Battle of Terledrom (Fromeltar) – FY61.285

The Fromeltar militia, supported by the the Inner Reach and Outer Reach militias from Dramune that arrived yesterday after a high-speed risk jump, engaged sathar forces today around Terledrom.
In an intense battle lasting only twenty minutes, the militia forces overwhelmed the sathar forces, which consisted of five capital ships. Militia forces sustained damage and causalities resulting in the lost of the Inner Reach militia destroyer and severe damage to both frigates of the Outer Reach militia.
A memorial service will be held tomorrow for the crew of the lost ship. Our hearts go out to their families and we thank them for their dedication to defending the Frontier.
The damaged frigates have been given top priority to move into the local shipyard for repairs as soon as space opens which is expected to occur tomorrow.
The surviving militia crews remain vigilant as we await the arrival of Task Force Cassidine some time tomorrow evening.
Kat’kst’kll, Terledrom News Service

Background

The Fromeltar system has one of the larger militias with a frigate and 3 assault scouts on the roster. When news of the sathar ships went out across the Frontier, both the Inner Reach and Outer Reach militias in the adjacent Dramune system decided that it was in their interest to help Fromeltar and both militias risk jumped to the system arriving a day in advance of the sathar forces. They hope to stop the worms here and prevent them from ever entering the Dramune system.

Similarly, Task Force Cassidine was dispatched by Spacefleet and ordered to make a high speed risk jump to the Fromeltar system. Unfortunately, coming from two systems away, they are still a day away from Terledrom when the militia forces engage the sathar. They will be able to clean up the remnants of the sathar fleet if the militias can’t hold the line, but won’t be any help in this battle. This fight will be completely between the UPF militias and the sathar.

Order of Battle

This setup is nearly identical to the Banding Together Knight Hawks encounter that I published back in Jan 2013 in issue 3 of the Frontier Explorer (p30). The only difference is that in that scenario, there was an additional UPF destroyer. This opening gambit by the sathar and the UPF response is something I’ve been thinking about playing out for a while now and that article and some of the others I’ll reference were specifically based on this opening of the Second Sathar War. As you’ll see, the UPF ship isn’t needed.

Militia Forces

With the arrival of the Dramune militias, the UPF have a definite hull point and ship number advantage although most of their ships are small.

Terledrom (Fromeltar)

3 Assault Scouts
1 Frigate
1 Armed station

Inner Reach (Dramune)

3 Assault Scouts
1 Frigate
1 Destroyer

Outer Reach (Dramune)

2 Assault Scouts
2 Frigates

Sathar

1 Frigate
2 Destroyers
1 Light Cruiser
1 Heavy Cruiser

This is a standard mix that the sathar are employing to start off the battle. You’ll see it in several of the upcoming battles. While it should have been enough to deal with any of militias they encountered, they didn’t figure on high risk jumps to support neighboring systems.

The Battle

Setup

With the recent animosity between the two Dramune worlds, the ships from those respective militias line up on opposite sides of the planet with the Terledrom militia arrayed between them. The Outer Reach militia and Terledrom assault scouts are “above” the planet with the other ships “below”. The assault scouts have an initial speed of 30 while the capital ships start at speed 20. The station is at position 4 and orbiting counter clockwise.

The sathar start at speed 10 and are arranged in a diamond formation with the center consisting of a frigate in the lead, followed by the light and heavy cruisers with the destroyers above and below the main line. They are headed straight toward the planet.

Starting positions for the battle. Click for full sized version.

Turn 1

The sathar vessels accelerate and veer down to engage with the ships that are “below” the planet. However, due to the extreme range, no shots are fired.

The UPF sweep in closing in from both sides. The Outer Reach militia focuses on the two destroyers with the assault scouts making an assault rocket pass and then flying out of range of the sathar’s energy weapons while the frigates fly into torpedo range and keep their laser canons trained on the sathar vessels.

The Inner Reach militia converges on the sathar light cruiser, with the destroyer and frigate coming in from the aft port quarter and the assault scouts making a pass on the forward port quarter and then flying out of range to prepare for another pass.

The Terledrom assault scouts loop around and come in from behind to make a pass at the sathar heavy cruiser and then fly off. Trying to avoid a direct shot by the sathar frigate and light cruiser, the Terledrom frigate accelerates, rolls to port, and lines up for a shot on the sathar destroyers, electing to shoot at the same ones as the Inner Reach assault scouts.

Defensive fire by the sathar is practically ineffective with the only damage being the light cruiser’s electron battery which disables the ICM launcher on the Inner Reach destroyer.

The militia are much more effective.

The heavy cruiser is hit by 3 assault rockets damaging its combat control system and reducing its hull integrity by over half. One of the destroyers is hit by an assault rocket severely damaging it and reducing its hull integrity by nearly half. The other destroyer gets away nearly unscathed as both of the torpedoes fired at it are neutralized by its interceptor missiles (ICMs), only being scratched by a laser battery for minimal hull damage. The sathar light cruiser is hit by a torpedo, 2 assault rockets, and a laser battery taking out nearly half of its hull integrity and its ICM and torpedo launchers.

Ship positions and paths at the end of turn 1. Click for full sized image.

Turn 2

The sathar heavy cruiser turns to go after the Inner Reach frigate. The light cruiser and frigate turn to go after the Outer Reach frigates focusing all their fire on the leading one. The sathar destroyers swing around to go after the Inner Reach destroyer.

The defensive fire by the Inner Reach frigate and destroyer focuses on the sathar heavy cruiser and is devastating – hitting it with both laser batteries, both laser cannons, and a rocket battery knocking out the cruiser’s distruptor cannon before completely destroying the massive ship. The Outer Reach frigates are not quite as effective. Firing their laser canons at the lead sathar destroyer they only knock out its laser battery, The other weapons are fired at the frigate as it approaches and only do some minor hull damage even though they hit with two rocket batteries.

The sathar destroyers are quite effective hitting the Inner Reach destroyer with a laser cannon and two torpedoes which don’t have to worry about a screen of ICMs as the militia’s ICM launcher was damaged. The torpedos completely destroying the militia destroyer. Similarly, the sathar frigate and light cruiser focus their fire on the the lead Outer Reach frigate hitting it with a laser and distruptor cannon and a rocket battery knocking out all of its defensive systems and 75% of it’s hull integrity.

The Terledrom assault scouts loop around to fire at the lightly damaged destroyer. The Inner Reach assault scouts make a run on the sathar light cruiser. The Outer Reach frigates fire at the damaged sathar destroyer and the frigate with the heavily damaged one just drifting away from the battle as it fires. The Inner Reach frigate splits its fire using its laser cannon on the light cruiser and the other weapons at the damaged destroyer. The Terledrom frigate also loops around to fire at the light cruiser. The Outer Reach assault scouts loop around to fire at the frigate.

The sathar’s defensive fire is again mostly ineffective. The undamaged Outer Reach frigate is hit by several energy weapons from the frigate and light cruiser damaging its engines (both accelerating and maneuvering) and doing some significant hull damage (about 40% of the hull). The sathar destroyers fire at the Inner Reach frigate knocking out its ICM and torpedo launchers.

The return fire from the militia obliterates the last four sathar vessels. The frigate is hit by a rocket battery, two assault rockets, and two laser batteries knocking out its laser battery and doing enough hull damage to destroy a heavy cruiser. The damaged sathar destroyer is hit by a laser canon igniting an electrical fire and then a torpedo makes it through the ICM screen and hits a weapon magazine causing a massive explosion that destroys the ship. The undamaged destroyer is slammed by three different assault rockets that rip it to shreds (and a laser battery that knocks out some of its acceleration). Finally the light cruiser is hit by a laser battery starting a fire and then slammed by 3 assault rockets that rip its hull to pieces.

The savagery of the assault rocket damage surprised even the militia crews and the battle was over in less than 20 minutes.

Ship positions and paths at the end of the battle. The map has shifted to keep the drifting Outer Reach destroyer on the map for visualization. Click for full sized image.

Repairs

The damaged ships immediately begin working on battle repairs but the hull damage to the second Outer Reach frigate is beyond space repairs and needs to be completed in a shipyard. Similarly for the damage to that ship’s thrust. The other Outer Reach frigate is able to repair enough hull damage to prevent it from breaking up as it begins to maneuver and decelerate to return to the planet but it too will need time in the repair yards. The other ships are able to repair their minor damage over the next 2.5 hours.

Lessons Learned

I’ll admit, I expected this fight to go a bit longer and cause more damage to the militia. Between really good rolls for the militia and lousy rolls for the sathar, this fight was amazingly short.

