Detailed Frontier Timeline – FY61.142 to FY61.172

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

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

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

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

Date (FY)	Events
61.142	The last shipment delivered by Obar Enterprises to Triad (Cassidine), a shipment of rubies from Pale (Truane’s Star), triggered a flag in a resource tracking system on Triad due to the speed of the high profile delivery. It is flagged for future investigation.
61.143	The UPFS Eleanor Moraes successfully arrives in the Waller Nexus system and begins scanning the system for planets.
61.144	The Gullwind successfully jumps into the Cassidine system and begins deceleration toward Triad station.
61.145	Strike Force Nova leaves Cassidine and begins accelerating for a jump to the Dramune system.
61.146	– Calculations nearly complete, the HSS History’s Hope begins accelerating for a jump to YS06. If successful, this will complete the jump route between YS06 and YS05. – Initial scans by the UPFS Eleanor Moraes detects a potentially habitable planet orbiting Waller Nexus. An atmoprobe is launched toward the planet. They adjust their deceleration vector to take them into orbit around the planet which they dub Mahg Mar.
61.147	– After scanning the OFS179 system for 20 days, the 7th Saurian ark ship has identified all the planets near the star and none are suitable for colonization. They begin working on jump calculations to their next system. – Results of the atmoprobe sent to Mahg Mar indicate that the atmosphere is breathable but contains trace toxins. Breathing masks will be required at all time when outside on the surface. – The 8th Saurian Ark Ship is completed. With sathar ships in the system and suspecting that the ships that razed Rock (Sessar) will be joining them, the shakedown cruise is skipped and loading begins immediately.
61.148	– Arriving at Triad station (Cassidine), the crew of the Gullwind replenish supplies and spend a day decompressing from their recent encounters before making the final leg of their trip to Inner Reach (Dramune). – Having confirmed the destruction of the saurians on Rock, the Sathar fleet in the Sessar system begins accelerating toward the Sauria system to join with the other fleet there.
61.149	– The UPFS Eleanor Moraes settles into orbit around Mahg Mar and begins preparation for landing on the surface of the planet. – Fearing that this might be the last Ark Ship launched, the Saurians move all of the remaining cultural artifacts that were planned to be spread out across the remaining 12 Ark Ships under construction to this one. All resources are dedicated to getting this ship underway before the expected sathar attack occurs. – The Gullwind leaves Triad station (Cassidine) and begins accelerating for the final jump back to Dramune.
61.150	– The HSS History’s Hope successfully jumps to the YS06 system and begins decelerating while planning their next jump. – A day out from Triad station, the Gullwind is intercepted by an assault scout, the MESS Maltharia. In the ensuing battle, the assault scout is damaged but takes out the Gullwind’s engines. It disengages, leaving the freighter adrift. (SFKH1)
61.151	– The first two ships for the new Strike Force Meteor emerge from the Pan Galactic shipyards orbiting Gran Quivera (Prenglar). They depart to Morgaine’s World (Prenglar) to begin exercises with elements of Task Force Prenglar. – Unable to repair the engines outside a spacedock, the crew of the Gullwind call back to Triad for assistance. The UPFS Melinda McCoy (destroyer) and UPFS Dirk (assault scout) respond to their mayday. (SFKH1) – After hearing the Gullwind’s crew’s story, the Melinda McCoy’s captain, Commodre Klat-tic M’tal, a vrusk, arranges a tug to take them back to Triad. He also radios ahead to SF Nova, current decelerating toward Inner Reach (Drammune) with the story. (SFKH1)
61.152	– After three days in orbit generating a preliminary map of Mahg Mar’s surface, the crew of the UPFS Eleanor Moraes selects a preliminary landing site and the ship descends to the planet’s surface. Work begins immediately on overhauling the ship’s engines. – The HSS History’s Hope begins accelerating for the jump to their next target system, a binary M dwarf system 7 light years away.
61.153	– The sathar attack fleet from Sessar arrives in the Sauria system. The remains of the sathar fleet still in the system begin accelerating toward Kischen, the saurian homeworld. The Battle Rays tailing this fleet radio the news home and begin accelerating home as well. – The Gullwind arrives back at the CDC shipyards around Triad. Luckily there is room available in the shipyard and the Gullwind is immediately admitted for repairs.
61.154	– Calculations complete, the Saurian ark ship begins accelerating for their jump to the FS58 system, an F3 start, probably too hot for them but more likely than the M0 star they are currently at. – Strike Force Nova arrives at Inner Reach (Dramune), they only spend a day at the station before continuing on to Fromeltar.
61.155	– The decelerating fleet from Sessar is detected by the saurian forces, three days away from the planet. – Fully repaired, and short on cash, the Gullwind departs the CDC shipyards and once again begins accelerating toward Dramune. (SFKH1)
61.156	– Overhaul of the first engine complete, the captain of the UPFS Eleanor Moraes, Winston Marlboro, authorizes an initial scouting expedition to survey the surrounding area. Preparations begin for an expedition that will leave in the morning. (SFKH2) – After a day of acceleration, the crew of the Gullwind have noticed that they have a shadow, a pair of ships following their course but always remaining just at the edge of radar range. They suspect it is the UPF Melinda McCoy and Dirk but cannnot confirm this. (SFKH1)
61.157	– With the sathar fleet less than a day away, loading of the last Ark Ship is aborted with only 90% of the material goods and 50% of passengers loaded. The ship departs Kischen with a small military escort and heads toward the Precipice system, the last remaining saurian system. – A small detachment of the sathar fleet breaks off from decelerating and begins accelerating in an attempt to catch the departing ark ship. – The HSS History’s Hope successfully completes the jump to the new system, which they designate as YS07. Decelerations commences as they prepare to plot the return leg of the jump. – Shortly after Captain Marlboro, along with most of the ship’s crew, departs to begin surveying the surrounding area via airship, Bill Terry, first officer of the Eleanor Moraes, turns on the remaining crew and stuns or otherwise incapacitates them, taking over the ship. (SFKH2) – With the ship secure, Terry remotely orders the survey robot accompanying the airship to attack and destroy the airship. The captain is injured as is the chief engineer. After a brief message from Terry explaining that he is abandoning them on the planet, he cuts all communications between the survey party and the ship. (SFKH2) – Salvaging what equipment they can, the uninjured members of the survey party are ordered by Captain Marlboro to take the survey robot and proceed overland to recapture the Eleanor Moraes. There is still 45 hours of work to do on the ship’s engines before Terry can leave so they must hurry. (SFKH2)
61.158	– Battle of Kischen – The remaining saurian forces engage the attacking sathar vessels. After hours of battle, the saurian forces are destroyed but the sathar vessels are similarly devastated. – The remaining sathar forces around Kischen begin bombarding the planet, paying particular attention to heavily industrialized areas. The remaining ark ships under constructions are destroyed. – Three days out from Inner Reach, a small group of ships breaks off from SF Nova and begin decelerating back toward the inner system. – The crew of the Eleanor Moraes continues their travel back toward the ship. Bill Terry uses some of the survey robots remaining at the ship to attempt to ambush the party while en route but they manage to defeat both of his attempts and overcome the natural obstacles in their way. (SFKH2)
61.159	– The 7th saurian Ark Ship successfully jumps to the FS58 system. They begin decelerating and scanning for planets. – Strike Force Nova makes the jump to the Fromeltar system and begins decelerating toward Terledrom. – Realizing that he won’t get the engine overhaul completed before the rest of the crew arrives, Bill Terry begins preparing the Eleanor Moraes for liftoff anyway. (SFKH2) – The Eleanor Moraes crew arrives at the ship before Terry is ready to lift off. Breaching the defenses he has put in place they gain access to the ship. In a tense standoff on the bridge, the crew convinces Terry to surrender. (SFKH2)
61.160	– The Gullwind makes the jump to the Dramune system and begins decelerating toward Inner Reach. Almost immediately, their shadow reappears and hail the Gullwind, identifying themselves as the Melinda McCoy and the Dirk. They begin decelerating with the Gullwind, slowly closing the gap between the ships. (SFKH1) – With the ship secured, and the captain and chief engineer recovered from the airship crash site, the crew of the UPFS Eleanor Moraes send a subspace message back to Theseus informing the Frontier Expeditionary Force HQ of the recent events and their status. (SFKH2)
61.161	– The last saurian Ark Ship successfully jumps to the Precipice system. They immediately radio ahead to the outpost there to prepare for a full evacuation as they begin decelerating toward the planet Edge. The sathar ships pursuing them return to the main force orbiting Kischen. – Two assault scouts, part of the new Strike Force Meteor, are completed at the Triad starship construction center. The UPF crew takes command of the vessels and begin accelerating for a jump to Prenglar. – The UPFS Eleanor Moraes receives a response from the FEF HQ that the CMS Osprey is being dispatched from White Light with material and personnel to effect repairs. The Moraes crew is to continue their primary mission of surveying the planet until the Osprey arrives in 28 days. (SFKH2)
61.162	– Deceleration complete, the HSS History’s Hope begins accelerating for the jump back to YS06. – After two days of deceleration, just as they are approaching the orbit of Outer Reach, the Gullwind and it’s escorts are enveloped by a powerful jamming field preventing all communications. They are assaulted by 9 vessels (3 frigates, 2 corvettes, & 4 assault scouts) that include the Outer Reach militia. (SFKH1) – After a brief but intense battle, the UPF vessels are destroyed and the Gullwind is disabled and taken in tow. The Gullwind and UPF ships manage to destroy one of the corvettes and an Outer Reach militia assault scout as well as severely damage one of the frigates. While under tow, the jamming field is maintained to prevent communication. (SFKH1)
61.163	– Strike Force Nova arrives in orbit around Terledrom (Fromeltar). They will remain in the system for 16 days while it waits for the ships detached in the Dramune system to catch up. – The CMS Osprey begins accelerating for Theseus and the first leg of their mission to rescue the UPFS Eleanor Moraes. (SFKH3)
61.164	– Now slowed in the inner system, the 7th saurian Ark Ship discovers a habitable planet. However, due to the intensity of the star (F3 vs their native G8), the high gravity (1.5g) and slow rotation (40 hours), they deem the planet unsuitable. Preparations are made to depart the system. – The Gullwind arrives at Darkworld station, home the Malthar who orchestrated their capture. The crew is overwhelmed my the Malthar’s robots when whey refuse to leave the ship.
61.165	– The 7th saurian Ark Ship begins accelerating for their next jump which will take them to the Theseus system. – Having destroyed all visible traces of the saurian population on the planet Kischen, the sathar fleet begins accelerating toward the Precipice system.
61.166	The 8th saurian Ark Ship arrives in orbit around the planet Edge (Precipice) and immediately deploys shuttles to start loading the population.
61.167	The HSS History’s Hope successfully jumps back to YS06 completely charting the route between the two systems. They relay the jump data back to their home foundation on Histran via subspace radio and begin the return journey back to YS07.
61.168	After incorporating lessons learned from the false start and several weeks of successful operations, Synthcorp’s “Muffin Button” is declared a success and begins to roll out in other locations on Inner Reach.
61.169	With the population and as many supplies as possible loaded from Edge, the 8th saurian arkship begins accelerating out of the Precipice system. They decide to follow the general direction of the 7th Ark ship and begin accelerating toward OFS191.
61.170	– The two new UPF assault scouts arrive at Morgaine’s World (Prenglar) and join up with their sister ships exercising with Task Force Prenglar. – The 7th saurian Ark Ship successfully jumps into the Theseus system where they immediately detect radio signals from the inhabitants and ships in the system. – Vectoring their deceleration to stop deep in the outer system, the saurians begin studying the signals coming from the inner system. They are not detected by the system’s inhabitants. – The sathar ships make the jump to the Precipice system. They detect the saurian ark ship beginning its acceleration out of the system. Several ships are detached at high speed to try to intercept it.
61.171	The CMS Osprey arrives at Minotaur station (Theseus) where they are briefed on all the details available about their jump route and the Moraes crew and status. They take on additional supplies for the stricken ship. (SFKH3)
61.172	Two more assault scouts, destined to be part of Strike Force Meteor, are completed at the Streel shipyards orbiting Pale (Truane’s Star). The UPF crews take possession of the ships and begin accelerating for a jump to Dixon’s Star and then to Prenglar.

