GODCo Bio-Lab

In the mountains, about five hours west of Navin’s Mill on Pale, the Greater Overall Development Corporation (GODCo) has a a semi-secret bio-lab. Everyone knows it there, or at least that it exists, if not its exact location, what is not known is exactly what type of research is done there.

And the truth isn’t all that exciting. As the Frontier’s preeminent terraforming company, GODCo has research labs all over the Frontier looking at adapting species, both flora and fauna, to the environments of the worlds inhabited by the Frontier races. And adapting the local flora and fauna for use by the Frontier races as well. This particular lab on Pale was looking at ways to better adapt some of the yaririan food crops to better live and thrive in Pale’s cooler climate with its yellower sun.

The secrecy around the bio-lab is institutional, not necessarily due to the work being done there. GODCo is always very secretive about its work as a way to avoid competition. Especially here on the Streel Corporation’s homeworld.

Location

Click for full-sized image

The lab is located in the mountains west of Navin’s Mill on Pale. Access is by paved roads and then a rough ground track (for the last 100 km). The total travel time from Navin’s Mill is about about five hours. While it’s possible to land an aircar at the facility, this form of access is rarely used.

The lab is built underground in the side of a mountain. Only a small structure is visible on the surface. This was done partially to take advantage of a geothermal power source discovered there, partially to make it easier to regulate the temperature in the labs, and partially to help maintain the secrecy of the lab by not having everything out in the open. The lab has been in operation for over 20 years.

Lab Staff

As part of GODCo’s veil of secrecy, all of the staff currently working at the lab live on-site. The non-science staff rotate in and out regularly while the scientists typically stay longer for the duration of there experimental work. The lab’s staff consists of:

  • Lab admin and assistant admin
  • 20 scientists
  • 8 security personnel
  • 2 power technicians
  • 2 roboticists
  • 2 computer technicians
  • 4 general technicians
  • 4 hospitality staff (cooks, recreation, etc)

In addition to the 44 staff members, there are 8 security, 12 maintenance, and 4 service robots at the facility.

Floor Plans

The lab itself consists of four levels. Except for the ground level, which is the only visible level on the surface, all of the levels are built into caverns that have been carved out of the mountain. The following sections give details on each level.

The various room descriptions are intentionally left fairly generic. Feel free to embellish or modify them to suit your game and campaign. Unless otherwise specified, all doors in the complex have level 1 locks that open to the staff ID badges.

Each of these maps are produce at 140 DPI, two squares to the inch with a scale of 1 meter per square. They should be able to be imported directly into your virtual table top of choice is you so desire.

Ground level

The only part of the complex visible on the surface, this level consists of the outer fence, a garage and storage facility, a security office, barracks for some of the security personnel, and an elevator and stairwell descending to the below-ground levels.

The contour lines on the following maps represent 1 meter elevation gains.

Exterior View

Exterior view. Click for full image. There is an unlabeled version as well.

This is the exterior view of the facility. The labeled items are:

  1. Access Road – This two meter wide access road is a gravel and pressed dirt road winding up the mountain.
  2. Wall and Gate – The wall surrounding the compound is 3 meters tall. The gate stands a little taller at 4 meters and can be opened (inward) to allow vehicular access.
  3. Garage – This garage is big enough to hold a ground truck for unloading when supplies are delivered (typically monthly). The roof here is 5 meters tall instead of the 4 meters of the rest of the building (the light gray area).
  4. Roof Access – This is a taller portion of the roof (total height 6 meters) that provides access to the roof from the stairwell below.
  5. Doors – Other than the garage, this is the only access into the building.
  6. Elevator Roof and Heavy Laser Mount – This is the roof of the elevator shaft. It extends an additional 4 meters above the lower roof and has a ladder to allow access. On top of this part of the building is a heavy laser that is connected to the complex’s power supply and computer.

Interior View

Interior view. Click for full sized version. There is also an unlabeled version.