Both sides leaned just how effective the assault rockets could be, especially if you roll well. The sathar seem to focus their ICMs on deflecting torpedoes but not the assault rockets which can do significant damage. Unfortunately for the other sathar fleets, this lesson was learned a little too late as all the sathar ships were obliterated in a single round and there was no time to transmit that information out. It wouldn’t have affected the other battles occurring today, but may have been useful for future encounters.

The sathar also learned (again) that they should probably focus on the smaller vessels to reduce that assault rocket threat. That information was transmitted from the Battle of Stenmar but the commanders of this battle fleet seems to have ignored it, focusing on the larger vessels first.

The militia were extremely lucky in this fight. It could have gone much worse. I rolled really bad for most of the sathar defensive fire which could have eliminated some militia ships before they could fire and the dice were extremely hot for the militia with double damage being generated for 6 assault rockets, 1 laser canon, 1 laser battery, and 1 torpedo. Even some of the regular damage rolls were really high (a torpedo hitting for 26 HP, laser batteries hitting for 9 & 10 HP, a RB hitting for 16 HP, and assault rockets hitting for 19 and 21 HP). Plus they took out the heavy cruiser before it even had a chance to deploy its more effective weapons. It only got one round of defensive fire and missed with everything.

On to the next battle being reported tomorrow.

Skills For Hire – Lab Crawl

So last week I wrote up the location of the GODCo bio-lab. This week we’re going to look at what my players found when they got there. First I’ll provide my game notes with the details of what had changed, and then so a short write-up of the players’ actions. “Lab Crawl” is the title I gave this scenario in my notes.

Background

GODCo has been operating the lab on Pale for about 20 years now. The lab is a location the GODCo scientists are studying the Pale flora and fauna and looking for ways to adapt various yazirian plant species to the environment as well as improving flora and fauna used by Frontiersmen to be more adaptable to the Pale climates.

A few days ago the quarterly supply delivery to the “secret” base left but the drivers and vehicles (two ground trucks) never returned. Yesterday an aircar flew out to the site and was shot at by the site’s defenses (heavy laser). The PCs are being sent in (on the ground) to investigate. Their objectives are:

Figure out what happened
Rescue any personnel trapped and still alive in the lab
Secure the site if possible.

What Happened

In my game, there are still sathar on Pale from the First Sathar War (referred to as the Great Sathar War on Pale as the second one is just now brewing). While a few of the sathar on the planet are holdovers from the war, many more have actually slipped to the surface over the intervening years. They have been working to subvert the society and develop new bio-weapons (e.g. lesser quickdeath, sathar poison squirrel). It is to do some work on the poison squirrel that they have capture the lab.

A few weeks ago, a team of sathar attacked and captured the base. They needed access to the equipment and facilities to complete some work that they had been doing in more makeshift labs elsewhere on the planet. The staff that survived the attack are being held as prisoners and used as test subjects (and food) for the creatures they brought with them.

Changes From Last Post

In my previous post, I described the lab during “normal” operations. Here is what changed when the PCs arrived

Staff

There are only 1d5+5 of the original 44 staff members still alive, all scientists. They are locked individually in the living quarters and isolated from one another. They are all malnourished and weak. They will not be able to assist the PCs in any fighting.

I put them in the rooms farthest from the elevator/stairs but you could put them anywhere. The sathar have changed the computer security system so that none of the staff ID cards work to open the living quarters doors.

Vehicles

There is a ground transport in the garage (area 3, ground level). It is only partially unloaded.

Robots

All of the security robots were destroyed in the original attack. The sathar have reprogrammed all the maintenance and service robots to have attack/destroy programs and will attack any non-sathar beings on sight. These robots are all level 3 and have only their mechanical hands as weapons. The security locks have all been removed by the sathar as they modified them. They have the following stats:

STA: 100 ATT: 60 IM: 6 DMG: 2d10 Move: 30 m/turn

The remaining robots are located in the following areas:

2 service robots – Ground Level in hallway (area 5)
4 maintenance robots – Level 1 area 30. There is a random 10% change per minute that one will emerge and go about some maintenance task. If attacked, it can summon the others.
4 maintenance robots – Level 2 area 11 (at the far end of the lab area). There is a random 10% change per minute that one will emerge and go about some maintenance task. If attacked, it can summon the others. They can also be called by the sathar on this level.

Sathar

There are 10 sathar at the facility.

Two are security officers and will be in the security office on that level (area 8). If the robots start fighting they will emerge and attack the intruders. These sathar have laser pistols with 3 power clips and a level 3 skill. Their stats are:

STA: 45 ATT: 50 IM: 5 DMG: 2d10 PS: 3 Move: 30 m/turn

The other eight are in the lab areas on level 2. Divide as desired among 3 labs. These are all scientists and will only have improvised melee weapons when attacked but do have a level 1 melee skill. Stats for these sathar are:

STA: 40 ATT: 30 IM: 4 DMG: 1d10 PS: 2 Move: 30 m/turn

In addition to the sathar on level 2, there are a number of sathar attack monsters with them in some of the labs. There are 2 cybernuks in one of the bio-labs, although only one has the cyber implant, and a caged juvenile quick death in another (use the Lesser Quickdeath stats). A third lab has a cage containing 10 tailless squirrels. If freed, any of these creatures will attack the PCs. If they can, the sathar scientists will release the creatures into the lab hall (area 14) to attack the PCs as part of their defense.

Place the sathar and creatures in the labs as desired. In my game, I had them all in labs on the right side of the map. The first lab had 3 sathar, the second had 2 sathar and the nuks, the third had 3 sathar and the squirrels, and the fourth lab had the quick-death.

Other Notes

The computer is level 4 with a level 3 computer security program. Lab doors have level 5 locks, bedrooms have level 1 locks.

Something got out and the power generator level is overgrown with a blue fungus/moss that is mildly toxic to the touch (S1/T20) toxin. This is currently growing on all the walls on level 3, part of the stairwell between level 2 and 3, and in the elevator shaft near level 3. It has not yet traveled to Level 1 or 2. Due to the fungus, the power occasionally will short out and brownouts occur occasionally around the lab. There is a 5% chance any minute that the power will temporarily go out or lights will dim in any given room.

Loose Ends

Some things I left open ended and which didn’t really come up when playing that you can flesh out as desired for your game:

Where’s the other ground truck? There were two in the convoy but only one is here. I honestly forgot about there being two when I was running it but it never came up directly. This is an opportunity to expand the scope of this encounter if you want your PCs to possibly pursue the sathar across the planet.
The fungus/moss on the generator level – Was this something the sathar brought with them? Was it something GODCo was working on?

Running the Adventure

This adventure played out over two game sessions.

The PCs had no idea there were sathar involved when they were hired. The job was simply to go to the lab, investigate what happened, rescuing any survivors, and secure the facility. GODCo offered a generous bonus of 500 cr. per staff member recovered alive.

After about six hours of travel, mostly in an explorer, the PCs arrived at the facility to find the gate closed. As they got close to the site, however, they noticed that no radio communications were working. The site appeared deserted. The humma decided to jump the fence and got shot at by the heavy laser for his trouble. Luckily, it missed him. He was able to open the main gate and the explorer entered the compound.

They gained access to the garage and discovered the partially emptied ground transport. Exiting into the hall, they were attacked by the robot stationed there. They took some damage but were able to quickly deactivate the robot. (Since the sathar removed the security lock, I only required a DEX roll – the robot was attacking them after all – to switch it off. Their roboticist has a high DEX but still missed a few of the rolls throughout the adventure.)

As they rounded the barracks (not knowing what they were) they encountered the other robot and after starting to engage that, the two sathar emerged and started firing at them. A well tossed tangler grenade captured both sathar (although one was killed by laser fire the same round). Realizing it was caught and the robot deactivated, the captured sathar committed suicide.

Clearing the rest of the level, they opted to take the stairs down and not alert anyone else by using the elevator. As they emerged into the hall on level 1 they experienced their first brownout of the power. They entered the security office and found a number of CCTV cameras looking at different parts of the lab including the hallways on level 1 and one into each lab on level 2. They saw the 8 sathar and the attack creature but didn’t know where in the complex those images were coming from.

Examing the hallways, they ran into two maintenance robots coming out of area 30 on the fall left hall way. A fight ensued with those robots and the other two that were called out of room 30 after the fight was engaged. They managed to deactivate two of the robots while the other two were destroyed.

