Carlos Kildare (Quickdeath Bounty Hunter)

Life has been a bit crazy recently and I haven’t posted anything for a couple of weeks but progress is being made. I should be getting several post up over the next couple of weeks. We start this month off with an NPC that you might encounter while traveling in the outback on Pale, Carlos Kildare. The Death at Rosegard adventure features an opportunity for the PC’s to meet and possibly work with Carlos. That interaction will be detailed in a different post but for now, here is his description and stats.

Carlos Kildare

Quickdeath hunter

Carlos was born on Minotaur but emigrated to Pale when the planet was first colonized. He is a first-wave colonist but has become a bit of curmudgeon as he has aged. Carlos is the classic “been there, done that and got the scars to prove it” sort of character that you might meet around the Frontier.

He grew up in Point True and was present when the sathar landed at the outset of the First Sathar War. He joined the Aletheia Resistance Band and fought the alien invaders for the duration of the war. With the defeat of the sathar fleets in space and material support from the Pan Galactic Corporation, the government of Pale inducted all the resistance fighters into ad hoc army formations. Carlos attained the rank of sergeant in one of these rag tag militia formations but left the military after the sathar infantry were wiped out on Pale.

Since that time he’s done well collecting bounties on sathar attack monsters that were let loose during the war. He uses a modified Snow Panther track vehicle (stats below) to get around. For a time right after the war, there was a glut of bounty hunters seeking quick cash but the pickings have become slim and only a few hardcore hunters remain in the business. Carlos had his crew quit after a recent run of bad luck and is seeking extra hands for his team.

He has also recently been diagnosed with a nearly inoperable cancer. He could allow the doctors to attempt to treat it but the “cure” will leave him weak and change little or nothing. He would rather spend his time going after bounties and may have a bit of a death wish.

Stats

Human, Male

Age: 140
STR/STA: 45/55
DEX/RS: 60/60
INT/LOG: 35/40
PER/LDR: 35/50
PS: +3, IM: +6, Ranged: Beam 70%, Projectile 50%, Melee: 53%
PSA: Military
Skills: Beam weapons 4, Melee weapons 3, Projectile weapons 2, Technician 2
Equipment: Military Skeinsuit, Sonic Disruptor & power belt, Machete, chronocom, ID, sun goggles, and military issue parka and snow pants.
Equipment stowed in the Snow Panther: 2 holo projectors and a type 3 parabattery, a kerosene powered type 1 generator, five 5 gallon jerry cans (for kerosene), 3 electro stunners, two pikes (pole arms), 4 solvaway, 5 tangler grenades, 5 frag grenades, 1 auto rifle, a dozen 20 SEU clips and 6 auto rifle clips, survival food & water, a single wire electric fence (100 m long with 20 SEU clip- acts as a stun stick if anything touches the wire), a depleted med kit (enough Biocort and supplies to perform first aid twice as well as 4 doses of anti-tox), and a half depleted tech kit (50% chance the kit is missing the part you need for the current skill check).

The Snow Panther

Vehicle:               Snow Panther
Cost (Cr):             17,500
Top Speed:         75 kph (125m/turn)
Cruise Speed:    60 kph (100m/turn)
Acceleration:     40m/turn
Deceleration:    30m/turn
Turn speed:       70 m/turn
Passengers:        6
Cargo Limits:      3000 kg, 8 cubic meters

The Snow Panther is a tracked working vehicle designed for the bitter cold of the planet Pale’s environment. Most that are used in the outback are optimized to be lived in with fold down cots, a small camp stove and a space heater. With a full complement of passengers, it can be a bit crowded but is still workable.

Kildare’s Snow Panther has been modified with a roof hatch and the roof has a low railing running around the roof. There is also a winch and swing arm for lifting heavy objects to the roof as well as a power port that connects to the parabattery. On the sides and back of the vehicle is a folding catwalk with railing that is just wide enough for one person to walk on. While the cat walk is deployed it is possible to walk on it entirely around the vehicle (but off the ground) except in front.

Note: The generator will operate for four hours on five gallons of fuel. It has a full tank and the jerry cans are full so the generator can be run for a total of 24 hours producing 500 SEU/hour. The snow panther uses 1 SEU/kilometer to travel. The life support systems and cook stove use 2 SEU/day.

Void Sickness

Traveling through hyperspace ain’t like dusting crops, boy!

Han Solo, Star Wars

While a little out of context (Han was actually referring to astrogation calculations), the quote still applies – faster than light (FTL) travel is not just a walk in the park.

