A Module Based Campaign – part 1

As I’ve been creating and tweeting the #SFTimeline on the @StarFrontiers Twitter account, I’ve been thinking more and more about how to string all of the published Star Frontiers modules into a comprehensive campaign.

As I was writing up this post, I was reminded that the topic for the RPG Blog Carnival this month was “The Art of Customization”. This series of articles falls directly into that topic as I’m customizing the published modules to form a comprehensive campaign and story from the disjointed publications. So this will be an entry in the Blog Carnival. I don’t often do Blog Carnival posts as the topics don’t ever seem to mesh up with what I’m working on (or I don’t want to try to shoehorn them together). This one just happened to line up.

The timeline I’ve been tweeting doesn’t work as I’ve been interspersing the modules into the timeline out of order. That’s mainly because I’m a bit impatient and wanted to incorporate the modules early to give me some ideas of things to include in the timeline. I have enough threads running now that I can safely drop the rest of the modules in in their “appropriate” order for set of PCs to be the protagonists in all the events. Maybe at some point I’ll go back and tweak the timeline to match the one I’m presenting here.

The modules don’t provide enough XP by themselves to move directly between them, so in addition to providing my preferred order to the modules, I’ll be providing some suggestions of additional adventures, either from the fanzines or that the Referee will need to create for their group. Depending on how much I end up writing, this may end up as a series of posts.

I’ve posted bits and pieces of this campaign idea over the years on various social media and forums but in this series of posts I’m going to try to collate all of that into a comprehensive document. Let’s get started.

Ground Rules

In the timeline that follows, I’m going to assume that the PC’s start as fresh, new adventurers newly minted with the Alpha Dawn Expanded rules: a PSA and two level 1 skills.

I’m also going to be a generous Referee and assume that in the published modules, the PCs earn the maximum (or nearly the maximum) XP possible in each of the sessions. As we launch into each of the modules in the timeline, I’m going to present what I expect the approximate amount of XP the characters should have earned at that point. If you are running this campaign and your characters aren’t quite there yet, run a few more side adventures for them to get them up to speed.

I’m also going to assume the module are run as written, warts and all. You’re free to tweak them as you see fit but I’ll assume the events described occur.

TL;DR Version

In case you don’t want to read all the details, here’s the overall order I’d run the modules in sans, any intermediary adventures to get the XP progression correct. It’s mostly the order they were published, but bumping Mission to Alcazzar after Dark Side of the Moon.

SF0: Crash on Volturnus
SF1: Volturnus, Planet of Mystery
SF2: Starspawn of Volturnus
SF3: Sundown on Starmist
SFAD5: Bugs in the System
SFAD6: Dark Side of the Moon
SF4: Mission to Alcazzar
SFKH0: Warriors of White Light
SFKH1: Drammune Run
SFKH2: Mutiny on the Elanor Moraes
SFKH3: Face of the Enemy
SFKH4: The War Machine

TSR did a good job in publishing the modules in order of increasing power level. The exception being the two modules developed by the UK group (SFAD5 & 6) that only require PCs with a power level a little less than Mission to Alcazzar. I’m sure if more modules had been published, they would have bounced around more but their initial offerings were spot on.

The Grand Campaign

The Great Sathar War

You may or may not have noticed in my other writing, but I will typically refer to the First Sathar War as the Great Sathar War in my writing and “in world” documents that discuss events occurring before the Second Sathar War (SWII) starts. You can’t have a “first” without a “second” so until the SWII starts, and is recognized as such, there would be another term for the first conflict. And while I typically use “The Great Sathar War” as the name, due to its localized extent – only affecting four star systems – using the term “great” is probably a misnomer and I should be referring to it as the “Sathar War”, “The Sathar Incursion”, or “The Sathar Incident”. Although since it affected the two most populated systems (Cassidine and Prenglar) it might be considered a “war”, even if mostly just a naval one.

In my mind, all these adventures take place, and in some cases, trigger, events in the Second Sathar War. In any case, they have to occur after the First Sathar War as the PCs know of the existence of the sathar even in the first Volturnus adventure which they wouldn’t if it occurred before the first sathar invasion.

I also see the SWII as a much longer and more protracted affair than the First Sathar War with the sathar trying to undermine the UPF and Rim systems and infrastructure before the actual invasion. This can be seen in the Detailed Frontier Timeline I’m working on and will be reflected in some of the side adventures here. While the PCs may not be involved in any of the major military conflicts of the war (especially at the beginning of the campaign), those events will be happening in the background and the PCs may find themselves in the aftermath.