The fighting was occurring at the end of the hall by area 30 and the prisoners in the rooms there heard them and tried to get their attention. They proceeded to open (via tech or brute force, depending on the player) each of the doors and discovered that 9 of the scientists were still alive, although is fairly poor shape.

From the scientists they got the information about the attack and current situation as they understood it. They also learned that the brownouts only started occurring after the sathar arrived. Speculation began on what the sathar were doing that needed that much power.

With the scientists found, they shepherded them up to the surface, planning on driving them out in the ground transport. At this point a discussion ensued on what was next. Fighting sathar is a job for Star Law and really above their pay grade and several PCs were all for bugging out with the scientists, reporting what they found, collecting their rewards and walking away. However, one of the PCs is a member of the Anti-Satharian League (ASL) and floated the idea that they might be able to get some reward from that group for the sathar if they took them out themselves.

In the end, they decided that the Anti-Satharian League PC would drive the scientists out and call in for medical pickup once he got out of the radio jamming. He would report the sathar presence and request instructions from Galactic Task Force (GTF). He’d also contact the ASL and see what he could negotiate. That discussion ended the first session.

Session 2 started with finalizing the plan. While the ASL PC headed out with the scientists, the other PCs set about exploring the rest of level 1. They realized part of the way through that they should have asked the scientists for a tour. Meanwhile, the PC with the scientists, after about 40 minutes of driving, got out of the jamming range. Calling in GTF immediately dispatched some flying transports to pick up the scientists and told him to stand by on the sathar situation. While he waited, he called ASL and got the same response. After a few minutes, GTF told him that if the team chose to go in after the sathar, they would be deputized by Star Law for the operation (Star Law couldn’t get anyone there for many hours and didn’t want the sathar to get away) and offered a bonus of 1500 cr. each. Just after that conversation, he was called by his ASL contact and offered a 250 cr. reward for each sathar killed plus and additional 500 cr for any sathar data collected from the computer systems.

With the offers in hand, he headed back to the compound once the medical team arrived to escort the scientists. Having been gone a couple of hours, the rest of the team was getting a bit antsy and debated exploring the generator level but decided to be patient and wait. They also reprogrammed the two maintenance robots to obey them and attack sathar while they were waiting. When the offers were presented, they decided to take on the sathar and collect the reward from both sources.

Not wanting to walk down 50 m of stairs, and figuring they had the drop on the sathar, they opted to take the elevator. They quickly examined the areas outside the decontamination airlocks on that level. Hoping to reduce the odds, they hacked into the life support and ventilation systems for the labs (all 10 individually) and dropped a doze grenade into each system to try to knock out the sathar. They had to do all 10 because they didn’t know which system went to which lab or even which labs the sathar were in. Luckily they had 11 doze grenades between the 5 PCs.

Doze grenades dropped and hoping they worked, they went through the cleaning rooms into the lab area. Upon entering and seeing into the labs, they found that the sathar in the lab with the cybernuks had been knocked out but the other were still up and about.

They rushed the robots over to the first lab and had them block the door preventing the sathar from exiting while the PCs headed down the the third lab where the three sathar were working with the tailless squirrels. As they were approaching, the sathar let the squirrels out and there were suddenly several critters attacking most of the PCs.

On the second round of the fight, the four robots emerged from the robot storage area and started to advance on the PCs as well. An on the next round they realized the flaw with having the robots block the sathar in the first lab as one of the sathar deactivated one of the two robots.

With enemy both in front of them and behind, they started to fall back and regroup trying to deactivate robots, kill sathar, and fight the squirrel critters. A well placed frag grenade managed to kill most of the squirrels as they fell back but not before a couple of the PCs were bitten and poisoned.

Just as they were starting to get the situation under control, one of the sathar in the nuk lab woke up (I had rolled for the time each were going to be out and rolled low for that one). After spending a round trying to rouse its comrade (with no success), it then headed to the doors to let the nuks out into the fight.

The sathar and squirrels turned out to be the easy targets with the nuks and robots providing the most challenge. They managed to take out the sathar that had freed the nuks before it could let the quickdeath out or things might have been really bad for the team. As it was, two of the team members, wounded and cornered, retreated into the lab that the squirrels had come out of pursued by one of the robots. They trapped one of the nuks in the entrance to another lab, and then finished off or deactivated the remaining robots and creatures.

When the fighting was over, they had deactivated two more robots, killed seven sathar, 10 squirrels and one nuk. The last sathar never woke up and they hit it with a StayDose to keep it sedated. They left the trapped quickdeath and nuk for StarLaw and GODCo to deal with. They decided to report that there were only 7 sathar (they had miscounted) and secret the live sathar away to turn over to the Anti-Satharian League for a 2000 cr. reward.

It was touch and go there in the middle of the battle with a couple of PCs getting down to single digit STA, but they pulled through in the end. Each PC ended up with 6 XP and 3600 cr. They also ended up with 7 damaged service and maintenance robots that they took with them as well.

Final Thoughts

It was a good adventure. It just took longer to finish than I had hoped due to scheduling conflicts (on my part) and not being able to get it all done in a single session (or I would have posted this sooner).

I actually completely forgot about the quickdeath in the heat of the battle which is why the sathar didn’t immediately make a bee-line for that lab to try to get it out. But that was probably just as well. Had the quickdeath came into the fray it might have been too much. As it is, the fight went well. They PCs were a little worried there for a bit, but managed to pull it out in the end. I actually thought the squirrel were going to do a bit more damage but the frag grenade really did a number on them, only three of the 10 survived the initial blast.

The activating and deactivating of the robots was a bit of humor (at least for me) during the big fight. There was a bit of a go around of the sathar turning their robots off, them trying to turn the sathar robots off and also trying to turn their back on, and fighting the robots that weren’t deactivated. And the moment when I said that the sathar turned their first robot off definitely seemed to catch them off guard and ratchet up the tension.

This will be the the last Skills for Hire post for a while. As I talked about in my “What I need is … more focus” post back in August, I have a lot of things going on and that was the main cause of the scheduling conflicts. As such, I’ve decided to put the game on hiatus for now. My players are going to take up the GM mantle and run games for each other in the meantime but I won’t be doing anything for a while.

Did you like the adventure? What might you have done differently? What changes or additions would you make? How could you use this in your game? Let me know your thoughts in the comments.

Skills for Hire – Rescue

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

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

Adventure Outline

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

The setup

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

Major segments

Finding the location
Surveillance
Springing her free
Getting safely home

Details

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

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

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

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

The manor

Level 2 locks on offices

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

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

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

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

Running the Adventure

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Skills for Hire – Lost in the Mountains

For the first session of the game, I wanted to keep things fairly simple as we’re still getting a feel for the format, and how much can be done in a single session. So we started with a fairly basic scenario, a young girl has gone lost in the mountains near her home and the PCs are hired out to find her (hopefully alive) and bring her home.

Long time readers of the blog, and those that listened to the beginning of the “A New Can of Worms” actual play, will recognize some of the setting and characters. I’ll start with an outline of the adventure, and then talk about the players and how they handled things.

Lost in the Mountains

Background

Alyssa Tinnett, a young woman in the village of Rosegard, went out “adventuring” in the region around the village after school last day-day. She took her “adventuring pack”, which included a small tent and sleeping bag, rations, water, rope, an all-weather blanket, and a pocket tool. She also took her sword, a gift from the yazirian Talnor at the Streel mine compound, which he has been teaching her how to use. She’s done this in the past and typically returns before it gets dark and the next night-day cycle starts. This time she didn’t return.

It’s late fall on Pale and as a farming village, the citizens are quite busy bringing in the harvest. Her parents and grandparents went out searching for her but were hampered by the darkness of the Pale night. They put out a job request to several mercenary companies in Point True and the contract was picked up by Galactic Task Force (GTF). The PCs were assigned to the job.

What happened

Alyssa’s Campsite. Click for larger image.

Her adventure started out like all her other ones. In this case, after playing in the woods with some of her friends for a while, she went north from the village while her friends returned home. She intended to check out the artificial dome that the sathar agent at the Streel compound was using as a drop point and then continue further north to the small canyon in the mountains to the north. She got to the small camping site that some of the older kids had once set up in the canyon and got her tent set up. After that, she shouldered her pack and started further up the canyon.

A short time later, she heard the sounds of something behind her but nothing was immediately visible. A few minutes later, she got to the top of a small rise in the canyon and looking back saw a pair of large bird creatures, something akin to a giant (1m tall) chicken. She recognized them as Nuks from some that had been killed around the village several months ago. With her way back to the campsite cut off, she began hurrying up the canyon looking for a place she could hide out.

