Tag Archives: Asset Recovery

Asset Recovery – Project Outline

Cross section of the CDCSS Nightwind

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

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

Asset Recovery

Project Tag: Asset Recovery

Level

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

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

Premise

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

Basic Story

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

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

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

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

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

Materials Needed for the Adventure

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

Last Thoughts

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

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

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