In this post, I want to look at a mechanic for FTL induced illness, which I’ll be calling Void Sickness. The name comes because I created this mechanic for my Star Frontiers games where FTL travel is accomplished by traveling through “The Void” or “Void Jumping”. In that game, you accelerate up to speed (1% the speed of light) and then make a nearly instantaneous transition into and out of the Void to cross many light years. The rules are a little vague on the actual duration but I’ve always used 1 second per light year. When you re-emerge you are in a new star system (hopefully your destination if you got the astrogation correct).

But what happens physiologically when you make the transition? You are entering, even if it is briefly, a dimension your body wasn’t designed for. It’s natural that your body may have an adverse reaction to the transition.

During the Jump

First there is the physical manifestations during the brief time in the Void. I always describe this as a confusion of the senses. You can feel colors, hear tastes, see sound, etc. And it could be different for different species or even individuals within a species. I often use this picture to describe the visual sensations.

But what I want to talk about today is what happens after you exit the Void.

Aftereffects

Many games don’t worry about this. They just assume that the PCs and others can experience FTL travel with no worries or side effects. And that is absolutely fine. If having potentially negative consequences of FTL travel is not something you want in your game, then you don’t have to have it. But if you do, this is a possible mechanic you can use.

In my case, I wanted to add a potential downside to FTL travel that starts out fairly benign and uncommon but becomes worse the more and more you travel. Until it possibly reaches a point that you simply don’t want to make any more interstellar trips unless you absolutely have to. Here’s what I came up with.

Void Sickness

Void Sickness is not an uncommon effect of FTL travel and some people are more susceptible to it than others. But even if you are susceptible to it, it doesn’t affect you on every trip. It is also a condition that worsens, with both increased susceptibility and symptoms, the more times you engage in FTL travel.

I’ll present this as a percentage based system (since that is what Star Frontiers, which I originally developed it for, uses) but you can easily convert this to a d20 or other system if you want.

Original Version

This is the original version of Void Sickness I developed. It’s actually pretty harsh, I’ll present a much milder version below.

To see if you are susceptible to Void Sickness you need to make a check against your Stamina (or CON or the equivalent from your system). Since STA in Star Frontiers typically ranges from 30-70, you make a STA+20 check the first time you make a Void Jump. If you make the roll, you do not suffer from Void Sickness on this trip and your base chance to avoid Void Sickness on all other jumps starts at 95% (i.e. if you roll a 95 or lower on d100 you are not sick).

If you fail this roll, you are susceptible to Void Sickness. You suffer from the sickness on this trip and your base chance to avoid it on future trips is equal to your STA score. Thus you are much more likely to succumb to it in the future.

On all future FTL trips, you make a roll against your resistance score. If you succeed, you do not suffer from Void Sickness for that trip. If you fail, you do suffer and your resistance score is reduced by one.

The impact of the Void Sickness is determined by the amount you failed your roll. The difference between your roll and your resistance score determines both the strength of the effect and its duration. This value becomes the penalty you suffer on all skill and ability checks and it lasts for that many hours.

For example: Drod, a dralasite, has a STA of 50 and is making his first interstellar trip. He checks for his susceptibility to Void sickness by rolling a d100 and rolls an 76 which is 6 points higher than this initial check (50+20 = 70). He is susceptible to Void Sickness and going forward his resistance score is only 50. For this trip he suffers a relatively mild case and only has a -6 modifier to his skills and abilities for the next 6 hours. If on a future trip,if he were to fail the resistance roll again, his resistance would drop to 49.

A Milder Form

In its original form, the Void Sickness is something that everyone will succumb to eventually if they take enough interstellar trips and if you have a string of bad luck, you could succumb to it fairly quickly. If you want the effect to be fairly rare, and slower acting when someone does have it, you can use the following variation. With this form, it is probably something the PCs will never have to deal with but you could have Void Sickness in your campaign as setting material to use on NPCs.

In this form, the base chance the first time you make a jump is a flat 95% on a d100. If you roll less than that you don’t have the sickness and never will. You never have to roll again. If you do fail the roll, you have a mild case this time (you are not going to fail by more than 5 points) and your resistance roll going forward is equal to whatever you rolled this time. (i.e. if you rolled a 98, your resistance chance for all future trips starts at 98). The effects and increase in susceptibility are as before.

Mitigations

If the occurrence of this illness is common, there will probably be a number of ways to deal with it from drugs that boost your immunity to other drugs that mitigate the effects. If the occurrence is more rare, there may only be drugs to mitigate symptoms and there may not be anything specifically for Void Sickness but only the use of regular drugs to treat the symptoms. Here are some that I use in my game. All these are required to be administered by someone with the Medic skill.