And here’s the full timeline to download.

DetailedFrontierTimeline Download

State of the Frontier – July 2020

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

Looking Back

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Looking Forward

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Your Thoughts

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

Organizations – Tristars

We were finally able to get another “Skills for Hire” gaming session, this time with 8! players last week. Which means I can post some of the content from that game without it being a spoiler for the players. If I post something here I didn’t give them in game, they can consider it something they learned from their investigations.

This week we’re going to look at another organzation, the Tristars, and organized crime group centered in Myha’s Beach on Pale in the Truane’s Str System.

Organization

The head of the organization is one Gornar Welnat, a yazirian. He owns Brekstoone Manor as well as several of the large resort hotels in Myha’ Beach. He is a well respected businessman in town and his connection the Tristars is guessed but not generally known.

The Tristars are divided into two different sub organizations. One is more white-collar and is concerned with political and business interests in the city. They have bought off local politicians, businessmen, and in some cases, police officers to help them further their business interests. Those that won’t cooperate are subject to other forms of persuasion, ranging from loss of business deals, stiffer competition, or even physical damage to property or persons.

Which is where the second half of the organization comes in. This branch of the Tristars is actually the larger segment and consists of beings willing to do the dirty work for the organization. It has members ranging from stilled tradesbeings to basic street thugs and the individuals that manage them.

All members of the organization have a tattoo that identifies them as members of the Tristars. In it’s simplest form, it consists of three open stars arranged in a triangle as seen at the right. This logo is the source of the organization’s name. The basic form is the version sported by all new recruits and the lowest echelons of the hierarchy. Some members wear the tattoo openly, while others have it more concealed. It is often found on wrists or shoulders.

As one moves up the ranks, the design gets more elaborate with second level members sporting divisions in the stars. And third level members sporting more divisions still.

Individual member might add color to the various designs but silver and gold colorations are reserved for upper echelon members in the more business and political oriented side of the business. It is rumored that Gornar has a gold version of the tattoo somewhere.

The various portions of the organization are fairly isolated. The street level teams know very little about the upper echelons. They might have a contact name or chronocom number but that may be the only contact that they have. Groups will know their superior and who they get “jobs” from but don’t know much about the organization beyond that.

At the third level in the hierarchy, members might know that the Tristars are operated out of Brekstoone Manor and probably suspect that Gornar is involved, but still may only have a single contact at the Manor itself if they have a contact there at all.

History

This is something that the player didn’t discover as it never came up but doesn’t affect the game in any way so I have no problem posting it now.