This is the inside of the ground level of the complex. The labeled rooms and areas are described below:

  1. Access Road – as described above
  2. Wall and Gate – as described above
  3. Garage – Large enough for a ground transport, there are some tools and a parabattery recharging station here.
  4. Storage – This room is used as storage to unload arrive ground transport and hold supplies for which there isn’t room in the main underground facility. There will be a variety of lab and medical supplies, as well as food and housekeeping supplies in this room at any given time
  5. Hallway – This is the main hall of this level.
  6. Barracks – These are double bunk room for the four security personnel currently working on this level.
  7. Stairwell – This is long helical stairwell that descends to the lower levels of the complex. The stairs also extend up to the roof access (#4 in the exterior view). There are small landings every 10 meters of decent going down. Primarily used only in emergencies.
  8. Security Office – This is the security office for this level with a computer terminal as well as video feeds from external and internal cameras. This room has a level 2 lock.
  9. Elevator – This large elevator is the main mode of travel between the various levels of the complex. It is capable of holding up to 16 beings at once or carrying large freight or pieces of equipment. It travels 10 meters every 6 seconds.

Level 1 – Housing and Recreation

This level is located 20 meters below the surface. It extends deep into the mountain and houses all the housing, recreation, and office space of the facility along with things like the computer, tech shop, medical bays, and life support system.

Level 1. Click for full sized version. There is also a version without labels
  1. Elevator – This large elevator connects the various levels. It travels 10 meters every 6 seconds.
  2. Stairs – This is the stairwell that connects the levels of the complex.
  3. Security Office – This is the main security office for the entire complex. It has video feeds from security cameras on all levels of the complex as well as a computer terminal. This room has a level 2 lock.
  4. Administrator’s Office – This office is plushly decorated and has a small conference table and chairs in addition to the working desk. The desk contains reports of the work from the various labs as well as other administrative reports. This office has a level 3 lock.
  5. Tech/Robotics Shop – This is workshop for working on the complex’s computers, robots, and other mechanical items. It is well stocked and has high quality equipment. Any tech skill to work on machines, robots, or computers gains a +10% bonus when performed here.
  6. Storage – This room contains supplies and equipment for use in the repair shop.
  7. Main Computer – This room houses the main computer for the complex. There is an admin terminal here in the room. The room has a level 4 lock.
  8. Life Support Systems – This room houses the machinery that runs the life support system for this level and level 3. It contains water and air filtration and circulation systems.
  9. Garden – This room is filled with solar spectrum lamps and contains both hydroponic gardens growing food for the complex as well as just a relaxation garden with grass, flowers, and small shrubs.
  10. Offices – These rooms are offices for some of the higher ranked scientists. Each is decorated (and cluttered) according to the whims of the owner.
  11. Medical Bay Entrance – This small hallway provides access to the various rooms in the medical bay
  12. Operating Room – This room is a full surgical room. Any surgery skills performed here get a +10% bonus.
  13. Medical Office – This is the main office of the complex’s medical officer when they are not working down in the lab level.
  14. Exam Room – Typical doctor’s office exam room
  15. Sick Rooms – These two rooms are used to isolate sick members of the staff while they recover or away transport back to Navin’s Mill or Point True.
  16. Medical Storage – This room contains all the supplies needed by the medic for the exam room, sick rooms, and operating rooms. It contains the equivalent of 10 medkits plus any other supplies needed.
  17. Dining/Common Room – This room contains tables and chairs as well as a few couches and recliners There is a bay door/counter area between here and area 18 that can be opened for serving food in addition to the regular doors connecting the two areas.
  18. Kitchen – This is where all the food preparation is done
  19. Pantry – This is where most of the food for the complex is store. Part the room is a walk in freezer.
  20. Library – This room houses a collection of books as well as a computer terminal with access to the complex’s information storage program.
  21. Conference room – This room contains several tables and chairs. It also has a video screen for calls outside the facility as needed.
  22. Theater – This room is a large theater/lecture hall where the staff can watch movies or listen to presentations. Used for staff meetings and relaxation, the entire off-duty staff can fit in this room at once.
  23. Gym – This room contains a variety of mats and equipment for recreation.
  24. Sauna – This is a large sauna for use by the staff. Controls are in the wall by the door.
  25. Steam Room – Popular with the dralasite staff, this steam room allows for the addition of scents and other substances to be added to the steam system. Controls are by the door.
  26. Weight Room – This room contains a number of weights, weight machines and other exercise equipment for use by the staff.
  27. Restrooms/showers – Located throughout the facility, each of these rooms contains showers and lavatory facilities usable by the Frontier races.
  28. Cave/Running Track – Outside of the actual building, the residents have access to a running track that runs the perimeter of the cavern that the complex in built into. the floor has been smoothed and a track laid down but the walls and ceiling are still rough-hewn stone, although obviously cut and not natural. There is lighting along the entire length of the track.
  29. Living Quarters – These rooms are the living quarters for all of the staff. Each contains a bed, sofa, table and chairs. While the layout of each room is basically the same, each is decorated according to the taste of the tenant.
  30. Robot Storage – This is where the robots that work on this level and the ground level in the facility are kept when they are not working. It contains small bays for each robot that contain the recharging stations.
  31. Assistant Administrator Apartment – This is a luxury apartment for the assistant admin. It has it’s own private bathroom. This room has a level 2 lock.
  32. Administrator’s Apartment – This very luxurious apartment belongs to the administrator of the facility. It has it’s own private bath as part of the suite. This room has a level 3 lock.