The entrance to the cave. The ramp is about a 45 degree slope. Click for larger image.

After a while, she came to a steep rock formation that she thought that the nuks wouldn’t be able to scramble up and climbed to the top of it where she found the entrance to a cave. Exploring a bit into the cave, the slope on the inside was even steeper and extended nearly 100 meters into the mountain. Turning back to the entrance, she saw the nuks at the base of the slope. One of them jumped up trying to get at her but slipped back down. She retreated further into the cave but after a half hour and the nuks not leaving, she got bored and decided to do a little spelunking.

Carefully descending the steep interior slope, the cave opened up into a wide long cavern with some side passages branching off to the left. Following one of these side passages, she discovered another large cavern, although not as big as the first. However, as she moved out into the center of that cavern she must have disturbed something as she passed the entrance because there was a large crash and several tons of boulders tumbled down nearly completely blocking the entrance. There was a small opening, but too small for her to fit through.

After searching around for an hour or more, she couldn’t find any way out of this room back the way she had come. There was a passage to her left, and another straight ahead. The first was on her level but the second was up a 20 meter cliff that angled back out over the ground beneath it that she couldn’t find a way up. Exhausted, she curled up in her all-weather blanket and went to sleep, planning to continue looking for a way out in the morning.

Adventure Outline

The adventure consists of several small steps and encounters that I outlined as follows:

Mission briefing and aircar flight to Rosegard
Meet with the family at the Rosegard town hall
Track Alyssa north
- Encounter with a young sathodragon
- Find nuk prints following Alyssa’s prints
- Find the campsite with damaged tent and lots of nuk prints
- Encounter with a pair of Pale mountain lions
- Track Alyssa and nuks to cave entrance
Fight with the nuks at the cave entrance
Explore the cave to find Alyssa and get her out
Return back to the village
- Possible encounter with a quickdeath or a group of lesser quickdeaths

Encounter and Event Descriptions

Mission briefing

Area around Point True. The locations to the NE of Rosegard are locations from the A New Can of Worms game. Click image for larger version.

This occurs in the GTF headquarters at Point True. The PCs are given the basic information from the Background section above and allowed to requisition any equipment (within reason) that they feel they will need. They are told that they will receive their regular daily pay rate (20 cr/day for my new players) and a 100cr bonus each if the girl is found.

If none of the PCs ask for it, their handler issues them an radiophone in addition to any other gear they request. Once they have their gear, they are flown by aircar to Rosegard. As each aircar can take 3 PCs, there may be more than one. It’s a 30 minute aircar ride but a 4-5 hour drive. The aircar drivers will remain with the aircars at the city center while the PCs are out exploring.

Meeting with the family

This part of the adventure mostly occurs in the city hall building of Rosegard. As they land they are met by the mayor, Genio Washy, Alyssa’s parents, Larroy & Camryn Tinnett, and Alyssa’s grandparents, Steven & Janie Hite.

During this discussion they PCs can learn any of the “What happened” information that the parents might know as well as anything about Alyssa from her background. They know she went north as she told some of her friends and they told the parents when Alyssa didn’t return. They can also learn about the connection Alyssa has with Talnor from the Streel compound.

Tracking Alyssa

This bit of the adventure occurs in the valley surrounding Rosegard as depicted in the map below. I drew the map with Inkarte which doesn’t really have sci-fi assets so it has a bit more of a fantasy feel but I whipped this up in about 30 minutes (mostly relearning the interface as I haven’t used it in years). I then added the annotations in GIMP.

This is the referee version of the map with all the relevant locations marked. Click the image for a full sized version. There is a player version with none of the annotations as well.

The sathar dome is the natural place to start and the villagers can give exact coordinates for its location. It’s about 10 km from the village. The PCs can either walk there (a couple of hours) or have the aircar(s) drop them off (a few minutes). The dome itself is a light-weight, fiberglass pole frame, with a cloth covering. It looks like it was once naturally camouflaged but the grasses and such on it have died and it now stands out against the terrain. It is very light-weight and is about 3 meters in diameter. It is staked down to prevent blowing away but lifting it up reveals that there is nothing under it.

The terrain north of the sathar dome. Click for larger image.

Alyssa’s tracks are easy to find and the PCs can start tracking her north. The terrain is very wild and untouched as only the villagers occasionally come up here. There are small game trails in places and Alyssa seems to be following them and making for the small creeks running through the valley. She’s not trying to hide her tracks so they are relatively easy to follow as the paths have pockets of sand where the tracks are very visible. The waterways are 1-2 meters wide and at most a few tens of centimeters deep. They flow north to south on the map (into the valley from the canyons and then down out the bottom of the map).

Some time after the PCs leave the sathar dome, but before the reach the creek, they will encounter a young sathodragon. As they come up over a rise, it will be on another rise about 150-200 meters away. The sathodragon will see them and rush to attack. If it drops below 50 STA, it will try to retreat and escape.

Shortly after they cross the creeks for the first time, Alyssa’s tracks will be joined by those of two nuks. This will continue until they find her campsite and the destroyed tent with lots of nuk tracks around. As they follow her tracks from the campsite, the nuk tracks will continue to follow her prints.

A bit further on, she seems to become aware of the nuks behind her and the tracks indicate that she’s moving faster and at one point, as the path goes right along the edge of the creek, they vanish. She jumped sideways into the water and then went 20-30 meters upstream in the water before emerging. The nuk tracks are confused at this point but they eventually found her tracks upstream and continued to follow her.

Sometime after the campsite but before the PCs reach the cave entrance, they have an encounter with a pair of Pale mountain lions. On is waiting in ambush near the path and the other is another 20-30 meters up the mountain waiting to pounce as well. If either is reduced to less than half stamina, they will both retreat and try to flee.

Fighting the nuks

Eventually the PCs will arrive at the entrance to the cave. The two nuks are milling around here still not having given up the pursuit even though it’s been nearly 20 hours. When they see the PCs they will immediately rush to attack and will continue attacking until killed.

Exploring the cave

With the nuks dispatched, the PCs are now free to enter the cave. It should be obvious from the lack of tracks leading away and the fact that the nuks were hanging around trying to get up the slope, that Alyssa went in.

I based the cavern roughly on Carlsbad Caverns in Carlsbad, New Mexico. I downloaded a map of the Carlsbad Caverns and then modified it slightly for use in the game. The original map can be found here. Below is the map I used for the game with the relevant locations marked. I took some liberties with the elevations but otherwise used the map as is. If you’ve never been to Carlsbad, you have a long steep decent into the main cave. It’s fairly open in real life, and I closed it up in the adventure, but the blue path is the switchback path you take to get down to the bottom as it is very steep going straight down.

The map of the cave system. Click for full sized image.

As the PCs are exploring, remember that the only light they have is what they brought with them. They are not going to have large vistas and in some cases may not be able to see the other end of the cave.

If they are calling out as they explore, Alyssa will respond when they are by the cave-in location. There is a small opening, about 15-20 cm in diameter that they can look through and see her once she comes over to it. They will not be able to move the rocks as several of them are quite large (read tons). They can move some but not make the opening any bigger. Given time and effort, a dralasite without any gear could squeeze through the opening to get to her but she still can’t get out.

Alyssa will explain to the PCs about what happened and tell them about what looks like an exit at the top of the cliff on the other side of the room she is in. She hasn’t explored the large room in the upper left of the map yet as she will have just woken up when the PCs arrive.

Eventually, the PCs will find a way to the cliff face and can get her out. It’s 15-20 meters down and an overhang above the room floor where Alyssa is located. They will need to figure out a way to get down to her and get her back up (hopefully they brought rope).

Returning home

With Alyssa safe, the PCs just need to get back to Rosegard with her. If they think of it, they can simply call for the aircar(s) to pick them up. If they think to do this, the aircars will arrive in about 15 minutes and there is enough room for one to land at a time and load them up.

If they decide to hike back, they will have an encounter with either a quickdeath (from the AD rules) or a pack of lesser quickdeath. It’s up to you based on the abilities and strengths of the party. Obviously, their main objective should be to protect Alyssa. The quickdeaths will retreat if severely wounded or if one of the pack is killed.

Once returned, the village and family will be quite thankful. Alyssa will get a serious scolding from her parents. If the PCs wish to stay for the evening, there will be an impromptu celebration party in their honor. Several of the Streel mine employees, including Talnor, will come down for this. Talnor will also give Alyssa a talking to which she will appear to take more seriously than the warning from her parents. While a bit shaken by her ordeal, the resiliency of youth will quickly kick in erasing the worst of teh adventure and her natural xenophilia will kick in. She will spend a good portion of the party trying to talk to any of the non-human PCs and find out more about them, where they are from, etc.