The Tristars started as just a low-level street gang in the city some thirty or forty years ago. They claimed a section of the older part of town as their own and exerted there dominance there. They remained a low level, minor organization until about twenty years ago.

By then Gornar had already built his first resort hotel and was constructing a second. Facing competition from some of the older, smaller hotels, as well as some other large hotel owners, he decided to employ some local muscle to “dampen the competition’s spirit” as he put it. His agents contacted the Tristars for some “jobs.” Pleased with the results, he came to rely on them more and more, always through intermediaries.

Over the next few years, with Gornar’s help and guidance, the Tristars began to grow and take over or take out other local gangs in the city until they were the largest group in town. While there are still other groups around, they don’t have the scope or support that the Tristars do. At the beginning of this growth, the early gang leaders tried to keep control of the growing organization but they were quickly disabused of that notion by Gornar’s agents. While there is still some resentment within the organization over the loss of control to “outsiders,” most realize that they would not be as successful or as safe as they are without that outside help.

Rivals

At the higher levels of operation, there aren’t really any major rivals to the Tristars in Myha’s Beach. They are the major player. While some businesses and organizations oppose them, they are individual operations or small alliances of individuals.

On the street level, there are still several other smaller gangs in town that operate and often oppose the Tristars when they can. These include, most notably, the Jade Vipers and Windsurfers. The former more active in the newer portions of town and the latter more active down by the shipyards.

None of these groups oppose the Tristars too hard, as they recognize that if the Tristars wanted to focus on them, the could eliminate them altogether. But they are not opposed to spiking the wheels of individual operations regularly to make things difficult. These rival groups could be recruited to assist anyone opposing the Tristars. If you can contact them.

General Knowledge

The Tristars are a known force in Myha’s Beach and even on the radar of people in Point True. That said, most of the inhabitants of Myha’s Beach know that the organization exists but little else. They mostly associate it with the street level gangs. Very few people know of Gornar’s connection to the operation.

If you asked a random citizen about the Tristars, they would probably know the name but little else. Or if they are more familiar with the organization, won’t say much as they are either part of the group and not sharing secrets, or have been intimidated or otherwise influence by the Tristars and don’t want to get into any more trouble.

Hangouts

The group has a couple of well-known hangouts around town where you can usually find members at almost any time of the day.

One is the Shining Star, a pub/restaurant just outside of the old town and a couple streets back from the beach. It’s a small restaurant, seating about 50 where members of the gang like to hang out and socialize.

Another is the Flaming Oar, a bar down by the shipyards. This is a larger establishment, with a capacity of about 150 beings, that lies just outside the territory claimed by the Windsurfers. There are often dust-ups between the two groups there.

Use in my Game

For my game, the Tristars are the major antagonist for the current adventure. The daughter of a senator was kidnapped while vacationing in Myha’s Beach in an attempt to influence his vote for an upcoming bill. The PCs have discovered the Tristars’ involvement in the kidnapping (they did the deed) and staged a raid on the Shining Stat to capture a third level member of the organization for information. They suspect that the Tristars are holding the daughter in Brekstoone Manor.

Final Thoughts

This is a basic outline of the organization. It is general so that you can adapt it as needed to your game. I’m sure if I run other adventures in Myha’s Beach, the Tristars will get fleshed out more.

I have a couple more posts coming related to this one. But they have to wait until the PCs finish their adventure. One will be a scenario write-up for the adventure and the other will be a more detailed description of Brekstoone Manor.

Share your thoughts and ideas about the Tristars in the comments below.

HSS History’s Hope – part 2

This isn’t the post I had planned to do this week but since my game session last Wednesday fell through, I can’t post the details of that adventure yet. So I’m going to revisit the HSS History’s Hope this week. Hopefully we’ll get that game session in on Wednesday and I can post up all the goodies from that adventure.

A few weeks back I was contacted by long time game fan Matt Crymble about the HSS History’s Hope and the timeline project in general. Matt’s on-line involvement in Star Frontiers predates even my one as he is one of the original list serv members from back in the day that I was never a part of. We featured some of Matt’s creations in early issues of the Frontier Explorer and he created the Khad’dan, or yazirian honor blade that figures into a lot of the fan material.

He asked me if I was interested in any help on creating the ship and while I already had KH stats and partial deck plans for the ship, he did a wonderful write-up on the ship’s history. So let’s look at the ship a bit closer.

The HSS History’s Hope

History of History’s Hope

This is the write-up Matt sent me:

The HSS History’s Hope began life as an Imp Class Yacht which was modified into a racing yacht. The vessel class was initially selected for reliability and comfortable long term crew habitation, both critical for the exhausting pace of multi-system racing. Its speed was boosted at the expense of some maneuverability and as a racer it held a distinguished career even though it was not considered a champion. Unfortunately, the highly competitive nature of interstellar racing meant that the ship was too expensive to maintain without champion results and it was eventually made available for sale.

The vessel’s reliability and comfortable crew accommodations also made it a good choice as an exploration vessel and the extra bracing that was added for the increased acceleration from a standard Imp Class make it a sturdy little ship. The racer was slightly modified again after being clandestinely purchased by True Yazira and was rechristened the HSS (Histran Star Ship) History’s Hope out of the Scree Fron system.

Little modification was needed to turn the vessel into an exploration ship, though extra food and fuel stores as well as crew comforts and spare parts were added. Additionally the ship’s precision racing navigation station, known as the “sailing bridge” aboard ship, remains unchanged physically having only received new software to assist with the difficult astrogation tasks of plotting entirely new jump routes.

Because of its status as an exploration vessel the standard radar system was upgraded to include a planetary radar mapper and a planetary scanning system. The planetary scanning system can also work as a limited energy sensor in a focused area in an emergency while in interstellar space. The History’s Hope retains the ability to land on atmospheric worlds with habitable G ratings. The Assault Rocket launcher has been removed though a small part of the mechanism remains and parts were later added to give the vessel the ability to launch atmoprobes.

Crew compliment for a ship this size is small. This is a holdover from its racing days when extra crew was considered extraneous and the vessel is usually crewed with experienced spacers to ensure all needed skills are present. The extra crew berths are taken up by scientists and other specialists with most of the remainder being used for the extra storage necessary for such a long journey.

I hadn’t thought of the idea of an old racing ship, but I had intended it to be HS 4 and an old yacht. So I love this backstory for the ship. There are just a few things in his write-up that I am going to change. Otherwise, it will stand as is.

Modifications

First, it wasn’t “clandestinely purchased by True Yazira.” At least not explicitly. The ship is owned by the Yazira Heritage Foundation (YHF) which is a public non-profit organization. The True Yazira society is a major funder of the YHF, but not as an organizational endeavor. Rather the YHF has many private donors who also happen to be True Yazira members. It’s a happy coincidence. Although not surprising as the goals of the YHF directly align with some of the goals of the True Yazira society and it’s only natural that members of one would donate to the other.

Second, the ship was modified to have a lot more crew that I think Matt was intending. In the end, the ship has a total crew capacity of 24. Actually, there are 24 crew members, the capacity is actually a bit higher but that would require double bunking.

In addition to the ability to launch atmoprobes, I also added in a landing drone and a remote probe, as well as adding in a full-sized (20 being) lifeboat, a small (10-person) lifeboat, a workpod, and small launch. The truth is, a HS 4 ship starting to be pretty large. Designing the ship with my new starship construction system that takes volume into account, and adding in all the systems I needed, created a ship that was within a couple hundred cubic meters of the standard HS4 volume, a difference of just a few percent which is well within the design variation limits given in the rules.