Level 2 – Labs

This level houses the labs where the actual work of the facility is done. It is located an additional 50 meters below level 1. There are a total of ten labs on the level. The entire lab area is accessed through a series of decontamination chambers and then each lab is accessed through a separate airlock.

Level 2. Click for full sized version. There is also a version without labels.
  1. Elevator – This is the location of the elevator on this level.
  2. Stairs – This is the location of the stairwell on this level.
  3. Restrooms – These are the restrooms for this level.
  4. Conference Room – A large conference room for this level so that those working don’t need to go up the upper level for meetings or as a second room if the first one is in use.
  5. Life Support Systems – This room houses the life support systems and air filtration systems for this level. There are 11 systems here. Ten are independent systems that handle the cleaning and filtering of the air for each of the 10 labs. The other system handles all the other rooms.
  6. Cleaning room – This room contains large fans and scrubbers to remove most loose dirt and other contaminants from those entering the lab area. The floor is covered with sticky tiles that pull dirt off the bottom of shoes as you walk through the room. The inner door will not open until a full cleaning cycle has been completed.
  7. Changing Room – This room is where those going into the lab change into their lab suits and other gear.
  8. Clean Room Suit Storage – These rooms contain the clean room suits, lab coats, and other gear to be worn in the labs.
  9. Decontamination Room – This room does a final cleaning of any one or anything entering the lab area to remove any final contaminates. The inner door will not open until a full cleaning cycle has occured.
  10. Storage – This room contains lab supplies and other equipment that has passed through the decontamination process for use in the various labs.
  11. Robot Storage – These rooms are the storage area and charging stations for the robots that work on this level.
  12. Lab Entrance – These rooms are mini airlocks that provide the final security lock to prevent material from traveling into or out of the labs. These rooms have transparent walls so that you can see those inside. These doors have level 5 locks and can only be opened by those scientists working in the specific lab.
  13. Labs – Each lab is set up to work on an individual experiment. The walls facing the hall (area 14) are glass so that you can see into each lab area.
  14. Lab Hall – This hallway is inside the clean area and allows access to each of the labs and to the robot storage areas.
  15. Outer Hall – This hallway is outside the clean area and allows access to the elevator, stairs, life support systems, and conference room.

Level 3 – Power Generation

This level only houses the power generator. It is an additional 150 meters below the lab level. It’s quite a hike if you have to use the stairs.

Level 3. Click for full sized version. There is also a version without labels.
  1. Elevator – The location of the elevator on this level
  2. Stairs – The stair access on this level
  3. Outer Hall – Hallway connecting elevator and stairs with the robot storage area (#4) and the airlock into the generator area (#5).
  4. Robot Storage – This is the storage and charging area for robots working on this level.
  5. Airlock – Separates the power system from the access area to prevent anything crossing the boundary into the main facility. The locks on this door are level 4 and only open to the power techs.
  6. Inner Hall – Hallway connecting the airlock to the power generator
  7. Parabattery Bank – This room is full of racks of Type IV parabatteries. This is the backup power system for the facility that kicks in when there is not enough power being generated by the main generator or it is off-line for service. These parabatteries are charged when the generator is running.
  8. Control Room – A manual control room that allows for monitoring of the power generator in room 9 and the use of power throughout the facility.
  9. Power Generator. This is a Type III generator that is hooked in to a geothermal vent discovered in mountain. This rooms houses all the machinery, pumps, and transformers needed to power the facility.

Using The Lab In Game

That’s the basic write-up for the facility. I’ve left it fairly adaptable so that you can have whatever research you want going on. In my game, I had them working on yazirian food crops and a small yazirian pet, but you can have it be as innocent or sinister as you want GODCo to be in your campaign. And of course, you don’t have to leave this facility on Pale, you could move (or clone) it anywhere you need this type of facility on your game.