Rewards

The PCs will get the 20cr of their pay and the 100cr each for returning Alyssa. In addition, there is a 250cr bounty on each nuk that they can split between the group. If they managed to kill the young sathodragon, that is worth another 1000cr to split between the PCs. Finally, if they managed to kill any quickdeaths, those carry a bounty of 2000cr each.

Of course they need documented proof to claim the rewards. Photographs of the corpses (taken with their chronocoms) will suffice. If they don’t have any documentation, the villagers are willing to send someone up to the locations the PCs give them to get pictures for them. GTF will give them the money immediately even though it will take a few days for the Pale government to issue the reward, which will then just go straight to GTF.

Additionally, the PCs should receive 1-3 XP for the adventure depending on how well they did.

How It Played Out

When I ran this, we had three PCs: Dhuggo (dralasite), Arzdran Garvox (yazirian), and Joey Rufus (humma). They picked up some weapons and gear at GTF HQ and headed out.

After meeting with the parents, they also talked with Alyssa’s friends that had been in the woods with her. After stern words from Joey to Alyssa’s folks about their parenting techniques, the team head up to the dome where they picked up Alyssa’s trail and started off. None of the PCs actually had a tracking skill but two of them had Scout as a secondary skill area so they only had minor penalties since the trail was easy to follow.

The fight with the sathodragon went fairly quickly, Joey used his jumping ability to good effect to get behind it and keep it at a distance while Arzdran and Dhuggo fired on it with their lasers. Wounded, the sathodragon fled into the trees and escaped leaving a trail of blood. The sathodragon didn’t do too well only scoring a single hit on Joey. Joey applied first aid to himself (he’s the medic) and was nearly back to full STA. They marked the spot and continued on. The idea was that if Alyssa’s trail ended and looked like the sathodragon had gotten her, they would come back and track it to its lair to try to find her body.

Continuing to follow Alyssa’s trail they found the nuk tracks and the destroyed tent. Getting a bit worried, they hustled on. Luckily, Joey made a INT roll and noticed the closer mountain lion waiting in ambush for them. Again employing his jumping racial ability, he sprung over the lurking cat landing a few meters beyond it and unloading into it with his laser rifle. Then he notice the one further up the mountain beyond him. He was now between them with his teammates some 20 meters away. However, startled by his jump, and wounded by the laser fire from Joey and Arzdran, the mountain lions decided this was too much work and bounded off, leaving the PCs alone.

The fight with the nuks didn’t go as well. As the creatures rushed the PCs, Arzdran got a shot off wounding one. Joey jumped over them again to the base of the slope up to the cave entrance. The wounded one went after Dhuggo (wielding his nightstick) and the other one turned around to go after Joey. The PCs were doing well, severely injuring the one attacking Dhuggo, but then Dhuggo got a little cocky and started showing off (the player said he started pointing to the mountains, Babe Ruth style, before making his attack) and missed horribly (rolled a 97). The nuk on the other hand didn’t miss and took a bite out of his arm. They managed to finish off the nuks but Dhuggo took a total of 30 STA damage and Joey was wounded a bit more.

As Arzdran examined the cave entrance and kept watch, Joey did a bit of rough field surgery getting Dhuggo patched up and back on his feet.

They then entered the cave and decided to go left once they got to the cave floor. So they almost immediately found the cave-in. Having been calling for Alyssa, she responded to them and they were able to talk to her through the rockfall. She told them about the cliff on the other side of the room she was in. As Joey and Arzdran set off further into the cave complex to try to find a route to her, Dhuggo passed Alyssa all his gear through the small opening and started squeezing his way through.

After taking some twists and turns the others found their way to the top of the cliff where they could see Dhuggo sitting and talking to Alyssa down below. Using rope they brought with them (they had asked about climbing gear back at the GTF HQ and I had told them they shouldn’t need it so I retconed them having it since the reason they didn’t have it was my fault), they hauled Alyssa and Dhuggo up and made their way back to the cave entrance where they called the aircar to come pick them up. It was a little tight with five in a vehicle built for four but Dhuggo and Alyssa were both small and so they made it work.

Getting back to the village, they learned about the bounty on the sathar creatures and one of the villagers offered to go back to where the nuks were to get pictures as proof. They stuck around for the impromptu celebration and the after a while, with a few hours to kill before the day was over and they needed to head back, had the aircar drive fly them up to where they had the fight with the young sathodragon.

Tracking it back to it’s lair, they tossed in a couple of doze grenades which knocked it out completely. They tied it up and called back to HQ to ask if they wanted the thing alive. Receiving an affirmative, they were told that a flying transport truck would be there in an hour to collect it and to hang tight. In the mean time the doze gas wore off and the creature struggled to get free but they had done a good job with the knots (I believe someone rolled a 01) and in its weakened state it couldn’t escape. Joey injected it with a StayDose to try to knock it out which seemed to work. Securing it in the bed of the airtruck when it arrived, they followed the truck back for a while to make sure everything was good an then flew ahead to base to get back home.

All told it took us about 3 hours to play through this.

Thoughts

That’s the adventure and how it played out. I’m still working on getting the audio and video of the game session on-line. So at some point in the future, you’ll be able to listen (or watch) how it ran.

What I’d be interested in is what you think about the information presented for running the adventure. How was the format? Would it be helpful to me organized differently? If you were running this, is there information you would want that wasn’t there? Are there details missing? On the flip side, did I include too much in places? Is there anything too constraining?

Tell me what you think and how I could improve these write-ups in the comments below.

A Module Based Campaign – final

I can’t believe it’s been three months since I last looked at this. I’ve really been distracted by the 3D modeling and miniature creation project. I’m not quite done with the battleship miniature so that will have to wait another week (or more, it’s taking longer than I expected). With this post we are going to cover all the remaining modules and wrap up the module based campaign.

When we last left our intrepid adventurers, they had either just returned from Alcazzar or finished up some other mission for CDC and had arrived in the White Light system, probably on Clarion station. They have shiny new level 1 spaceship skills and are hopefully itching to start using them. It’s time to recruit them into the Clarion Royal Marines!

Warriors of White Light

The cover of this module was a map for the Second Sathar War game from the Campaign Book.

SFKH0: Warriors of White Light is the first of the Knight Hawks modules that incorporates both the Alpha Dawn and Knight Hawks skills and includes bits of the spaceship combat game as part of the play.

The module is designed to give the characters experience with various aspects of the Knight Hawks rules including ship combat, zero-g and space suit operations, and a chance to battle the sathar once again.

The module includes five mini adventures that are designed to be interspersed between descriptions of routine patrol and inspection duty. The first is just a routine inspections where they discover weapons to being smuggled to anti-crown forces on the surface of Clarion. The second presents a ship controlled by a mad cybot that hit hurling toward Clarion station. The third is a raid on a pirate base in the system. The fourth encounter has the PCs pitted against a sathar boarding force that is trying to capture their ship. The final encounter is a boardgame scenario where the milita battle a sathar raid.

I’d play this module as presented. As the Referee you have to add in a few more routine encounters that don’t really go anyway to help make the scenarios presented stand out but you don’t want to spend too much time on it, just enough to that the players appreciate the excitement.

By the end of the module, the PCs will have earned between 15-30 XP. I’ll be giving the sample characters 25. Unless the preform poorly, this is enough for all of them to have level 2 skills by the time they play the scenario with the sathar boarding force. By the end of the module, they should have all achieved level 2 in their spaceship skills and the gunners may even be at level 3.

The Question of What is Next

Until this morning, I would have said Dramune Run (SFKH1). It is the next module in the series and we’ve been playing them mostly in order so that makes logical sense. But as I was thinking about writing this post, I realized that that might not be the best order. So we’ll start by looking at what to do if you do want to run Dramune Run next and they I’ll discuss the alternate option that I’ll be using.

If you want to run Dramune Run as the next module, you’ll need to add in a few more adventures between the end of the Warriors of White Light (WoWL) module and Dramune Run. In that module, the PCs will be flying a hull size 6 ship, which requires at least a level 3 Pilot skill and our pilot PC is only level 2. They probably need about 15-30 more XP to get there (My sample PC, Dolnab, needs 20 more after WoWL).