Volturnus

We begin the campaign by running though the three published Volturnus adventures.

SF0: Crash on Volturnus

Since the original boxed set included the Crash on Volturnus module, that is where we will start. This module assumes brand new PCs with 0 XP. I always tell the players to not spend any of their initial funds on weapons and that they will be issued weapons as part of the start of the adventure. And then in the introduction I let them choose a weapon and tell them that it is placed in the weapons locker on the Serena Dawn. That way they aren’t really penalized for the game fiat that their weapons are destroyed.

In my game, there are quickdeath on Pale from the sathar invasion during the Great Sathar War. While the PCs may know of their existence and have seen pictures, they probably haven’t seen one in real life as they have been mostly hunted and controlled. Thus the presence of the quickdeath in the Ul-mor ceremony should be the first clue to the PCs that sathar have been on the planet in the past and may be still here.

SF1: Volturnus, Planet of Mystery

This module follows directly from the events in Crash on Volturnus and so the characters continue in their struggle to survive and escape Volturnus. If all went well, the PCs will have picked up 18 XP in the previous module and added a couple level of skills.

In this adventure they deal with the pirate threat on the planet and discover the larger sathar history and current presence on the planet in the form of the artifact. In my universe, the Star Devil pirates are partially supported by the Pan Galactic Corporation. If you want to provide that level of detail, the PCs can notice that most of the equipment the pirates have are PGC models and not Streel ones, even through Streel headquarters are on Pale in Truane’s Star, the nearest star system to Volturnus.

Another change I make to this adventure is in ending 1. If you want (as we do) the PCs to play through the next module in the series, I don’t feel that 2 weeks is enough time. Some of the tasks in the next module can take two weeks all by themselves. I tend to leave the time frame vague, i.e. “Attack on planet eminent”, or give it a month or so. Additionally, I want the UPF ships to show up right after the fighting starts and I don’t feel that two weeks is enough time to get any ships assembled beyond the Truane’s Star militia and get them to the Zebulon system.

The PCs can pick up another 18 XP in this adventure.

SF2: Starspawn of Volturnus

At this point the PCs have collected 36 XP and are probably level 3 or 4 in their primary skill and have a smattering of others. This adventure consists of a series of mini-quests to do something of benefit to each of the sentient species on Volturnus to convince them to join in the fight against the incoming sathar attack.

My players always like the Great Game of the Ul-mor and have a fun time trying to win. My last group, which happened to be my kids, managed to no only win the game, but do so without a single of the PCs being knocked off their mount.

The retrieval of the Sacred Idol of the Kurabanda is the part of the adventure that could potentially take the most time as part of the travel is through the wilderness on foot or by vehicle. If they drive all the way there it’s a several day journey each way. If they fly, they have to make the last part of the trek on foot which can take a few days, and if they happen to get caught in one of the blasts while flying and crash, they have a several week trek back without their vehicle.

The module ends with the massive Battle of Volkos, where the PCs pit themselves and the various species of Volturnus against the invading sathar hordes. Regardless of whether the PCs win or lose the battle, I have the UPF fleet arrive as the land battle is winding down and drive off the Sathar fleet. If the PCs win the ground battle, shuttles from the UPF fleet can safely land and possibly take the PCs back to Truane’s Star. If they lose, the UPF fleet is a naval force only and doesn’t have ground troops to fight off the surviving sathar army. They will radio back to the Frontier, but it will be some time before ground forces can be assembled and brought to the surface. The PCs will have to hold out until then.

I described the composition of both the UPF and Sathar fleets in last week’s Battle of Zebulon post. If you have players already familiar with the Knight Hawks rules, you could run this battle as an evening’s session. There are a lot of ships, so it takes a while if you use the advanced rules as I did.

The PC’s can earn up to 15 more XP from this module bringing their total up to 51 XP.

After the Modules

As the last module suggests, there are a number of other things the PCs could do on Volturnus before leaving. I have the UPF sticking around for a while after driving off the sathar so they can get transported home at any time if they do decide to have a few more adventures on planet. Possible endeavors include:

The Devil’s Lair

In Frontier Explorer issue 7, I detailed a small complex that is the personal hideout of the Star Devil when visiting Volturnus. I leave clues about the existence of this hideout in the computers of Slave City one for the PCs to discover. The Star Devil isn’t in the system at the moment, but the PC’s can clear out the hideout and learn more about the Star Devil’s operations. This small adventure is worth another 3 XP.