VoidBoost

Cost: 25 credits

VoidBoost is designed to improve a being’s immunity and resistance to Void Sickness. If administered prior to the Void Jump, VoidBoost raises the recipient’s resistance to Void Sickness by 20 to a maximum of 95%. Only a single dose of VoidBoost can be administered for any given trip. Additional doses have no effect.

Most starliners stock this medication for their passengers. It is either provided for free as part of the passage fare or at a discounted cost.

VoidBlock

Cost: 40 credits

VoidBlock is a broad spectrum medicine designed to reduce the effects of the symptoms of Void Sickness. It has no effect on the duration. It works by reducing the penalty to ability and skill checks due to Void Sickness. VoidBlock reduces the negative modifier associated with Void Sickness by 1d10+10 for 20 hours. No more than one dose can be taken in a 20 hour period. Any doses taken beyond the first in that time automatically have no effect. VoidBlock cannot be taken in conjunction with VoidReduce. If it is, neither drug has any effect.

Most starliners stock this medication for their passengers. It is either provided for free as part of the passage fare or at a discounted cost.

VoidReduce

Cost: 35 Credits

Void Reduce is designed to reduce the duration of the effects of Void Sickness. It has no effect on they actual impact of the symptoms. A dose of VoidReduce decreases the duration of Void Sickness by 1d10+10 hours. Only one dose of VoidReduce can be taken for any given occurrence of Void Sickness. Any additional doses automatically have no effect. VoidReduce cannot be take in conjunction with VoidBlock. If it is, neither drug has any effect.

Most starliners stock this medication for their passengers. It is either provided for free as part of the passage fare or at a discounted cost.

Other Medications

Depending on your game system there may be other medications already in the game that can mitigate some of the effects of Void Sickness. You can make a judgement based on the effects of the drugs in your game. For Star Frontiers, I allow the following:

Biocort – one dose of Biocort reduces the duration of Void Sickness by 1d5+5 hours. Only one dose of Biocort can be applied for a given occurrence of Void Sickness. If administered with VoidBlock or VoidReduce, Biocort has no effect.
Stimdose – one dose of Stimdose reduces the effects of Void sickness by 1d5+5 for 10 hours. Only one dose of Stimdose can be administered in a 20 hour period as per the standard rules. If administered with VoidBlock or VoidReduce, Stimdose has no effect.
Neutrad (from Zeb’s Guide) – one dose of Neutrad reduces the effects of Void Sickness by 1d5 points and its duration by 1d5 hours. Only one dose of Neutrad can be administered for any given case of Void Sickness. However, if administered with any other medication, none of the other medications have any effect.

Side note: Due to the way Neutrad affects Void Sickness, scientists believe that Void Sickness is some form of temporary radiation poisoning but the exact form of radiation is unknown and not reproducible outside of a Void jump. Many companies contract with ships to carry small micro experiments that run during the Void jump in an attempt to understand the cause of this illness.

Converting to Other Systems

Adapting this to another system is fairly straightforward.

If you want to use this in a d20 or 3d6 based system, You could simply multiply the relevant ability score by 3, 4, or 5 to get the initial base percentage for Void Sickness resistance if you wanted to keep with the d100 percentage system outlined. The multiplier would depend on how likely you want the occurrence to be but by default I’d use 4 as that maps the closest to the ability score range that I designed against. In any other system just use a suitable modifier.

If you don’t want to use the percentage based system but use the core mechanic from your system, simply reduce the percentage by the appropriate multiplier. e.g. for a d20 based system simply divide the resistance chance by five (and subtract that from 20 for a roll-over success system like D&D to get the target number.) Penalties can still be just the difference between the roll and the target and the duration becomes the difference times the modifier used. If you are using a 3d6 system the percentages don’t map as closely but it still works. The net effect would be for a slower initial deterioration followed by a very rapid final decline. If you are using a game with a dice pool system, a little more work would be required to convert the mechanic.

The hardest part to adapt would be the slow deterioration of the resistance chance. Instead of a reduction on every failure, you could implement a reduction after every N failures, where N is probably the multiplier used elsewhere. Or you could require a CON (or equivalent) check each time they suffer from Void Sickness. If they fail, their resistance weakens. If they succeed, their resistance doesn’t change.