I like how he indicated that it probably had a Deluxe Astrogation suite. That was definitely in the cards for this ship and it would have been upgraded to such if it didn’t already have it. In my game, having the Deluxe Astrogation suite gives a +10% to all astrogation skills. Something definitely needed when charting unknown routes.

While the planetary radar mapper and a planetary scanning system are not standard equipment listed in the rules, I like the description. I did add energy sensors to the ship, so that have that at full capablitily, not just a limited one as described in Matt’s text.

Full Ship’s Stats

Here are the full stats for the ship as I wrote it up:

HS:	4
ADF:	4
MR:	3
DCR:	32
Engines:	2x Class A Atomic
Crew Berths:	24 single occupancy cabins – Journey Class equivalent
Weapons:	LB
Defenses:	RH
Communications Equipment:	videocom radio, subspace radio, Intercom system
Sensor Systems:	deluxe astrogation suite, radar, energy sensors, skin sensors, external camera system
Life Support:	Primary: 600 days for 35 beings Backup: 200 days for 35 beings
Exploration Equipment:	2x atmoprobe, 1x remote probe, 1x landing drone, 1x laboratory
Computer Level:	4
Computer Programs:	Astrogation 4, Atomic Drives 4, Computer Lockout 4, Damage Control 2, Alarm 2, Laser Battery 1, Skin Sensors 1, Guidance/Analysis 3, Anlysis 3, Maintenance 1, Information Storage 6, Communications 3, Language 4, Robot Management 4
Vehicles:	small launch, large lifeboat, small lifeboat, workpod
Other Equipment:	30 spacesuits, laser power torch, 2x engineer’s toolkit, full redundant backup computer, 300 atomic fuel pellets

Deck plans will come in a future post. I have them mostly sketched out but still have a couple decks to go and need to make digital versions of them to share.

The Journey So Far

That’s the ship. Let’s next turn to looking at the crew and their travels up until now.

Crew

The crew is fairly large for this small of a ship, but the truth is, there is plenty of room inside the hull for them all. The crew size, as given in the stat block above, is twenty-four. It breaks down like this:

2 pilots
3 astrogators, one of which is the captain of the expedition
2 engineers
2 energy weapons specialists
2 technicians
1 roboticist
1 computer specialist (in addition to the astrogators)
1 psycho-social specialist
1 doctor
2 environmentalists
4 security personnel
1 linguist
2 archeologists

The first half of the crew are concerned with getting them to their destination or keeping the ship systems and crew running on the journey. The second half are merely passengers for the initial voyage, their skills will be needed if their destination turns out to actually be Yazira.

The Journey

When I first posted about the trip, the ship had left the Frontier and started into the Yazira sector and had made several misjumps. In the intervening months, they have recovered from those early errors, made more, recovered again, and continue to make progress toward their goal. Here is the sector map with the systems they have visited and the jump routes plotted.

The Full map. Click for full sized version.

The route to YS07 is a bit of a spoiler, but only because I’m a bit behind on posting the timeline updates. I should have already posted the successful jump from YS06 to YS07 by now. In fact, today they are beginning their acceleration back to YS06. Those updates will show up in the next few days. At this point, they are about 1/3 of the way across the Yazira Sector to their destination and not quite half way from Scree Fron.

What Does the Future Hold?

The ship is coming up on its one year anniversary since it’s retrofit. That means that they will have to decide if they want to double back to the Frontier for their annual maintenance, or skip it this first year and push on. Even making a high speed transit, it’s on the order of 50 days back to Scree Fron and another week to the nearest SCC. Then 5-15 days of maintenance. And then that same amount of travel time to get back to where they left off. That’s over a quarter of a year of travel. They’ll have to decide if the chance of a system breakdown is worth it.

Also, they were attacked back in YS01. There may still be ships there. And most probably there will be hostile ships in the Frontier itself. They have enough fuel and life support to make it all the way to their destination assuming no major mishaps. But they may have to return for supplies anyway.

The next jump after YS07 is going to be a long one, either 10 or 12 light years. And then some long ones after that, so there is plenty of chance for mishap. There’s a reason this part of space is called the Vast Expanse, the stars are few and far between and the crew is starting to run into that now.

I know what the future holds for the ship in certain areas, but I am actually rolling for all the astrogation skill checks as they come up so I never know if they will succeed in a jump or not. Which means I don’t know how successful they will be or what detours will come up. We’ll have to find out together.

Final Thoughts

That’s it for this post. I’m working on the deck plans and will post them, along with another progress update, once they are done. I’m also planning on a 3D model of the ship once the deck plans are finished. Although that might not be for a couple more months. But those are things you can look forward to.

What thoughts to you have on the travels of the HSS History’s Hope? Are there things about the ship or the expedition you’d like to know more about? Do you have ideas of things they might run into? Let me know in the comments below.

Quality of Spacefleet Enlisted Personnel

This thought has been bouncing around in my head for a long while now so I figured I’d get it out of my head and on (digital) paper so it would quit distracting me. It doesn’t have anything specific to do with any of the projects I’m currently working on but I’m sure it will apply at some point in the future. Regardless, it’s definitely good background/setting material so I’ll label it as such. While the specifics are related to Star Frontiers, the general though process can apply in any setting you are working on.

The “Problem”

In the Knight Hawks Campaign Book (p 48-49), it says:

Although the officers of the Spacefleet represent some of the finest individuals in the Frontier, the same cannot be said for the crews of Spacefleet ships.
The enlisted members of the fleet come from all walks of life. The fleet always is short of crew members. so the requirements for enlistment are not rigorous. No checking is done regarding a crew member’s background or abilities; consequently, a great amount of galactic riffraff has found a home in the crew’s quarters of Spacefleet vessels.
Many of these crews become fine fighting units; the combat record of the Spacefleet is impressive. Occasionally, however, a charismatic bully will win the respect or inspire the fear of his mates to the point of inciting a mutiny. More than one Spacefleet vessel has dumped its officers into space and disappeared to the fringes of the Frontier to embark on a career of piracy and plunder.

I’ve always had a bit of a problem with this idea for a couple of reasons. One, I’m not sure I agree that they are always short of recruits, unless it working for Spacefleet is a really bad job. It doesn’t feel to me that the crew sizes are all that big. The other is the skills required to make off with a ship. Let’s look at those each in turn. Maybe I’ll change my mind by the end of this, or maybe not.

Short Staffed

Let’s start by looking at the staffing issue. There are estimates of crew size for each of Starfleet’s vessels in the opening of the Knight Hawks Campaign Book (KHCB, p. 5) where it describes the different ships. From that we get the following crew estimates:

Fighters: 1
Assault Scout: 4-6
Frigate: 25-30
Destroyer: 40-50
Minelayer: 30-40
Assault Transport: no crew size give but 600-1000 troops, estimate 100 crew
Light Cruiser: 70-100
Heavy Cruiser: no crew size – estimate (based on the battleship) of 300-400
Assault Carrier: 300-400
Battleship: 400

Now I’m going to ignore the Assault Transports in this analysis, at least to start, as they are mentioned nowhere else in the rules and there aren’t even game chits for them. But I’ll probably come back to them later.

If we take the Order of Battle from the Second Sathar War game (KHCB, p. 55) as the baseline size of Spacefleet, we have the following number of ships:

Fighters: 16
Assault Scouts: 14
Frigates: 7
Destroyers: 5
Minelayers: 4
Light Cruisers: 8
Heavy Cruisers: 1
Assault Carriers: 2
Battleships: 3

Now I’d argue that the minelayer in the unattached ships list should be an assault carrier, but it won’t change substantially the argument.