Next week I’ll do the write-up of how I actually used this lab for my Skills For Hire game. This is the “normal” operation. It was anything but normal when the players arrived.

How do you like the lab? What did I forget to include or what would make it a better location? Let me know in the comments below.

Detailed Frontier Timeline – FY61.204 to FY61.233

Here comes the next installment of the detailed Frontier Timeline. The HSS History’s Hope is returning back home for it’s annual maintenance and gets waylaid, the UPFS Eleanor Moraes and CMS Osprey discover the sathar starship construction center in the FS30 system, and the Saurians start the process of settling into the Frontier.

We are drawing closer and closer to the launch of the sathar attack into the Frontier that will come to be known as the Second Sathar War. As I was starting to work ahead on that I realized that since back in mid April, I had forgotten to post the updates about the sathar ship construction and movement of sathar ships outside the Frontier. All of the craziness that result from COVID-19 resulted in me dropping the ball on these posts. The funny thing is, when I started this project nearly two years ago, these were the very posts and bits of information that I started the project to track. Seeing how the sathar moved ships around in preparation for and during the battle what the inspiration for the project in the first place. It’s kind of ironic that that is what I lost track of. The other stuff was just supposed to be filler around these posts, but these other threads seem to have taken on lives of their own.

I’ve gone back and fixed that error. In the final document at the bottom of the page, the posts (which start on FY61.068) that I missed posting to Twitter and in the monthly updates are highlighted in a blue font. I’ve assembled them into a separate table below so that you can see them all together if you don’t want to search for them in the document and see them in their context. These missed updates include almost all of the positioning of sathar forces before the commencement of the invasion. Going forward, things will be included as regular updates and posts and I won’t have to backfill.

I also realized, as I’m completing the events of the SFKH4 – The War Machine module, that in the time line, the Liberty System, which is the location of that adventure, is still unnamed and only known as FS30 on the star maps. So I’ve gone back through the document and changed all reference to the Liberty system to FS30. The name change actually occurs in the coming month and is an event that will be in the next update.

The Lost Events

Date (FY)Events
61.068A new sathar starship construction center comes on-line and begins producing ships.  This new center is located in a system “south” of Prenglar, OFS203.  It is designated SCC#1.
61.081Sathar SCC#2 (FS30) produces 6 fighters
61.096Sathar SCC#2 (FS30) produces a destroyer
61.105Sathar SCC#3 (OFS138) produces a frigate
61.116Sathar SCC#4 (OFS111) produces a frigate
61.1283 sathar ships (1 DD, 1 LC, 1 AC, designated transit group TG 1) depart SCC#5 (OFS19) and begin accelerating for a high-speed transit to SCC#4 (OFS111).
61.141A destroyer is completed in the sathar SCC#3 (FS30)
61.146The sathar SCC#4 (OFS111) completes 5 fighters.
61.148The ships of sathar TG1 arrive at SCC#4 (OFS111).  The destroyer remains in the system while the remaining ships are joined by 12 fighters (housed in the assault carrier) and another light cruiser.  TG1 begins acceleration for a high-speed transit to SCC#3 (OFS 136).
61.150A sathar frigate leaves SCC#4 (OFS111) and begins a high speed transit to SCC#5 (OFS019)
61.170The sathar frigate arrives at SCC#5 (OFS019)
61.172The ships of sathar TG1 arrive at SCC#3 (OFS136).  They are joined by another assault carrier (with 8 fighters), 3 heavy cruisers, and 3 frigates.  They depart immediately and begin accelerating for a high-speed transit to OFS167.
61.173The Sathar battle fleet arrives in orbit around Edge (Precipice).  They meet no resistance and begin bombing the planet.
61.175Destruction of the saurian world Edge (Precipice) complete, the sathar battle fleet begins acceleration to return to the Sauria system.
61.180Several sathar ships (1 AC, 1 HC, 1 LC, & 6 fighters, designated TG2) leave SCC#2 (FS30) and begin accelerating for a high-speed transit to new SCC#1 (OFS203).
61.182The sathar SCC#5 (OFS019) completes a cutter and light cruiser.
61.184The sathar fleet arrives back at Kischen (Sauria).  They begin an aggressive patrol of the system looking for any survivors or other ships that escaped their initial attack.
61.186The Sathar SCC#2 (FS30) completes a destroyer.  It along with six others, depart the SCC and begin accelerating for a high-speed transit to OFS 167.
61.193Sathar Transit Group 1 arrive in the inner system of OFS167.  They begin patrolling the system and waiting for other ships to arrive.
61.194– Sathar TG1 is reformed consisting of 1 AC (with 6 fighters), 1 HC, 1 LC, and 1 frigate.  It departs OFS167 immediately for a high-speed transit to SCC#1 (OFS203)