Final Thoughts

I created this illness primarily as background flavor for my setting. It’s not something I ever expect the PCs to suffer from. Unless they want to. If the PC’s background is such that they would have taken interstellar trips before the game starts, I give them the option to automatically select susceptibility if they want or to just roll. It was more designed as something that NPCs could suffer from and that the PCs would have to deal with in that manner. I also intended to use in some of the stories I was writing at the time (and that I may someday get back to).

Have you ever done anything similar in your games? Does this sound like something you might use in the future? Share your ideas, suggestions, and thoughts in the comments below.

Pale Background Information

What follows is player background information for the Death at Rosegard adventure. This is information that it is assumed the PCs would know from living in the Frontier and on the planet Pale where the adventure takes place. It covers a bit bit of history, planetary data, and socio-political information.

The adventure is written as if it takes place after the first sathar incursion into the Frontier but before the Second Sathar War begins. As such, instead of referring to the initial sathar invasion as the First Sathar War as is common in the rule books, the text refers to it as the Great Sathar War since there hasn’t been a second one yet. Expeptions occur when providing GM information designed to help modify the adventure for a different time period.

History

Pale is a new old planet. It was first colonized 176 years before the founding of the United Planetary Federation. It had a medium population before the Great Sathar War that led to the founding of the UPF. At that time Point True had a population of several hundred thousand inhabitants.

During the war every major population center other than Point True, as well as most minor population centers were destroyed by orbital bombardment. Even small villages and farmstead were destroyed by aerial bombing. There is basically just a big crater at the location of every city, town, village, or farm that existed before the invasion. In Point True, the old military base was nuked leaving several large craters and damage to remaining structures but the rest of the city was left relatively intact. There are still signs of the Sathar occupation that can be seen throughout the older portions of Point True.

The sathar were in the process of exporting the inhabitants off-world when the Frontier forces arrived and the sathar were defeated and driven off. Many thousands of the inhabitants of Point True were taken away in sathar ships and have never been heard from since.

After the war, the planet rebounded, partially due to the influx of people coming to help rebuild and partially due to aggressive development by Streel Corporation (known as Streele Mining Corp before the war). At the time of the adventure, about 40-50 years after the invasion, the population has grown to nearly its pre-war level. While the population is predominantly human, there is a significant representation of the other three major Frontier races. The racial breakdown is 46% human, 23% Yazirian, 18% Dralasite, and 13% Vrusk. However, since the war, the population is much more concentrated around Point True. Some portions of the planet are still completely uninhabited.

Planetary Rotation and Timekeeping

Pale orbits its primary, Truane’s Star, in the outer portions of the star’s habitable zone. This causes the average temperature on Pale to be fairly low resulting in cold and severe winters and cool summers. Pale is also a slightly smaller world with a surface gravity of only 0.9 g.

In addition to the cool weather, Pale rotates very slowly on its axis, completing one revolution every 55 standard hours. As such the local population has divided the day into four working time periods:

Day-day: Corresponds to the 13 hours starting roughly 1 hour after sunrise on the planet’s vernal equinox at Point True. This is the typical working time when the sun is up.
Day-night: This corresponds to the next 14 hour period and is typically a rest period although the sun is still shining. Because this rest period occurs during daylight hours, all houses on Pale have windows or curtains allowing rooms to be completely “blacked out” to simulate darkness and nighttime even though the sun is still up.
Night-day: This is the 13 hour work period occurring during the local night. Since this is a time of major work and transportation, all the streets and buildings of Pale are well lit to provide a semblance of daylight during this work period. When seen from orbit, the cities and towns of Pale in the Night-day part of the cycle blaze with light.
Night-night: This is the final 14 hour rest period that occurs during the local night time.

The extra hour is added in to either the Day-day or Night-day period depending on the season, the hour being added to the Day-day in the summer when the days are longer and the Night-day in the winter when the nights are longer.

Typical work periods are 10 hours long during the Day-day and Night-day periods although there are many graveyard and swing shift positions that run during other hours.

Sathar Presence on the Planet

As part of their invasion, the sathar seeded the biosphere around the planet, especially around Point True, with a number of their bio-constructs and attack monsters. Despite efforts to clean up after the war, some of these creatures are still loose on the planet. While quickdeaths and slithers are the most common, there are also a few other creatures that can be encountered when ranging away from the population centers. There are even still some cybodragons (and their descendants) running around although the cyber features are no longer functional due to lack of power. There are bounties for the elimination of these creatures paid for by the Pale government.

In addition to sathar bio-constructs, there are rumored to be some small pockets of sathar still living on the planet. These are remnants from the sathar army that was driven off and mostly destroyed when the planet was liberated. They survive by foraging and by hypnotizing and controlling members of the population to provide food and materials as needed. It is unknown how many of these sathar still survive and how active they are but the numbers range from a few dozen to several hundreds.

