
Have you ever done anything similar in your games? Does this sound like something you might use in the future? Share your ideas, suggestions, and thoughts in the comments below.