– A new transit group (TG3) is formed from the ships at OFS167. Consisting of 1 HC, 1 AC and 7 fighters, it begins accelerating for a high-speed transit to SCC#2 (FS30).
61.200Sathar Transit Group 2 (1 AC, 1 HC, 4 DD, & 8 fighters), arrive at the newly operating SCC#1 (OFS203)

That covers everything I missed in months past. I missed a few events in this month’s activities as I was doing the Twitter posts but they will just be included in the regular update below. The events I missed posting on Twitter will be highlighted in italics.

The Regular Update

Date (FY)Events
61.204After two days of preparation, the UPFS Eleanor Moraes, CMS Osprey, and the sathar scout ship (now named the UPFS Backdoor) lift off from Mahg Mar and begin accelerating toward the FS 30 system using the captured astrogation data. (SFKH4)
61.205After over a week of deliberations, discussions, and subspace communications all of the Frontier, Princess Leotia of Clarions extends a formal invitation from her world to the Saurians to set up an initial settlement there.
61.206– PG Meteor successfully jumps into the White Light system.  They do not slow down but immediately begin calculations for the 10 light year jump to Theseus.

– The second saurian Ark ships joins the first one in orbit around Minotaur and delegates from that ship join the discussions.
61.207– Two UPF Frigates slated for SF Meteor are completed in the Minotaur (Theseus) shipyards.  They begin a short shakedown cruise while they wait for the arrive of the assault scouts in PG Meteor.

– After two days of internal discussions, the saurians agree to send one of the ark ships to White Light for direct discussions about settling on Clarion, at least initially.  Princess Leotia offers to accompany them personally on their vessel as a show of good faith.
61.208– The UPFS Eleanor Moraes, CMS Osprey, and UPFS Backdoor successfully jump into the FS30 system.  They begin decelerating toward the location of the sathar base, codenamed Base Alpha. (SFKH4)

– The first ship, a light cruiser, is completed at the new sathar SCC#1 (OFS203) south of Prenglar.
61.209– The HSS History’s Hope jumps into the YS03 system and begins work on the jump back to YS02.

– Sathar Transit Group 3 arrives at SCC#2 (FS30)
61.210After 3 days of preparation, the 7th saurian Ark Ship leaves orbit around Minotaur and begins accelerating for a jump to the White Light system.
61.211Jump calculations complete, PG Meteor jumps to the Theseus system and begins decelerating toward Minotaur.
61.212– After four days of deceleration, the UPF ships approach the location of Base Alpha in the FS30 system.  They realize that the base is a small assault carrier.  Leaving the other ships behind, the captured sathar scout ship (UPFS Backdoor) approaches the carrier. (SFKH4)

– The UPFS Backdoor is pulled in to a docking bay of the sathar carrier.  After an intense battle through the decks of the sathar vessel, the crew manages to capture the ship and eject its engines before they can overload and destroy the vessel.   (SFKH4)
61.213Several ships, independently dispatched by members of the True Yaziria society, arrive in YS01.  They discover several Family of One vessels in the system patrolling for the eventual arrival of the HSS History’s Hope as it returns to the Frontier.
61.214– The HSS History’s Hope jumps to the YS02 system arriving safely.  They begin work to make the jump back to YS01.

– The True Yaziria ships engage the Family of One ships destroying one, crippling another, and driving off the remaining two.  The FoO ships are trailed until they jump out of the YS01 system.

– Four sathar fighters arrive from the inner system to investigate the explosions of the sathar carrier’s engines.  A battle ensues between the CMS Osprey, UPF Eleanor Moraes, UPFS Backdoor, and the sathar fighters.  The UPF forces win but the Moraes is severely damaged. (SFKH4)
61.215– The 7th saurian Ark Ship jumps into the White Light system and begins decelerating toward Clarion.  Princess Leotia radios ahead to alert her father of their arrival.