While rare, it is still possible to find some sathar technology from the war. It is rarely intact or functioning but any such finds are almost immediately collected by Star Law as soon as the discovery becomes known.

Politics and Corporations

Streel is by far the dominant force on the planet. After the war, Hilo Headrow took over Steele Mining and expanded its operations – first on Pale and then across the Frontier. While Streel doesn’t officially control the government, the government and its policies are fairly favorable towards the company and it is rumored that a majority of the government’s officials are “owned” by Streel in one way or another. Despite the potential negative aspects of this situation, Streel’s touch on the government is surprisingly light-handed given the tactics the company employs elsewhere around the Frontier. Much of the work of the government is environmentally sound and intelligent. Thoughtful practices are put into place that benefit all companies on the planet not just Streel. In fact, the planet is strong on fostering new ideas and companies.

While Streel is the dominant player, Pan Galactic Corporation still has a sizeable presence and even dominates in a few areas on the planet’s surface. In addition, a number of new emerging corporations have offices and operations on the planet. Names like StarPlay, WarTech, TransTravel, and Universal Households are becoming more common.

Miscellaneous GM Notes

The adventure takes place during the events of Laco’s War, the corporate war between Streel and PGC. While that conflict actually has no impact on the adventure, it should be kept in mind when PCs are interacting with outside agents. There is some tension between to two corporations.

Most of the other corporations listed in either the Knight Hawks Campaign Book or Zebulon’s Guide to the Frontier exist at this point although they are not yet considered mega-corps. Only Streel and PGC currently have that status. That said, they are growing and their presence is being felt on Pale.

By the time of the Second Sathar War, the population has rebounded to its pre-war level and is pushing into the heavy population category. If you set the adventure at another time period, adjust the size/number of towns and the population accordingly.

That’s it for the general background. I have a whole other section of background and detail information on the village of Rosegard itself but that will be another post. Feel free to share your thoughts on the planetary background in the comments below.

Outline for the Sathar Assault Carrier Project

As I was thinking about this project, I realized that if you are a player in a campaign and your GM uses any of my sathar material (probably a Star Frontiers campaign), this entire project is one giant spoiler. Although if you’ve already read through my Sathar Destroyer Technical Manual, then there will only be a few new things in this project beyond the decks themselves. Those are the bits I’m going to call out with the spoiler icon in all future posts on this subject as I’m going to assume that anyone here has read the technical manual. If you haven’t read the Sathar Destroyer Technical Manual, then the following warning applies to the entire series. You’ve been warned.

Now that that’s out of the way, let’s get started.

Sathar Assault Carrier

Project Tag: SatharAC

Overview

This is a project in the vein of my Sathar Destroyer and UPF Assault Scout technical manuals. It will cover in detail, including maps for every deck, the interior of the Sathar Assault Carrier. The design of the assault carrier will be based on the game stats and (roughly) the silhouette from the game rules but with my twist on how the sathar design and use their ships.

In addition to the physical design of the ship I include information about how the ship typically operates and information about the larger divisions of the sathar military (beyond that detailed in the destroyer technical manual).

Finally, I’ll include, either as part of this document or as a pair of separate documents, deck plans for the shuttles and fighters used by the assault carrier. I provided basic information on the shuttles in the Sathar Destroyer Technical Manual but no deck plans. I aim to correct that.

I’ll also be creating a 3D model of this ship.

Materials Needed

Ship design overview
Description of Sathar military structure
Fighter deck plan and write-up
Shuttle deck plan and write-up
Ship crew roster
Description and stats for any robots on the ship
Plans for each unique ship deck and description
Ship silhouette/cross-section showing deck arrangement
3D model of ships (one each of the following for the assault carrier, fighters, and shuttles)
- basic STL file for printing
- Blender file with materials and coloration for 3D graphics
Complete technical manual write-up describing each deck and the ship’s operation

Last Words

That’s the basic outline for this project. The assault carrier is a big ship. Based on the game rules, it’s about 380-475 meters long. I’m suspecting it will be closer to the smaller end but still, that’s going to be a lot of decks to create. However, many of them will be identical but used multiple times throughout the ship. It may actually end up having fewer unique decks than the destroyer did but we’ll see how this all falls out in the end.

If you have any thoughts or comments on this particular project, let me know in the comments below.