Using that list of ships, what is the total crew size of Spacefleet? We’re going to ignore the fighters, as those are single crew vessels and are going to be manned by officers, not enlisted crew. With their small crew size, the same could probably be said of the Assault Scouts, but we’ll count them anyway. I’ll use the max crew size listed for each ship. This gives us:

Ship Type	# of ships	Crew Size	Total Crew Members
Assault Scout	14	6	84
Frigate	7	30	210
Destroyer	5	50	250
Minelayer	4	40	160
Light Cruiser	8	100	800
Heavy Cruiser	1	400	400
Assault Carrier	2	400	800
Battleship	3	400	1200
Total			3904

If we assume that 10% of the crews are officers, that gives 390 officers and 3514 enlisted. Which to me, doesn’t seem like all that many positions to fill.

The question then becomes, how hard is it to fill those 3514 positions across all these ships? That really depends on what you feel the population of the Frontier is. The game gives population codes (heavy, moderate, light, and outpost) for all the worlds but never really defines what numbers those correspond to.

In a thread on the old starfrontiers.org forums (now defunct) I did a simple analysis of birth and death rates and population growth. Given that some of the worlds of the Frontier have been inhabited for up to 400 years (if you use the Zeb’s Guide timeline), subtle tweaks to those values, would allow you to have basically any population you wanted on a world. (I should resurrect that analysis, I still have the data, and do a new post on it.)

Let’s go with what I consider low population numbers:

Heavy population – 500 million inhabitants
Medium – 200 million
Light – 50 million
Outpost – 200 thousand

According to the AD rules, there are 7 Heavy populations worlds, 8 with medium populations, 4 with light populations, and 3 outposts. Using those numbers, across the Frontier, there are a total of 5.3 billion inhabitants. That’s less than the current population of the Earth. That means that the 3514 enlisted crew members that we need represents 0.000066% of the population. Or one out of every ~15000. I don’t see that as an impossible number.

I mean just for comparison, the ship’s compliment of a US Nimitz class aircraft carrier is 3532. And that doesn’t include the air wing. The US Navy operates 10 of those carriers, with a total crew size of 10x what we’re looking for, with a population of just 330 million, 16x smaller than the estimated Frontier population. And that’s just the aircraft carriers.

Based on those numbers, I just don’t see that it would be that hard to fill the enlisted berths with high quality, low risk recruits.

More Ships?

Now, how might those numbers vary? The first option is that Spacefleet has more ships. The listed order of battle is, after all, from a strategic and tactical board game, picked for playability game balance. The number of ships could be larger. Although the background material in the rules do say there are only 3 battleships. It’s not unreasonable to think that there might be twice as many ships. But that still doesn’t add that many more crew members, putting us up to only 2 aircraft carriers worth.

Another possibility is that there are lots of those assault transport flying around. If you wanted to transport 30,000 troops, you’d need 30 transports, at 100 crew per transport that’s another ~3000 crew members. So depending on the number of troop transports flying around, You could have an order of magnitude more crew members, which gets us closer to the crew complement of just the US aircraft carriers.

Still the crew numbers are small, filling the berths shouldn’t be too hard.

Smaller Population?

Another option is to make the population of the Frontier smaller. But remember that the US Navy supports a much large crew compliment on a population that is almost 20 times smaller. I think you’d have to make the populations of the Frontier worlds, really small indeed for this to start to be an issue.

In fact, I think the population would actually be larger than the numbers I quoted above, by at least a factor of 2 if not more. These worlds have been settled for a couple of hundred years at least. In the last 200 years on Earth the populations has grown from 1 billion to 7.8 billion. Give the high quality medical care, lots of available space for population growth, and general high level of industry and technology, it would not be unreasonable to have a very high birth rate and low death rate. Especially since the average lifespans are much longer.

Undesirable positions?

Another factor would be that these positions are somehow undesirable. This could be possible. Maybe Spacefleet is strapped for funds and doesn’t pay very well. Or maybe people don’t like being on-board ships for extended tours. Or there is some other factor. While these are all possibilities, I don’t seen them being a big factor.

Crews sizes are relatively small, which means it doesn’t take a lot of credits to make payroll. While it may not pay quite as well as civilian sector jobs, I don’t see it being that much different.

I don’t see the on-board living conditions being that much of an issue either. With the exception of the assault scout, these ships are quite large relative to their crew size. A modern Arleigh Burke destroyer is basically the same size as a Knight Hawks destroyer. But the Arleigh Burke has a crew of 300 while the UPF destroyer has a crew of 40-60, 6-7 times smaller. Now there are differences in equipment and living space, but that still leaves a lot of room to make living accommodations more spacious and comfortable. Living on these ships wouldn’t be too bad. Plus they regularly call on stations around the Frontier giving plenty of opportunity for “shore leave” on a regular basis.

I also don’t see it as a reputation issue. Nothing in the game indicates that Spacefleet is looked down on. Quite the opposite actually, it seems that Spacefleet is held in high regard around the Frontier. So sporting the uniform would seem to be a plus not a negative.

There might be other reasons that I’m not thinking of that might make the job less than desirable. Share your thoughts in the comments. The bottom line is that I don’t think Spacefleet would have a problem filling their limited crew slots with high quality crew members, rather than the “galactic riffraff” as described. There might be some that make it in, but I don’t see it being a high percentage.

Crew Mutinies

Let’s leave that aside for now and assume that for some reason, there is a lot of “galactic riffraff” in the Spacefleet enlisted ranks. Even if that is the case, I don’t see them dumping their officers and sailing off to the fringes of the Frontier to engage in piracy.

And the reason is the way the skills are structured. It takes a very skilled set of individuals to fly a spaceship. I don’t see the “galactic riffraff” have the necessary skills and experience to reach the levels necessary to fly these ships. Even an Assault scout takes a level 2 pilot skill which in turn requires level 2 computers and level 6 technician. And a frigate or destroyer requires a level 3 skill. And then you need at least an astrogator, and preferably an engineer and some gunners, although those latter might be able to be recruited later.

In Spacefleet, those skills are found in the officers, not the enlisted crew. If a crew mutinied and dumped its officers, the ship would just sit there as there would be no one to fly it.

That isn’t to say there couldn’t be mutinies. It would just have to involve some of the officers so that there are enough of the spaceship skills to fly the ship. While that goes counter to the quote from the rules, it’s not unreasonable. In fact, in my campaigns, there is a Spacefleet officer that makes off with one of the light cruisers and one point in the timeline.

There is no reason mutinies can’t happen, I just don’t think they would be quite the way described.

Final Thoughts

So that’s my take. Personally, I don’t see the enlisted personnel of Spacefleet being of any lower caliber than its officer corps. The population is high enough, and the number of berths to fill low enough, that they should be able to screen for the better candidates. And while mutinies may happen, they are going to have to involve the officers to some extent or there will be no one to fly the ships.

What do you think about the status of the Spacefleet personnel? Do you play it as written or modify things to be different? If so, what modifications do you make? Share your ideas in the comment section below.

The original draft of this post (everything up through the end of the initial quote) was saved back in May of 2018, right after I started the blog. It had been bouncing around in my mind for a while then, and that was two years ago. I might have more to say in the future but it’s late and I need some sleep.