– PG Meteor arrives at Minotaur station, the assault scout crews are given two days of rest before they are given their next assignment.  The two frigates join the assault scouts, and the ships are temporarily assigned to the Frontier Expeditionary Force under Commander Reider.
61.216After two days of engine overhauls and repairs, a small chemically propelled rocket approaches the UPF ships in the FS30 system.  Capturing the rocket, they determine that it is a message requesting a meeting from some unknown group.  They radio back to FEF headquarters. (SFKH4)
61.217– The UPF forces in FS30 receive orders from Commander Reider to make contact with whomever sent the rocket and learn as much about the sathar in the system as possible.  He is personally bringing reinforcements.

– PG Meteor is split into two groups.  One (a frigate and 4 AS) are sent to the FS26 system to see if any sathar ships were pursuing the saurians and establish a forward screen there.  The other (a frigate and 2 AS), commanded by Commander Reider, depart for the trip to FS30.

– After completing preparations, the crew of the UPFS Eleanor Moraes depart for the rendezvous point indicated by the map in the rocket.  (SFKH4)
61.218The full White Light Militia, sans the CMS Osprey, boost out from Clarion station to meet the saurian Ark Ship.

– The sathar SCC#1 (OFS218) completes a frigate.
61.219– With everything ready to go, the crew of the HSS History’s Hope prepares to jump back to the YS01 system.  They go on high alert as this is the system they were attacked in before and are worried that there will be trouble again.

– Jumping in to the YS01 system, the crew of the HSS History’s Hope detect radio signals from several different ships. Initially concerned, they soon realize that these ships are there as escorts, not antagonists. Work begins on jump calculations as the ships in the inner system accelerate to join them.

– The Eleanor Moraes crew arrives at the rendezvous point, a small asteroid that has been hollowed out into a space station.  After docking they meet with a new race, called the Mhemne. (SFKH4)

– Two sathar destroyers arrive at SCC#3 (OFS138) and join the forces there.
61.220– The 7th saurian Ark Ship, together with the White Light militia, settle into orbit around Clarion.  Preparations are begun to send a delegation to the surface.

– After a day of negotiations, the UPF forces and the Mhemne reach an agreement to work against the sathar in the system.  They plan to slip to the surface of the planet (Snowball) and contact the resistance there and investigate the sathar factories on the surface. (SFKH4)
61.221– SF Nova prepares to depart the K’aken-Kar system and begins accelerating toward the K’tsa-Kar system.

– UPF forces descend to the surface of Snowball (FS30). After fighting off a Sathar hovercraft, they make contact with the Mhemne resistance on the surface. (SFKH4)

– After consulting with Commander Reider, the UPF forces, assisted by the Mhemne resistance, begin a series of raids on the sathar factories on the surface of Snowball to disrupt sathar operations while they wait for PG Lancet to arrive in system. (SFKH4)

– Descending to the surface of Clarion (White Light), the saurian delegation are met by King Leotus and Princess Leotia as welcome guests.  The next several days are spent in meetings, festivities, and other activities to introduce the saurians to the Clarion culture.
61.222– The larger portion of PG Meteor (retaining the PG Meteor designation) arrive in the FS26 system.  They don’t detect any sathar signals but do detect the saurian beacon.  They begin decelerating toward the inner system.

– The smaller portion of PG Meteor, now designated PG Lancet, arrive in the Padda system.  They begin calculations for a jump to the Waller Nexus system without slowing down.
61.223After two days of discussions, the saurian delegation, escorted by Princess Leotia, begin a multi-day tour of Clarion to look for sites where the saurians could set up a permanent settlement.
61.224– Joined by the True Yaziria escort vessels, the HSS History’s Hope jumps to the OFS222 system.  They immediately begin engine overhauls and plotting the next jump to OFS221.

– The last sathar Transit Group, TG1, arrives at sathar SCC#1 (OFS203).  All ships stand down and complete any maintenance needed after their recent maneuvers.
61.225After training the Mhemne resistance fighters, the combined UPF/Mhemne force make their first raid on a sathar factory.  Catching the factory unprepared, they overwhelm the defenses and manage to capture one of the sathar shuttles. (SFKH4)
61.226PG Meteor arrives in the inner system of FS26.  The ships split up to begin exploring the planets there while remaining alert for sathar vessels.
61.227– After completing engine overhauls and the astrogation calculations, PG Lancet jumps into the Waller Nexus system.  The immediately begin work to jump to the FS30 system, again without slowing down.