Outline of the Death at Rosegard Adventure Project

This is the first of what will be the “Outline” series of posts. I’ll typically do one of these for the start of each project and possibly smaller ones for major sub-projects pieces. We’ll have to see how it goes. In these posts my plan is to lay out the basic structure of the project, identifying what will be included, what needs to be created and so forth. I’ll tag each of these outlines, along with the post related to that project with a tag to make them easily identifiable. For this particular project, the tag is “Rosegard” as is called out below.

The first three outlines, for my initial projects, will probably be a bit more fleshed out than later ones since I’ve been thinking about them a bit, or in the case of this one, already mostly finished it. Or it may be that things go on, these will get more detailed as I’ll be better about thinking of things in advance. We’ll have to see. Also, these first ones won’t be open to much debate as they are projects that are fairly well along. For future projects however, I will be taking input and idea from commenters and Patreon supporters to provide direction on what is created.

This particular project, Death at Rosegard, is an adventure I ran for my on-line Star Frontiers game and I have all the major pieces in some form, I just need to clean them up and present them. So hopefully it will go pretty quickly. That’s not true of the other initial projects and any future projects I create.

Let’s get started.

Death at Rosegard

Project tag: Rosegard

Level

An adventure for 4-6 beginning characters. This was literally written for a group of 6 brand new characters as their first adventure.

Premise

The PCs work for a mega-corp (Streel in this case) which has an arrangement with the small village of Rosegard to operate a mine near the town. One of the mining staff has been murdered and the PCs are sent to investigate.

Spoiler Sidebar

These outline posts are going to be, by definition, spoilery. It can’t be helped. But then again, I think the main audience for this material is going to be game masters more than players. However, if you want to be a player in these adventures and have your GM run them, I’ll try to flag out things to skip so you don’t ruin the surprise. To do so I’ll flag spoilery sections with this blue and gold warning mark:

If it appears near a heading, skip to the next section. If it appears next to a paragraph or bullet item, you only have to skip that small bit. Finally, when I do a post about one of these spoiler topics, I’ll put the warning icon right at the top and that means you may want to skip the entire article. I may not always be successful in tagging everything but I’ll try. You’ve been warned.

In this particular article, I think the only thing you need to skip is the Basic Story section coming up and a couple of bullet items in the “materials needed” section.

Basic Story

One of the mine staff is a sleeper agent for the sathar and has been recently activated. He has been slowly over the past several months been “liberating” supplies from the mining facility and providing them to his sathar handler. He has been aided recently by someone from the town providing supplies as well. His actions were discovered and caught off guard, he killed the discoverer. He then disposed of the body in a way to attempt to make it look like it was done by the native fauna but that failed.

The PC’s are sent to attempt to find the murder and in the process should uncover the sathar connection, discover another sathar agent unconnected to the town, and a small sathar base in the mountains. In addition, they will get to interact with the village, meet the inhabitants and possibly form some connections to the village. There is also the person in the village that is aiding the sathar agent at the mine to discover

Materials Needed for the Adventure

World map showing the location of Rosegard in relation to other points of interest
Area map of the countryside around the village and the mine
Village map (rough draft appears above)
Mining compound map
Stats and bios of the mining staff
Stats and bios of the villagers
Map and bio for location with the external agent and how he’s connected to the story
Map and stats for the sathar base
Various bits of background and history for the planet and area
A “Where to go from here” section with further story ideas

Last Words

And there we go, a basic outline for the adventure and a list of what is needed. Normally that “materials needed” section would be the final bit of the outline but seeing as this is the first one, I thought I’d talk about it and how it will be used. At a most basic level, that list is the roadmap for upcoming blog posts. Those are the bits and pieces I’ll need to develop (and share) as I build the adventure.

The list will probably be incomplete and often a bit vague in the beginning as I’ll think of other things that need to be added along the way. It’s not my intention to come back and edit it as we go but I might do a post at the end to compare what was made to what I originally envisioned, in part to just see how it fell out and partially as a learning tool for myself to get better at planning and estimating what is involved.

In this particular case, most of what is on that list already exists, either as notes, sketches, rough drafts as I have already run the adventure. We’ll be working on turning those notes and drafts into final forms over the coming weeks.

What do you think about the outline format? Are there things you’d like to see included? Things that need more detail? Should I not worry about the spoiler alerts? Let me know in the comments below.

Designing Out Loud – Ability Scores – part 3

This post originally appeared on the now-defunct Arcane Game Lore blog.

I thought I was done with this set of ruminations with part 2 but after finishing that post I had a thought: Would it be possible to combine the two different set of ability scores into something that I like that could work with both skill systems?