Detailed Frontier Timeline – FY61.112 to FY61.141

This month got a bit busy in the middle with the Dramune Run starting, the first Saurian ark ship headed toward the Frontier departing, the UPFS Eleanor Moraes beginning its fateful trip, and the sathar starting their final push on the Saurian homeworld.

Date (FY)	Events
61.112	After 60 hours of initial jump calculations, the crew of the HSS History’s Hope begin accelerating for a jump back to YS05, eight light years away.
61.113	The investigation by Star Law trace the sabotage that killed the Consolidated Nebula employees back to a worker at Groth Station. Local agents are dispatched to bring him in for questioning.
61.114	The being thought to be the saboteur of the starliner is finally tracked down and while Star Law agents are speaking to him, he is shot by an unknown assailant and killed. After a chase through the station, the assailant is cornered and, unable to get away, turns his gun on himself and fires, dying instantly.
61.115	Initial background checks on both the victim (the saboteur) and the hitman that killed him reveal that they don’t seem to have any connection and are just normal people, neither with any sort of record. More investigation will be needed.
61.116	The UPFS Eleanor Moraes successfully jumps to the FS11 system, dubbed Padda. (SFKH2) They begin deceleration toward the binary star system and start scanning the system for planets.
61.117	The HSS History’s Hope successfully jumps back to the YS05 system. Remaining near jump speed, they immediately get to work on engine overhauls and calculations for the jump back to YS03.
61.118	After running all the way across the Frontier from Dramune, the Gullwind arrives at Minotaur station in the Theseus system. The crew start working on engine overhauls and replenishing the ship.
61.119	Repairs compete for the PGC shipyard (Gran Quivera, Prenglar) restoring the starship construction center to full capacity.
61.120	The sathar war fleet arrives at Tischen were it will spend two days before pushing on to the Sauria system.
61.121	The members of the Gullwind crew, all dralasites, are killed by agents hired by Malco on Minotaur station (Theseus). Garalus slips the Gullwind from its berth at the station and departs for White Light alone.
61.122	– Crown princess Leotia Valentine Leotus (Clarion, White Light) celebrates her 34th birthday. – Loading complete, the 7^th Saurian ark ship begins accelerating to leave the Sauria system. This one is headed toward the Frontier. – The Sathar fleet departs the Tischen system enroute to the Sauria system.
61.123	SynthCorp launches a limited trial of the “Muffin Button” on Inner Reach (Dramune). For a monthly subscription of 1 cr, you receive a button that each time you press it, 2 fresh-baked muffins are delivered to your door by robotic courier and 1 cr is charged to your account.
61.124	Garalus Tylappar docks the beleaguered Gullwind at Clarion Station (White Light) and begins looking for a replacement crew. (SFKH1)
61.125	The last ships of SF Nova leave the PGC shipyards at Gran Quivera (Prenglar). They are assigned to patrol the vrusk loop of the Frontier, starting with a trip to the Cassidine System where they will exercise and brief Task Force Cassidine on their trip to the Rim
61.126	Garalus finds a new crew for the Gullwind. While conducting some business in the Spacer’s Lounge, they are attacked but drive off the assailants.
61.127	– The Saurian ark ship successfully jumps out of the Sauria system and arrives in the OFS179 system. They begin scanning for suitable world but don’t have high hopes as the star is only a small M0 dwarf. – The new crew get to work repairing the Gullwind’s hull which was damaged in the flight from Dramune.
61.128	– After completing and double checking their jump calculations, the HSS History’s Hope successfully jumps back to the YS03 system from YS05. They begin decelerating and start the calculations once again to jump back to the YS05 system. – While working on the hull repair, the new crew of the Gullwind is attacked by the leader of the thugs from the Spacer’s Lounge with a new group of toughs. They drive these attackers away as well.
61.129	– After only six days in distribution, SynthCorp has to temporarily suspend orders on the “Muffin Button” as the dralasites of Inner Reach have overloaded the system. – Repairs to the hull complete, the Gullwind immediately departs Clarion station, bound for the Madderly’s Star system. – The sathar battle fleet is detected decelerating toward Kischen, the saurian homeworld in the Sauria system. All of the saurian defense ships are mobilized to intercept the sathar fleet as far from the homeworld as possible.
61.130	– Repairs of the Triad Starship Construction Center complete restoring it to full capacity. – Shortly after leaving Clarion Station, the Gullwind is attacked by another armed freighter, the Nightshade. They manage to drive off the attackers and escape. – The saurian defense fleet engages the sathar ships. Many of the sathar ships are damaged or destroyed but the saurian losses are just as bad. The sathar break off the attack and begin retreating toward Tischen. Two saurian Battle Rays are tasked to tail the retreating sathar while the other ships return for repairs.
61.131	– After 15 days of scanning the Padda system, the crew of the UPF Eleanor Moraes have discovered no planets orbiting the stars. They begin calculating a jump to the next system, dubbed Waller Nexus (FS24) – Health failing, Garlus collapses. When revived, realizing he has only days to live at most, he reveals to his new crew the reason for the flight from Dramune and the recent attacks and charges them to get the chukkahs safely back to Inner Reach. – A second sathar fleet arrives in OFS 184 enroute to the Sessar system.
61.132	After accelerating away for two days, the sathar ships In the Sauria system begin decelerating again looking to stop somewhere in the outer Sauria system. The two trailing Battle Rays radio this information back to Kischen and begin decelerating as well.
61.133	Shortly before the Gullwind makes the jump to Madderly’s Star, Garlus Tylappar passes away leaving his new crew to finish the Dramune Run on their own.
61.134	The Gullwind successfully jumps to the Madderly’s Star system. The crew immediately get to work on engine overhauls which are a jump overdue. Between the three engines, 108 hours of work are needed to get the overhauls completed.
61.135	Strike Force Nova arrives in orbit around Triad (Cassidine). They will spend a week here working with TF Cassidine.
61.136	After a week of changes, updates, and upgrades, SynthCorp re-enables its “Muffin Button” service, but with the price doubled to 1cr a muffin.
61.137	The second sathar battle fleet arrives at the Rock in the Sessar system. They begin a massive orbital bombardment of the planet, completely destroying the saurian population there. The saurians manage to get word out via subspace radio to alert the people of Kischen.
61.138	– Calculations complete, and another 7 days without a planetary detection, the UPF Eleanor Moraes begins acceleration for a jump to the Waller Nexus system. – In their second 100 days of operation, the OE jump route between Cassidine and Truane’s Star yields the company just over 2.5 million in gross profits.
61.139	On their second attempt, the HSS History’s Hope successfully jumps from YS03 to YS05, completing both directions of that jump and fully charting it. The jump data are sent back their supporting foundation but not to the UPF. Work begins to plot the jump back to YS06.
61.140	With the engine overhauls complete, the Gullwind begins accelerating for a jump to the Cassidine system.
61.141	The Gullwind’s radar detects two unidentified ships closing on the freighter. Deciding they don’t want another fight, the crew strap into their acceleration chairs and max out the Gullwind’s engines for several hours, avoiding the encounter.

Here’s the full timeline file:

DetailedFrontierTimeline Download

State of the Frontier – June 2020

This is coming on the first of July instead of the last day of June as I was hosting the RPG Blog Carnival last month and the normal day for this post was filled by the wrap-up post for the carnival. Let’s get to it.

Looking Back

As I already mentioned, last month I was host to the RPG Blog Carnival with a theme of “Organizations” and that was the source of the majority of last month’s posts. I started the month (and the blog carnival) off with a post about the True Yazira Society, a group that works to oppose the Family of One and preserve the cultural heritage of Yazira. Mid month, I wrote about another organization, the Investors, a shadowy organization that works to increase their personal wealth and power by manipulating governments and corporations throughout the Frontier. Finally, we finished the month with the wrap up post for the blog carnival.