There are plenty of options here. You could run more adventures like those presented in the WoWL module. The main thing here would be to come up with some new scenarios and not just reuse the same ideas. White Light and Clarion have been favorite topics of the authors in the Frontier Explorer fanzine and we’ve even been running a “Warriors of White Light 2.0” series in the magazine (starting in issue 22). You could mine these for ideas of adventures on Clarion station (issue 23), in the White Light system (issue 23), and even one that involves the freighter from the first encounter that takes them across the Frontier to Cassidine and back (issue 24). We took a bit of hiatus from the series in issues 25 & 26 but there are still some articles in the queue so you can expect more to come. These adventures and ideas should get the PCs up to a level 3 pilot skill and then they are ready to tackle the Dramune Run.

However, as I was thinking about this, I felt that there was a better way to run the modules. In addition to requiring a few more adventures to get the PCs ready for the Dramune Run module, the module ends with them owning a ship. At that point, it’s pretty hard to get the PCs to not just want to go off adventuring in their ship and the remaining modules are not really conductive to that. Instead, let’s save the Dramune Run for the climax of the campaign and start by going a different direction.

Beyond the Frontier

The last three Star Frontiers modules published by TSR comprise the Beyond the Frontier series. The modules are:

SFKH2: Mutiny on the Eleanor Moraes
SFKH3: Face of the Enemy
SFKH4: The War Machine

Much like the Volturnus series of Alpha Dawn adventures, these modules take the characters to new worlds to meet new races and confront the sathar, just on a larger scale.

The advantage of going with these modules before Dramune Run is that they make a nice progression from a power level perspective and the PCs can actually be assigned to the mission as part of their commission in the Clarion Royal Marines. It can just be their next assignment.

From a power perspective, the PCs only need a level 2 piloting skill to be the backup pilot on the UPFS Eleanor Moraes, a HS 3 exploration vessel. If anything, the PCs are going to be better skilled than the pre-gens provided with the module. They can start right away without any intermediate adventures needed. And participation in these adventures will give them more than enough experience to be at the correct level for the Dramune Run.

The PCs will be part of the Frontier Expeditionary Force (I should make a patch for that organization) which is composed of civilians and Spacefleet members. It’s completely reasonable that the government of Clarion, which has a high standing in the Council of Worlds, would volunteer some of its decorated Royal Marines to be part of the endeavor. Pushing the boundaries of the Frontier helps to ensure the security of their world. The PCs are a natural choice given their recent experiences in the WoWL module’s scenarios.

Again, these modules can be run as presented. I’m going just discuss them briefly to summarize what happens and the XP gained.

SFKH2: Mutiny on the Eleanor Moraes

This module starts of the series with the PCs out exploring the world of Mahg Mar in the Waller Nexus system when the First Officer, Bill Terry, mutinies, takes control of the ship, and destroys their exploration airship. It is up to the PCs to traverse the wilderness between them and recapture the Eleanor Moraes before Terry destroys it and kills the remaining crew.

This adventure requires a wide mix of skills and will give the PCs a chance to use some of the environmentalist skills developed back on Volturnus (and hopefully improved upon on some of the intervening adventures). It also requires use of their technological skill and weapons skills and, due to the rough trip back to the ship, gives the medic a chance to shine as well.

Hopefully the PCs recapture the ship intact but regardless, when the call goes out about the events on the planet, they learn that their old ship, the CMS Osprey, is being dispatched to assist and will arrive in a few weeks with supplies and repair materials. They just have to hold out until then.

This modules gives out 6-18 XP depending on how the PCs perform in their trek back to the ship and in the capture of the ship itself. I’ll be awarding our sample characters 15 XP.

SFKH3: The Face of the Enemy

This module also takes place on Mahg Mar, after the Osprey arrives but before the repairs to the Eleanor Moraes are complete. In this adventure the PCs once again make contact with a native intelligent race on the planet, something they have had a lot of practice with throughout the campaign (Volturnus, Starmist, and Alcazzar). Along the way they discover evidence of sathar presence on the planet and capture a small, hull size 2 sathar scout ship. The climax of the adventure is a Void jump to a new system (FS30) and a raid on a modified sathar assault carrier and the chance to capture sathar prisoners and the assault carrier itself.

The module awards 5-17 XP depending on how the PCs do. I’ll be awarding our team 14 points for this adventure. They’ve now earned enough XP to increase their Knight Hawks skills even more as well as possibly increase some of their other skills. With the sathar ship captured, they are ready to take on the final part of the series.

SFKH4: The War Machine

In the War Machine, the PCs are going to make contact with the technological race native to the FS30 system and hopefully drive the sathar from the system, capturing or destroying the sathar starship construction center based in the system.

This module involves both character and ship action as well as diplomacy and problem solving. After fighting off a small squadron of sathar fighters, the PCs are contacted by the native race in the system to arrange a meeting. While the team has had several first contact scenarios, this one is unique in that the species being contacted has active interplanetary spaceflight capabilities. After making contact they proceed to the planet’s surface and attack a sathar processing plant. After that they mount an attack on the sathar ships and shipyard. If successful, the Mhemne (the native race) are liberated and the sathar facilities are destroyed along with several sathar ships, reducing their combat capacity in the upcoming (or possibly on-going) Second Sathar War. The system is renamed the Liberty system (the module doesn’t say what the Mhemne’s name for it was) and the PCs are hailed as liberators and heros.

This module awards from 9 to 26 XP based on performance but if the PC’s are performing down near the 9 XP level, they may not succeed as they are making a lot of mistakes and losing valuable resources. We’ll give then 22 XP for this module.

Back to the Frontier

That end the Beyond the Frontier series of adventures. By the time it’s all over, the PCs have been gone for several months. Upon their return to Clarion, they can collect their back pay which should be a considerable amount of cash. It’s now time for the final adventure in the module campaign,

The Dramune Run

At this point the PCs have level 3 spaceship skills and reputations as heroes and outstanding members of the Clarion Royal Marines in addition to their other exploits across the Frontier. Just the type of people Garlus Tylappar needs to help him.

The initial encounter of this adventure can occur at any point after the PCs are back on Clarion station. They’ll probably be given a few days to a few weeks of leave after returning from the Liberty system. Garlus should approach them during this down time to make his pitch. He should lean on their reputations and show a knowledge of their exploits in making his case (but nothing that would not be known through public media).

This module also just plays out as written. The PCs will help get the Gullwind repaired and into space. They will fight off pirates on the way to Dramune and then be captured and escape from Darkworld station rescuing the Chukkahs and exposing the Malthar’s plans.

The XP awards for this module range from 20 to 43 with a possible 5 XP for the astrogator and up to 120 XP divided by the number of PCs for rescuing Chukkahs. I’ll be awarding our team a total of 48 XP each.

The End

And that wraps up the module campaign. The PCs now have a ship, and after the Beyond the Frontier series, a reasonably large chunk of cash to get them started. If they want to continuing adventuring or take up the life of merchants you can extend the campaign for as long as you want.

The Final Characters

These are the final skill levels of the characters at the end of Dramune Run.

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: 288/299

PSA – Technological

Skills: Technician 6, Robotics 5, Computer 3, Beam 3, Melee 3, Engineer 3

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: 282/299

PSA – Bio-social

Skills: Medic 5, Environmental 4, Projectile 5, Psycho-social 3, Melee 2, Gyrojet 2, Beam 2, Rocket Weapons 3

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.

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: 264/299

PSA – Techological

Skills: Technician 6, Computer 3, Robotics 3, Projectile 3, Melee 3, Demolitions 1, Beam 1, Pilot 3

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: 294/299

PSA – Military

Skills: Beam 6, Melee 6, Environmental 2, Thrown 4, Martial Arts 4, Medic 2, Projectile 3, Energy Weapons 3

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: 284/299

PSA – Military

Skills: Gyrojet 6, Martial Arts 4, Projectile 4, Technician 2, Melee 6, Thrown 3, Beam 2, Rocket Weapons 3

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: 280/299

PSA – Technological

Skills: Computer 6, Robotics 5, Beam 3, Melee 2, Technician 2, Astrogation 3

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.

Final Thoughts

I don’t really have much to add. What are your thoughts and ideas on the way the campaign was laid out? Feel free to comment below.

Asset Recovery – Project Outline

It’s been kind of a crazy week for me and while I’ve been working on things behind the scenes, between travel for work and getting caught back up once I got home, I haven’t had a lot of free time. Plus I’ve been in a fiction-writing mood and while I’ve broken the 50k word mark on my manuscript, I don’t really want to post anything from this very rough draft.

So today I’m going to post a new project overview for another adventure. This is another one that I’ve actually run before, at least partially, but this version will be a bit more fleshed out. Some of the bits and pieces are already online, like the Ship Dock Crew Lounge I posted last week, which was originally designed as a location this adventure. So let’s dive into this.