Why? Well my reasoning was this. I know in the end I want both games. And I’d like them to be somewhat compatible with each other. Thus if a character was created in one system it could be ported over to the other. And that would be easier if the ability scores were the same. Much like going from Basic D&D to Advanced D&D. The ability scores were the same and the basic ideas were the same, just some of the details were different. (I don’t know if you could actually port characters between the systems but the foundations were the same.) The Star Frontiers style version could be my “basic” game and the RuneQuest style could be the “advanced” form.

So let’s see what we can do:

Similarities

This is the easy part. Many of the ability scores are the same between the two sets, although they might have different names.

Strength – This is exactly the same in both sets
Constitution and Stamina – These are essentially the same characteristic with different names. The names have slightly different connotations but mechanically they function the same in both systems as a basis for hit points, resistance to disease and poison, etc.
Dexterity – Again basically the same characteristic, although in the one system there is a separate score for gross motor skills and dexterity only applies to fine motor skills.
Appearance and Charisma – While charisma is slightly broader than appearance in its application, these two are essentially the same.
Intelligence – This is the same in both sets
Wisdom – This one exists in both sets but with slightly different application. In the Star Frontiers style set, it rolls up both the Wisdom and Willpower characteristics of the RuneQuest set. And it’s one that I added to the RuneQuest set over the RuneQuest model.

Differences

This is where the work is. These characteristics don’t exist in one or the other set and I’ve got to figure out if they are needed or can be adjusted.

Stature – This one is from the RuneQuest set (called Size in RuneQuest) and describes the physical size of the character. In that game system it has an impact on melee combat as the bigger you are the longer your reach and the earlier you hit in combat. Plus it is averaged with your Constitution to determine your hit points. It also has a negative impact on agility and stealth skills as the bigger you are the harder those skills become. The only other place I remember it being used is as a limit on certain spells, i.e. larger Size required more magic to affect.
Willpower – This one is also from RuneQuest where it is just called Power. In my Star Frontiers set it is subsumed into the Wisdom characteristic. It forms the basis for magic/psi powers and has influences on a variety of skill categories (communication, magic, perception, and stealth), both positive and negative.
Quickness – This comes from the Star Frontiers set (called Reaction Speed in Star Frontiers) and is a measure of gross motor skills and how fast the character responds to sudden changes. It’s fairly heavily used in that system for ability checks. In RuneQuest it is basically combined into the Dexterity ability score or covered by skills
Leadership – Another ability score from the Star Frontiers set that has no analog at all in the RuneQuest system as everything that this ability score covers is handled by skills in that system.

Is Reconciliation Possible?

One of the great things about thinking out loud and writing things out to explain to others is that it really helps to clarify your thinking and organize your thoughts and ideas in ways that you would never do if you were just bouncing them around in your head. After writing up the above comparisons of the similarities and differences, I believe the answer is yes. It would be possible to come up with a single set of ability scores that could be used for both systems. The question is how many do we end up with. Let’s dive in and find out.

The Easy Ones

Two of the ability scores, Strength and Intelligence, don’t need any work as they are the same in both systems.

There are two more that are essentially the same but with different names. First there is Constitution and Stamina. I think I’d use Stamina as it has a slightly broader definition to me. The second is Appearance and Charisma. Again I think Charisma would be the better choice for its broader meaning. I think these choices are better as they allow the ability score to have it’s full meaning in the Star Frontiers style game and then in the RuneQuest style system, where some of the impact of these ability scores are taken over by skills, they simply have a reduced meaning. Going the other way is a little harder in my opinion.

That’s four down, moving on.

Dexterity and Quickness

So in once of the sets, this is all lumped under Dexterity while in the other set, they are split out. Taking a quick survey of other games on my shelf behind me shows about an even split of the two methods. Some do and some don’t split them apart. Although the second ability score is usually called agility, which I like and will probably adopt if I use both.

So convention isn’t going to help here. I like the idea of splitting them into separate ability scores as they really are different things. I personally have fairly good dexterity but I’m not very agile. And I see their benefit is the Star Frontiers styled skill system. In the RuneQuest style skills, most of the actions that would be covered by an ability score check are handled by skills, the main purpose of this ability score would be to affect the skill modifiers in that system. Which is okay.

I think in this case, I want them separate and so would keep both of them, calling them Dexterity and Agility.

Stature

Other than adding flavor to the system, I don’t know that his one really has any impact in the Star Frontiers style skill system game. Unless I model the combat mechanic of the game after the RuneQuest style mechanic, something I’m very inclined to do. Otherwise, it would only affect things like the size of armor you needed and whether or not you’d fit in that escape pod or other such things.