In between those posts I sprinkled in the regular Detailed Frontier Timeline post, and a post about a new location, Myha’s Beach, a city east of Point True on Pale.

Behind the scenes I was supposed to be working on issue 29 of the Frontier Explorer. And while I did get some work done on that, I did not get nearly as much as I should have.

I also ran a session on my online Star Frontiers game, “Skills for Hire.” There should have been two sessions but due to technical difficulties and a lack of players, the second session didn’t happen. There was a bit of development work for that game that will show up in future posts. I just have to wait for the players to get to it so that posting the details doesn’t spoil things. But there is at least a location and possibly another organization to be written about.

On the technical side, I finally got my mail server migrated and updated from my old server to the new one. My old server is now officially retired. It’s still up and running so I can access stored passwords and such on my account there but all my servers are now running on the new machine. I even started looking into an upgrade of the starfrontiers.us site but didn’t get very far on that. Upgrading the mail server allowed me to use security certificates from Let’s Encrypt instead of being completely self-signed. Going forward this will solve some of the mail issues I’ve been having with my websites since their recent migration and upgrade.

Looking Forward

Beyond the Detailed Frontier Timeline post next week, I really don’t know what this month will bring. There should be a post about a new location. I have all the maps and room descriptions, I just need the players in my online game to get there first. 🙂

I also think I’ll be doing another post on the HSS History’s Hope. This will include at least an updated map of it’s progress, a description of the ship, it’s game specs, and possibly a rough 3D image. I’m currently working on deck plans for the ship but I don’t think I’ll finish them this month.

That just leaves one post up in the air. We’ll see what comes up, possibly a writeup of the mini adventure I’m waiting to run for my game.

The main thing I’m going to be working on is issue 29 of the Frontier Explorer. My goal is to have it all done by the 15th and out to the supporters of the magazine’s Patreon campaign. That means it will be out on the 22nd for general release. If you want to get it early, consider joining as a supporter there. Although if you are already a supporter of this site, don’t feel that you need to support both.

Also related to my on-line game, I’m still planning on posting the audio of the sessions (and possibly the video as well) on-line as a podcast here on the site. I just haven’t had the time to sit down and get it all put together. I was waiting for a Windows update that would allow me to use the Windows Subsystem for Linux 2 on my computer. That came through earlier in the month (finally, it was dated for April). If I find time between working on the Frontier Explorer and posts for the site, I’ll try to get that up.

I’ve also floated the idea of doing a podcast series reading and discussing the core rule books for the game. I posted about this on the Facebook group and it got a positive response so maybe I’ll tackle that at some point in the future as well. But probably not this month?

Your Thoughts

Do you have any ideas or suggestions on things you’d like to see in the blog? Is the rules reading and commentary postcast something that would be of interest to you? Anything I’ve mentioned that you don’t want to see? Let me know in the comments below.

June RPG Blog Carnival – Organizations – Wrap-up

It’s the end of the month and time for a wrap-up on this month’s RPG Blog Carnival. Regular readers of my blog know that I normally do a “State of the Frontier” post on the last day of the month, that post will be up tomorrow. Today we’re going to look at the various entries in this month’s blog carnival topic, Organizations.

I don’t know if the topic wasn’t very appealing, people were crazy busy, or if the blog carnival is losing steam but we did not have a lot of submissions this month. I know I’m guilty of not doing an article every month as sometimes I’m strapped for time or just don’t have the inspiration to bend the often fantasy themed topics to sci-fi. But I was hoping this month’s topic of organizations would be broad enough to appeal widely, I guess I was wrong. That said the entries we did get were great.

First up was Building a Financial Landscape with Megacorps by Phil Forbes on the Stray RPG Thoughts blog. This entry discusses how to use Keith J. Davies’ Polyhedral Pantheons system to, instead of creating gods for a setting, create a series of mega-corps that are the main influencers in a setting. Phil then goes on to apply the system to the local branches of the mega-corps and the local markets they are operating in. This provides a rich framework of connections and competing interests for the players to interact with. I found this one interesting as my preferred setting, Star Frontiers, already has a pantheon of canonical mega-corps controlling various interests throughout the setting. I’m definitely going to take a look at this system for expanding these interactions.

Next up was an entry by Andrew Girdwood on the Geek Native blog. He gave us a random secret society generator. You can never have enough random names on hand and this generator gives you an infinite supply. You choose a general genre (Contemporary, Horror, Low or High Fantasy, or Sci-Fi) and then generate a name. You can keep clicking to get new ones or until you find one that sparks your imagination. The second one I got on his sci-fi generator was “The Eternal Planet Faction.” I immediately thought of a tie-in with the True Yazira society that I posted as part of the kickoff of this month’s carnival. In this case, it’s not part of the True Yazira Society, but a faction within the Family of One and the GODCo mega-corp that is trying to recreate their homeworld. I might write that up in the future. I’ll definitely use it at some point in my game.

Next was the entry by Gonz from Codex Anathema with their entry on the Silver Arrows, a loose, crime-prevention organization that might be part of the Church of the Silver Flame in their Ebberon campaign. They even provide a variation on the Arcane Archer archetype to play a member of the Silver Arrows.

As host, I offered up two different organizations. The first as part of the kickoff post, was the True Yazira society, primarily a cultural organization striving to preserve the traditions of their homeworld but also opposing the practices of the group that has usurped authority (as the True Yaziria Society sees it) from the rightful rules of their species. The second was the Investors, as shadowy, behind-the-scenes organization that works to influence governments and corporations to increase their own wealth and power.

That’s it for this month’s RPG Blog Carnival. I hope you found a nugget you could use in your game from this month’s posts or were inspired to generate some new organizations for your world even if you don’t blog or didn’t submit an entry. For me this is just a springboard as I plan to present various organizations from my setting in future posts, not just part of the Blog Carnival. I have several ideas lined up, I just need to find the time to write them down and get them posted.

Next month’s entry is still TBD but be sure to check out the RPG Blog Carnival’s home page on the Of Dice and Dragons blog to find links to past and future topics. And come back tomorrow for my regular “State of the Frontier” Post.

Myha’s Beach

I had originally planned to do a post on the HSS History’s Hope this week but I’m not quite ready for that. Instead, I’m giving you the outlines of a small town on Pale, Myha’s Beach. While I developed this as part of my Star Frontiers campaign, you could easily drop this town on to any world in any game.

Location

In my game, Myha’s Beach is located about 300-400km east of Point True on the sea coast. Here’s a map of the region around Point True.

I can’t seem to find where I recorded it, but I believe each of those grid boxes are either 300 or 350 km on a side.

History

Myha’s Beach started as a small fishing village founded shortly after the sathar were driven out of the Frontier. The village was built about five kilometers south of the crater left from the sathar’s destruction of a former costal city.

Not long after the basic city infrastructure was in place, the small town became a favorite beach destination for vacationers wanting to get away from Point True. The waters are warm and clear as the spur of land to the north keeps the cooler arctic waters from flowing into the bay. The city has embraced this role and now tourism employs a major portion of the city’s workforce.

About a decade after the city was founded, Streel decided to get into the shipbuilding industry and brokered a deal with the city to open a shipyard some 10 kilometers to the south of the city proper. This caused the city’s population to grow once again as the shipyard workers moved to Myha’ Beach and more services grew up to support the new citizens.