Asset Recovery

Project Tag: Asset Recovery

Level

An adventure for 4-6 moderately advanced Star Frontiers characters with level 2-3 Knight Hawks skills. One of the PC’s should be a level 3 pilot in order to fly the ship in the adventure.

The adventure is designed for a single session and was originally run as part of an on-line con back in 2012. This version is slightly expanded.

Premise

The PCs work for the Cassidine Development Corporation (CDC) as troubleshooters that are assigned missions to solve problems for the corporation around the Frontier. A starship prototype, which vanished six months ago, has suddenly turned up under a new name. The PCs are assigned to recover it for CDC and return it to Triad in the Cassidine system

Basic Story

The CDCSS Nightwind is a prototype, para-military freighter that finished completion six months ago at the CDC shipyards orbiting Triad. On its maiden voyage and shakedown cruise, the ship supposedly misjumped on it’s way to Prenglar and disappeared. Now six months later, it has reappeared in the Theseus system registered as the Timeon Star Ship (TSS) Stargift.

The misjump to Prenglar wasn’t a misjump at all but a calculated jump by the astrogator to take the ship astray. Together with the chief engineer, and one of the gunners, they took control of the ship with the help of a pirate vessel at the end of the jump. The three original crew members are listed as the ship’s owners under pseudonyms and the ship is listed as found in the Timeon system and claimed under salvage laws. The Nightwind’s current crew have loaded a shipment of air cars and are awaiting several cargo units worth of StarPlay robots for delivery to the K’sta-Kar system.

The PCs will need to determine if the ship is legitimately salvage or not (it isn’t) gain access to and control of the ship, and successfully return it to the Cassidine system. There is another ship (an East Indiaman Freighter) in the system allied with the Nightwind’s current crew, as well as those that might help the PCs. If they get control of the ship, there will be a pirate ambush waiting for them on the route back to Cassidine.

One of the features of this adventure, in a nod to long time Star Frontiers players, is that one of the ships currently docked at Minotaur Station is the IRSS Gullwind, before the Dramune Run module. This crew and ship are potential allies of the PCs. The Gullwind and the East Indiaman are docked in adjacent berths with the Nightwind (sharing the same crew lounge area).

The two main parts of the adventure are figuring out how to get onboard the Nightwind and then a mini dungeon crawl with the PCs traversing the various decks of the Nightwind trying to capture/incapacitate the crew and take control of the ship while being opposed by the crew and security robots.

Materials Needed for the Adventure

Deck Plans for the Nightwind – these were published many moons ago in issue one of the Frontier Explorer.
Crew Stats
- Original Nightwind crew (dossiers provided to the PCs by CDC)
- Current Stargift crew (to be determined by the PCs)
- East Indiaman crew (allies to the Stargift crew)
- Gullwind crew (potential allies to the PCs)
Details and stats for the shipment of robots being taken on by the Stargift.
Stats for StarPlay contact about the robots
Stats for contact about aircar shipment
Stats and reaction notes for station security
Map of public observation area
Map of dock lounge area – This was last week’s post
Some basic responses to possible player options for getting on the Nightwind.
Stats for Knight Hawks encounter (optional) on the trip back to Cassidine.

Last Thoughts

I have scattered notes for a lot of the pieces of this adventure in notebooks and digital files. Part of the purpose of this project is to get it all collected into a single cohesive form. I already have the beginnings of an adventure outline and I’ll be fleshing that out and posting bits in the months to come.

I ran this as part of an on-line con many years ago and due to some technical difficulties getting started, we ran out of time and the team only got as far as getting onto the ship. But fun was had. I’d like to run this again and so there may be an opportunity for a one-shot on-line session in the coming months and my ultimate goal is actually go to a gaming convention and running this there. I’m looking at Gary Con in 2020 in Lake Geneva, or maybe ORCCON 2020 in LA. Although I may have to wait to go to a con later in the year as ORCCON is just before my birthday and Gary Con is just before a potential work trip to South Africa. We’ll see how it goes.

I also already have a 3D model of this ship. The model was made directly from the deck plans published in the Frontier Explorer so it matches the irregular deck structure exactly as detailed. It’s even one of the few minis I’ve actually painted (although I can’t seem to find it at the moment, my boys have probably made off with it).

A Module Based Campaign – part 4

Okay, I didn’t get nearly as much done on my trip as I hoped. I should know by now (after doing these for over 15 years) that attending a conference sucks way more energy out of me than I expect. That and I had something come up that took up a bunch of my free time. I did get to play cricket for the first time though. That was fun and the Australians got a good laugh at us Americans messing up all the time.

I had hoped to get the map done and posted this week and while I made some progress on it. Working on it in the airports and on the plane was not as efficient as I had hoped. So this week we’re going to continue with the module based campaign series. We’ll finish the Alpha Dawn adventures and when we’re finished the PCs will have their starting starship skills and be ready for the Knight Hawks adventures.

Where are we at?

I have two goals for this part of the campaign. The first is to get the PCs to level on spaceship skills. The second is to start building them a nest egg of cash that they can use when the get a ship as running and maintaining a ship can be expensive.

When we left off in the last post, the PCs had just foiled Jack Legrange’s plan to kill all the Vrusk on Kraatar and had been given a free ticket to either the Theseus or White Light system. This is where we pick up.

Upon arrival, the PCs will be at loose ends and looking for employment or some other form of adventure. While the last adventure was XP heavy, it didn’t come with a lot of cash since their original employer was killed early on. After they’ve had a day or two to bum around the station, they are approached by representatives of the Cassidine Development Corporation.

They have heard about the PCs exploits on Kraatar and looking into their background their accomplishment in some of the other adventures as well. The offer from CDC will depend on the PC’s experience level. If the PCs need a bit more XP to get to the point that they have all the prerequisite skills they need to acquire spaceship skills, the pitch will be to work as troubleshooters for CDC helping them solve problems in often remote parts of the Frontier.

If, on the other hand, the PCs already have all the prerequisite levels for starship skills, the Referee could go right into the pitch for SF4: Mission to Alcazzar explaining that they had lost contact with their base on Alcazzar and want to hire the PCs to go find out what is going on.

Laying the Groundwork

Let’s assume the PCs aren’t quite there yet, they need a few more XP to round out their skills and make the jump into the life of a spacer. The exact adventures are up to the referee but I’d use two design principles in setting them up.

First, they should be relatively remote. Or at least on sparsely populated worlds, New Pale instead of Pale, Morgaine’s World instead of Gran Quivera, Groth, Lossend, or either planet in the Scree Fron system. Remember that CDC works in developing new areas and tends to be on the edge of civilization.

This has some advantages for the PCs. One is that the travel times involved can be long. That means that they are bringing in a paycheck without having to do much work. The other is that since they are operating on the edges of civilization, there isn’t as much oversight or direct control. They are on their own to use their own discretion. Of course the downside is that they are potentially far from backup and resupply.

Second, they should come into direct conflict with agents of Streel and have heartaches and headaches because of it. I want to set them up do be ready to go after Streel in both Mission to Alcazzar and in the following Warriors of White Light adventures.

The Intermediate Adventures

Given the state of our PCs in this thread, they are basically ready to start getting their starship skills but I want to give them one more adventure before Mission to Alcazzar.

To that end I might have CDC discover something unique and valuable on Histran in the Scree Fron System. Maybe it’s something similar to items found on Volturnus, or maybe some manifestation of the matrix virus from Bugs in the System. Or it could just be that it’s another adventure with the Jurak Hangna Foundation and CDC is leveraging the PCs’ existing relationship. What it is, it should be something that leverages the PCs background and warrants shipping them all the way across the Frontier. Or if you don’t want to stretch that far, make it something on Lossend in the Timeon system. They are right in that neck of the woods so it’s not that far a trip.

Either way, they should be in a race against teams from other rival mega-corps, especially Streel, for whatever the prize is. They are not in the Truane’s Star system so Streel probably won’t be playing nice. The point is to make the conflict between Streel and CDC personal for the PCs.

For our PC’s I’d make this about a 15 XP adventure, whatever it ends up being. If your PCs need more XP, you can make it a bigger adventure or a series of smaller ones to get them where you want them.

Mission to Alcazzar

I would have this come to the PCs either right as they are finishing some assignment, or if they have been doing several assignments for CDC, I’d have them get pulled off a project they are currently working on. If possible, I prefer the latter as it emphasizes the importance of this assignment to the Company.