– Resting a day after their first assault, the UPF/Mhemne force on the surface of Snowball attack a second sathar factory.  This fight proves to be a bit more challenging as the factory is on alert after the first attack.  The factory is destroyed but the attacking forces are unable to capture another shuttle. (SFKH4)
61.228After 5 days of guided exploration, the saurians decide on a location in the southern hemisphere of Clarion that is about a quarter of the way around the planet from Valencia, Clarion’s capital.  They return to their ships to begin preparations for establishing the settlement.
61.229– After another day of rest, the UPF/Mhemne forces attack the third known sathar factory.  This is the most vicious fight yet and the sathar forces intentionally destroy all the shuttles when it is apparent they will lose the fight. (SFKH4)

– Strike Force Nova settles into orbit around Kwadl-Kik (K’tsa-Kar).  They will remain here for only 2 days before continuing on to Clarion (White Light) to meet the saurians in that system.

– HSS History’s Hope and escorts jump to the neutron star system OFS221. While there was a hint of ship radio signals, it is lost in the natural radio noise from the pulsar.  Work begins on engine overhauls and jump calculations for the trip to OFS224.
61.230After four days examining all the planets in the inner system of FS26, the ships of PG Meteor settle into orbit around one of the two habitable planet in the system to compare notes and prepare for a departure back to Theseus.
61.231SF Nova departs Kwadl-Kik (K’tsa-Kar) for Clarion (White Light)
61.232PG Lancet completes their preparations and jumps into the FS30 system.  They begin decelerating toward the inner system and establish communications with the UPF forces there.
61.233– After four days of searching, the UPF/Mhemne forces on Snowball find another sathar factory.  After a bloody and desperate fight, the UPF/Mhemne forces gain control of the factory and manage to capture an additional shuttle before it can be destroyed by the sathar forces. (SFKH4)

– One day before the ships are ready to jump to OFS224, the HSS History’s Hope and escorts are attacked by 3 unknown vessels (2 corvettes and a Lightspeed Lady class privateer). In the ensuing battle, two of the escorts are destroyed and the History’s Hope is damaged, but they manage to destroy the attackers

Here’s the full file with all the updates:

DetailedFrontierTimelineDownload

State of the Frontier – Sept 2020

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

Looking Back

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

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

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

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

Looking Forward

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

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

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

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

Final Thoughts

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

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

Maps and Counters

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

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

Counters

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

AD Counters

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

KH Counters

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

Maps

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

Scans

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

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

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

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

Remastered

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

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

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

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

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

Final Thoughts

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

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

Void Jumping, Acceleration, and Other FTL Nuggets

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

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

Other Posts

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

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

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

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

Void Jumping

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

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

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

Okay, here comes the math.

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

v(t) = at

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

ADF and the Board Game Rules

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How I Apply This In Game

So how do I use this?

Basic Application

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

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

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

Traversing multiple systems in a single trip

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Final Thoughts

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

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

Detailed Frontier Timeline – FY 61.173 to FY 61.203

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

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

Here’s the events of the last month:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And here’s the full timeline file:

DetailedFrontierTimelineDownload

State of the Frontier – August 2020

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

Looking Back

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

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

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

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

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

Looking Forward

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

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

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

Final Thoughts

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

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

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

RPG Blog Carnival Logo

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

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

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

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

Myriads of Projects

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

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

Websites & Social Media

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

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

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

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

Fanzines

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

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

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

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

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

Blogging

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

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

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

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

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

Active Games

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

Podcasts

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

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

Other Projects

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

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

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

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

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

Gaining Focus

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

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

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

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

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

What’s Next?

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

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

Skills for Hire – Rescue

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

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

Adventure Outline

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

The setup

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

Major segments

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

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

Details

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

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

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

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

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

The manor

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

Level 2 locks on offices

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

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

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

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

Running the Adventure

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Brekstoone Manor

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

Front view of the manor (click for larger image)

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

This post is going to detail out that Manor.

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

History

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

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

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

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

Floor Plans

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

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

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

Basement

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

Ground Level

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

1st Floor

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

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

2nd Floor

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

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

3rd Floor

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

Observatory Level

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

Things I Left Out

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

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

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

Details, Details, Details

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

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

Wrapping Up

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

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