City Layout

Myha’s Beach is a long narrow city that sprawls out along the seacoast. The original village lies toward the northern end of the current town. The original marina is still in use. As the tpwn began to grow, it was originally small, 4-10 room hotels that were built both north and south of the original village, with almost everything built with access to the beach. This region of small hotels and private residences comprises the northern 3-4 kilometers of the town, centered on the now historic original village center and marina.

With the construction of the Streel shipyards to the south of the town, the town’s growth began to shift more in that direction with new residential and commercial districts being built southward with the residences on the beach and the commercial districts more inland. While growth continued to the north, it slowed considerably. At this same time, several large resort-style hotels were built on large swaths of the beach south of the existing city.

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.

The 3-4 kilometers around the initial resort hotels was zoned for more of the same while the area between these large hotels and the Streel shipyards was reserved for the smaller hotels and residences. As this area filled in the city began to grow inland from the seashore with more commercial and residential areas to support the growing resident and tourist population.

In FY36 a small spaceport was built about 30 kilometers inland from the town to reduce the noise and air traffic impact on the town. This allows offworld visitors to come straight to Myha’s Beach instead of having to go to Point True first.

Current Population

The current resident population of Myha’s Beach is about 20,000. It is about 55% human, 20% yazirian, 15% vrusk, 9% dralasite and the remaining 1% made up of Rim and other races. In addition to the residents, the city supports between 20 to 40 thousand visitors, depending on the time of year.

About 5% of the resident population work at the Streel shipyards. Another 10% work in the town’s still thriving fishing industry supplying fresh seafood to both the local residents and tourists but also to Point True. A quarter of the resident population works directly in the tourist industry running shops, hotels, equipment rentals, and as guides both to the ocean and the inland areas. The remaining population works all of the support industries including city services, maintenance, restaurants, and stores that keep the city running.

Your thoughts?

That’s the city of Myha’s Beach. What other details would you like to see in a city write-up like this? Do you have any suggestions for other things that should be included or discussed? Let me know in the comments below.

The Investors

This is another new organization for the June RPG Blog Carnival which I’m hosting here on the Expanding Frontier. I had originally thought I was going to write about my vision of the Galactic Task Force, Incorporated, which I am using in my current game, but decided that I would rather go with something completely new instead of an already established mega-corp in the setting. So I decided to write about “The Investors” a secret society I created as part of my Detailed Frontier Timeline project.

The Investors

The Investors is a secret society composed of a number of the very, very wealthy citizens of the Frontier. They work behind the scenes on nearly all the worlds of the Frontier. Very few people outside the organization even know of its existence. Star Law has a slim file on the organization, and a few of the large mega-corps have some data, and a few planetary governments have some data, but beyond that, they are very obscure.

The society does not have an official name, the members just refer to themselves as “investors.”

Aims and Goals

The aims and goals of the organization can be summarized by two words, money and power. The organization exists to increase the wealth of its members and increase the power they have in influencing the operation of the Frontier economy.

The members of the society, while sometimes at odd with one another, and always in competition with each other, use their already considerable assets to influence businesses and governments in ways that will increase their personal wealth and make it possible for them to exert greater influence in the future.

An example of this recently in my Detailed Frontier Timeline is their acquisition of the Groth Energy Corporation on Groth in the Fromeltar system, the major power supplier on that world. First, they manipulated the finances of the company to force it into near bankruptcy. They then bought out the previous owners, and finally tripled energy prices on the planet. Since GE was the only power supplier to many portions of the planet, people either had to pay the new prices or go without power. At the same time, they started trying to buy up all the smaller energy producers as well. They were a little too rash, however, and many of the smaller energy providers banded together to form the Consolidated Nebula Energy Group to fight back.

As the society has grown, and due to its decentralized nature, sometimes the members find themselves working at cross purposes with other members. When this is discovered, they meet to discuss the best way forward that provides the greatest benefit to all. If there is ever a business conflict that seemed to be at a compete impasse and then suddenly resolved itself, sometimes in a completely unexpected manner, it may very well have been the investors behind the scenes making deals.

History

The society started at a country club on Triad in the Cassidine system, in 37 p.f. There was a gala event and three of the Frontier’s richest beings, including the then CEO of Pan Galactic Corporation, were commiserating with one another about all the laws and restrictions their respective planetary governments were placing on them. One of them joked that they should create an organization to invest in the right people to sway things in the direction they wanted. The idea stuck with them and by the end of the night, the three had formed a rough outline of how they would operate.

Over the years, the original three members felt out others around the Frontier with similar feelings and desires and the number of investors grew. While they are primarily a self-interested lot, not everything they do is necessarily bad. Fed up with the depredations of the pirate Hatzk Naar, the organization worked to facilitate the organization of the First Common Muster. The sathar invasion in the Truane’s Star system a few years later was definitely bad for business and the organization was instrumental in the speed at which the Second Common Muster happened, which allowed the sathar to be quickly defeated. And with the formation of the UPF, most of the new military contracts for the creation of Spacefleet and equipping Star Law went to businesses owned by members of the society.

Today, members of the society control, or at least exert strong influence over, nearly all the mega-corps and large planetary corporations. They have tendrils into almost all the governments of the Frontier with some of the members serving in those governments.

Membership

There are no more that a few dozen members of the society across the entire Frontier. You must have a net worth of over a billion credits to even be considered for membership and there just are not that many billionaires out there.

No single person within the organization knows all the members, or even the true names of all the members as they only interact through holovid communications and use aliases in their interactions. While a single member might know the true identity of a few other members, possibly the person who recruited them and those they may have recruited, the members are careful about not revealing their identities, even to other members of the society.

That said, due to the limited pool of possible recruits, it is sometimes possible to determine the identity of other members by the agendas that they support. And a few members openly share their identity to other members.

The membership contains representatives from nearly every major industry in the Frontier.

Recruitment is done slowly and carefully. As members interact with the other elite, wealthy citizens, they keep an ear out for those that are discontent with restrictions they are facing or which are limiting their opportunities. These contacts are nurtured and if they are deemed to have the right mindset and ethics, they are approached for membership, sometimes openly and sometimes indirectly.

Organization

There is no real hierarchy or formal organization to the society. In theory all members are equal. When conflicts arise or major decisions have to be made, they form committees consisting of the members affected by the activity to discuss and debate the issues and reach a decision.

Occasionally, some endeavors are so large in scope, that it requires a meeting of the entire society. These events are rare and are usually scheduled around major events on one of the core worlds that all the members would reasonably expect to travel for anyway. Even these major meetings are held remotely so as to preserve the anonymity of the members that wish to do so.

Despite there being no formal organizations, there are definitely clicks and power blocks within the organization. Most members are at least somewhat loyal to the member that recruited them and gave them access to the society. Other power groups form along industry lines or other areas of common interest. Some major decisions can take weeks to resolve as each group tries to influence things most favorably for themselves.

What do you think?

The society’s outline is fairly vague and nebulous. That is intentional. It is partially due to the fact that the society is still taking shape in my game and I haven’t decided exactly how and where I want to use it. But it is also partially to allow others to shape and use it in their games as they wish. This description paints broad strokes over the society’s operations and memberships but leaves the details for individual game masters to implement in ways specific to their campaign.

Let me know your thoughts on the society and how you might use such an organization in your game. And don’t forget to check out the other posts linked in the comments of the kickoff post of this month’s blog carnival to see what others are writing about on this month’s topic.