The reverse question is could you live without it in the RuneQuest style skill system? It’s only a negative skill modifier unless you’re really small so for most characters, removing it would improve their skills, a positive from the player’s perspective. The implications on spell casting could be ignored or based on a rolled height/weight that is not an ability score. And the melee modifier isn’t really needed either, it just adds a bit more differentiation in the combat system.

Mostly I see this one, while highly realistic, being more for adding flavor to the system than fundamental to it’s operation. I can’t see any of the Star Frontiers style skills being based on this ability score. For now I think we leave it out. I can always add it back in later if I change my mind.

Leadership

This one I think is unique, at least in my experience, to Star Frontiers. In RuneQuest, the events covered by this characteristic are handled by various skills. The only other system I know of that had something similar were the chutzpah and moxie scores in Paranoia. Although Powers & Perils had Eloquence which was used in combination with other ability scores to compute probabilities for things a Leadership ability score would be used for.

While it’s definitely possible for someone to be very charismatic but completely incapable as a leader, or vice versa, I think this one could be dropped and the areas covered by this ability score lumped in under the Charisma score. We’ll leave this one off as well.

Willpower and Wisdom

This one is probably the hardest for me to come to a decision on. Willpower is derived from RuneQuest’s Power ability score and Wisdom is derived from Star Frontiers Intuition ability score. Neither one has an analog in the other system although I added Wisdom to my RuneQuest style set and included the nature of Willpower into Wisdom in the Star Frontiers style set. So I’ve obviously considered them both as a combined ability score and as unique entities.

The real question is which do I prefer and how would they apply in game. As a general rule I like more detail over less and think that they should be separate for maximum realism. I can definitely think of people/characters where one would be high and the other low as well as ones where they run together. Having them separate provides more potential variations. But how do they apply in-game.

The first to consider is Willpower in the Star Frontiers style skill system. If separate from Wisdom, it would form the basis for any psi power I included, just like it would in the RuneQuest style system. Also, since I’ve decided to drop Leadership, some of the checks that might normally fall to that ability score would probably fall to this one instead. At least anything related to the force of character instead of their charm and likability (which would go to Charisma). It would also possibly be the go to ability score for things like morale. So this has a valid use in the Star Frontiers style skill system.

The second is Wisdom in the RuneQuest style system. I added this one originally simply because I liked having it distinct from Willpower and felt it should be in there, not because I had a strongly perceived need for it. Although once added, I had it sprinkled throughout the skill system being a positive modifier to a greater or lesser degree for Communication, Knowledge, Perception, and Stealth related skills. I think it also would be good to have as an ability check as a defense against skills like Bargain, Charm, Fast Talk and the like when someone is trying to pull one over on a character (whether they be a PC or NPC). However, you could also consider using countering skill rolls and have the Wisdom ability score only play a part via its skill modifier. So I guess I see it as useful, although to a smaller extent in this system.

Since both characteristics have a use in the system they weren’t originally designed for, I think they are both worth keeping.

Conclusions

If you’ve been keeping track, of the ten original unique ability scores, eight made the cut and were deemed useful in both systems and the other two were maybes whose utility could be subsumed into one of the original eight and so were dropped with the caveat that we might call them back up later on. This gives us as our final ability score list:

Strength – Raw physical power
Stamina – Vigor and vitality – will be used for hit points as well as endurance and resistance to disease and poisons
Dexterity – Fine motor skills and hand-to-eye coordination
Agility – Gross motor skills and ability to react to sudden changes and events
Intelligence – Brain power, ability to reason and to learn
Wisdom – Intuition, street smarts, and perceptiveness of surroundings
Charisma – Appearance and personality/likability
Willpower – Force of character and presence. Will also be the basis for psionic power if included.

It wasn’t intentional but a happy coincidence of this is that there are four physical characteristics and four mental characteristics, giving us a nice even balance. Plus the two extras are one of each so if they get added back in it will still be balanced.

I’m quite happy with the way this turned out and so I think I’ll use this list going forward. It’s almost identical to the original Star Frontiers style set but with Quickness renamed agility and Willpower substituted for Leadership and a few of the definitions shifted around.

But Wait, There’s More!

And it looks like there is going to be a part 4 to this series. As I was writing this I realized that one other thing had to be determined and that is the range for the ability scores, do we go something in the 2-20, 3-30, or 1-100 range? What are the advantages and disadvantages of each? However, this article is long enough already so we’ll save that discussion for part 4. Stay tuned.