Regardless, they are bundled up and shipped off. Depending on where they are at with their other adventures, they will be headed to Prenglar or White Light to make the jump to Alcazzar. Along the way they will be briefed and allowed to provision for the adventure.

Run the adventure as written. The beginning might be a little different if the PCs have been working for CDC but if they are picked up directly to solve the problem on Alcazzar, you can play it directly out of the module. Regardless, they are on a double pay rate so this will help to earn them some extra cash.

This module doesn’t give an expected amount of XP to be earned (or if it does, I missed it in skimming back over it). However, based on the encounters, I’d award up to 6 XP at the CDC compound, 3XP for the journey to the Streel compound, up to 6 XP for successful interactions with the Lokkuku, and 3 XP for taking out the Streel compound successfully. That gives up to 18 XP, similar to other modules. We just need to get them enough to by the Knight Hawks skills.

Aftermath

The PCs should definitely be given the stock option offer. If they don’t choose to buy their spaceship skills with the XP earned, you could run them on more adventures for CDC to get them a bit more XP. If you take this option, I’d heavily weight the adventures to events involving starships to get the PCs thinking in that direction. Possibly even have their CDC contact recommend they get those skills. Once they do have the spaceship skills, however, I’d have whatever adventure they finish deposit them in White Light.

The Characters

From this portion of the campaign the PCs have netted 33 more XP. They’ve used them to lean all the necessary prerequisites and have each learned their first level 1 starship skill. Here is where they now stand.

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: 164/175

PSA – Technological

Skills: Technician 4, Robotics 5, Computer 2, Beam 3, Melee 2, Engineer 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: 154/172

PSA – Bio-social

Skills: Medic 4, Environmental 3, Projectile 4, Psycho-social 2, Melee 1, Gyrojet 2, Rocket Weapons 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: 160/175

PSA – Techological

Skills: Technician 6, Computer 2, Robotics 1, Projectile 3, Melee 2, Demolitions 1, Pilot 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: 156/175

PSA – Military

Skills: Beam 6, Melee 4, Environmental 1, Thrown 3, Martial Arts 2, Medic 1, Projectile 3, Energy Weapons 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: 135/142

PSA – Military

Skills: Gyrojet 5, Martial Arts 4, Projectile 4, Technician 2, Melee 3, Thrown 3, Rocket Weapons 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: 142/142

PSA – Technological

Skills: Computer 6, Robotics 3, Beam 3, Melee 2, Technician 1, Astrogation 1

Notes:

A Module Based Campaign – part 3

We’re back to the campaign outline. I can’t believe it’s been over two months since I posted about this but the map project did suck up most of my time. This post will cover the two UK produced modules, SFAD5: Bugs in the System, and SFAD6: Dark Side of the Moon. If you need to catch up, you can read part one and part two by following the links.

These two modules, unlike the first four, have the AD designation as they were published after the release of the Knight Hawks expansion and related modules that carried the KH designation. The AD specification let us know you didn’t need Knight Hawks skill to play the module which is good, as our intrepid adventurers don’t have any yet.

We’ve skipped over SF4: Mission to Alcazzar as I like to do that one last. I’ll cover that one in part four of this series and explain why. It’s really a toss up between doing SF4 or SFAD6 last, and in some ways might make sense to run SFAD6 as the final Alpha Dawn module but I think Mission to Alcazzar makes for an easier transition to the Knight Hawks modules. In any case, let’s look at the next steps of the campaign.

Getting Started

Just like it took a little bit of work to get the PCs in position for Sundown on Starmist, the same is true for Bugs in the System. At least if you keep the Belnafaer system in the position indicated by the module itself. You are always welcome to move it where ever you want in your game.

Here’s where Zeb’s Guide and the module puts the system. And I just realized I misspelled the system name on my Extended Frontier Map. Now I need to go fix that.

The module says to put Belnafaer in one of the single star systems between Scree Fron, Truane’s Star, and Athor. I had originally put it in the system labeled FS22 but the Zeb’s Guide map put it straight out from Scree Fron and there wasn’t really any reason not to use that location so that’s where I put it on my final map.

The problem is that, just like before Sundown on Starmist, the PCs are all the way on the other side of the Frontier from where the adventure is supposed to take place. It might actually be easier to put this module before Sundown on Starmist. That way, they are at least in Truane’s Star. You still have to come with a reason for them to be headed to Scree Fron and back so as to take this route but the distance isn’t as great. Then you only have to get them over to the right side of the map once as the rest of the adventures take place in that part of the map.

Running this today, I’d use the Jurak Hangna Foundation, a character and institution created by Eric Winsor for the Frontier Explorer. Jurak runs an botanical and zoological preserve on Hosakar in the Scree Fron system. Whether they are leaving Volturnus or Starmist, I’d have them contacted by the Foundation requesting them to either transport some fauna from that world to the preserve, or maybe the Foundation had already acquired some and wanted their expert advice about it. In either case, the would have reason to travel to and from Scree Fron and layover in the Belnafaer system thus kicking off the adventure. I would have the adventure occur as they are returning from Scree Fron. Their time in the Scree Fron system should be a short adventure netting them an additional 3XP for their time.

Running Bugs in the System

I just want to say that I love the way the computer systems were set up in this module. It something I want to emulate in adventures I put together in the future and something I need to look more closely at as I haven’t actually read the module all the way through in a couple of decades.

Running the module is fairly straightforward. The PCs receive the job offer and go off to investigate the cause of the problems and effect the repairs needed. Over the course of their time on the Jetsom platform, and their return to the Moneyspider, they discover and hopefully defeat the virus that is causing the problems.

According to the module, the PCs should receive between 15 and 27 XP for the adventure with 21 being average. I’m going to award them 24XP for succeeding in solving the mystery and preventing the virus from leaving the system.

The Dark Side of the Moon

Once again we need to get the PCs across the Frontier as Kraatar is over on the right side of the map and Zeb’s Guide gives it a jump route from Theseus. This can be partially alleviated is you just have them take a longer trip on the spacecraft. While the module makes it sound like the trip is fairly short, you could have the PCs recruited in Prenglar, an appropriate place for the award to be presented, and the trip to Kraatar could take several weeks. Or you could come up with some middle small adventure to get them in the general vicinity of Theseus. And if you ran Bugs in the System before Sundown on Starmist, they are either in White Light or K’sta-Kar and are fairly close by. At some point, they need to be recruited and on their way to Kraatar.

Otherwise, this module can just play out as presented. It definitely presents a darker side to the Frontier than the other modules but is a great adventure with lots of intrigue and action.

By the time the characters get to the climax on the moon, hopefully one of them has reached level 6 in their Technician skill so that they can fly the shuttle. If they are laser focused, it is possible by this point to have even achieved a level 1 skill in Piloting but that isn’t necessary. The AD rules specifically say that level 6 Technicians can fly shuttles.

This is a pretty long adventure with a lot of possible XP. The module itself explicitly lists 39XP available if they do everything exactly right. I’m going to award my characters 32 XP (Legrange manages to slip away and they weren’t perfectly successful in all the parts of the adventure). Also as part of the ending, they get a free ride to Theseus or White Light (their choice) as that is where I want them to be for the next stage of the adventure.

The Characters

So from these two adventures and the little side adventure along the way, the PCs have managed to pick up 59 more XP. That, plus the 13 from Sundown, gives them 72 XP that they’ve been spending along the way to increase their skills. Now seasoned adventurers, their skills stand as follows:

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: 136/142

PSA – Technological

Skills: Technician 4, Robotics 4, Computer 2, Beam 3, Melee 2

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: 130/142

PSA – Bio-social

Skills: Medic 4, Environmental 3, Projectile 3, Psycho-social 2, Melee 1, Gyrojet 2

Notes:

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: 138/142

PSA – Techological

Skills: Technician 6, Computer 2, Robotics 1, Projectile 3, 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: 137/142

PSA – Military

Skills: Beam 6, Melee 4, Environmental 1, Thrown 3, Martial Arts 2, Medic 1, Projectile 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: 135/142

PSA – Military

Skills: Gyrojet 5, Martial Arts 4, Projectile 4, Technician 2, Melee 2, Thrown 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: 142/142

PSA – Technological

Skills: Computer 6, Robotics 3, Beam 3, Melee 1

Notes:

The PCs are now right on the cusp of getting their Knight Hawks skills. While it’s possible that they might have gotten them already, I chose to spread the XP out a bit more. They will definitely pick them up after the next adventure.

In the next part we’ll finish up the Alpha Dawn modules and the PCs will be ready to start their careers as spacers.

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:

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:

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:

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:

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.

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.
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.
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.
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?