Eorna Defense Installation

In Frontier Explorer issue 2, Jim Young detailed a ruined Eorna Defense Installation. The PCs could have noticed it while flying back and forth recruiting the species for the war or maybe found mention of it in the Mound of the Mechanons or the Eorna Archives. The article provides two different scenarios for the location’s use depending on the background you want to use. This would worth another 3 XP if successfully explored.

Eorna Lunar Defense Battery

Jim provided another location, this time on Volturnus’s moon, in issue 3 of the Frontier Explorer. If you plan on having a Knight Hawks component to the game, you could have the PCs find a way here before the sathar arrive and use the fighters in the base in the battle (which is a bit of bending of the standard rules) or you could have the UPF forces discover the base and send the PCs in to investigate. The fighters discovered could form the basis of the Zebulon system’s initial militia forces. This could generate the PCs another 3 XP.

Lizard Head Rock

A long time ago, I did an entire complex under Lizard Head Rock, a location suggested as a possible adventure at the end of the module. In my teenage years, this complex housed another species, even older than the Eorna, in a large, active, and hidden society. If I were to use it today, I’d redesign it (I was obsessed with the confines of a single sheet of graph paper) and make it ruins instead of an active area, but it still would make a fun little exploration dungeon crawl. The Yernoids in the area are a primitive version of the ancient race. Depending on how big you make this, it could be 3-6 more XP.

Sathar Survivors

Finally, they could track down sathar survivors, another adventure hook suggested by the module. Spacefleet doesn’t have the personnel and the native species are drifting back to their homelands. It’s up to the PCs to clean up the pockets of sathar still sticking around. If the PCs really are in to this, it could go on for a while but assuming they only do a small number of these roundups, they could earn 3-9 XP depending on the number, the complexity, and how generous you are with XP.

Returning to the Frontier

There are a number of events that could happen once the PCs return to the Frontier from Volturnus. At this point, assuming you’ve done some of the additional adventures on Volturnus, the PCs should have between 60 and 70 XP.

Tracking down the Star Devil

Information collected on Volturnus provided clues to the Star Devil’s operations in the Pale system. By the time the PCs return, the Pale government has identified the location of a small Star Devil Operation on New Pale. The PCs are sent to investigate and shut down the operation, capturing the staff if possible. This should be worth another 3 XP.

Council of Worlds

If your players want to get involved in some political wrangling, you could have them summoned to Gran Quivera in Prenglar to testify before the Council of Worlds as to the events on Volturnus and the state of the species there. Because of the Sathar, the Council of Worlds is interested in the events in the system.

In my game, the Battle of Zebulon (the space battle) and the Battle of Volkos (the ground battle) are the opening shots of the Second Sathar War. It takes a while for everything to get going but the loss at Zebulon jolt the sathar out of their complacency towards the Frontier and cause them to step up their activities.

The PCs are the Frontier experts on Volturnus at the moment and their words could have far reaching impacts for the future of the planet and the species living there, as well as the Frontier’s response to the sathar. This should be worth another 3-9 XP depending on how involved you make it. It also gets them part way across the Frontier where they could be recruited for the next module SF3: Sundown on Starmist.

Up Next

That gets us through the first three modules with the PCs earning around 70 XP (possibly a bit more) from the modules and side adventures. In the next installment, we’ll look at the rest of the Alpha Dawn modules and supplementary adventures that will get them to the spaceship skills and ready for the Knight Hawks adventures.

How have you strung the modules together? Have you added in additional adventures on Volturnus? Share your experiences in the comments below.

Battle of Zebulon

I finally got the Pursale ship deck sketches up last week but then got completely distracted by a number of other things. One of those was the decision to write up my concept for a complete “zero-to-hero” style Star Frontiers campaign that takes the characters from starting PCs to major players in the Frontier with high level spaceship skills that uses all the published modules. The first of those posts will be next week.

While working on that, I talk about the space battle around Volturnus at the end of the first 3 modules. The modules hand wave it away as, at the time, the spaceship rules weren’t published so there was no way to run it. In this post, we’ll look at my concept for that battle. What sathar ships are there, and what the UPF sends to the fight. If you read my Detailed Frontier Timeline posts, you know the answers as this has already been covered in the posts there, but I thought I’d lay out some of the rationale behind the decisions and set the game up for an epic Knight Hawks board game battle. And I’ll tell you how it played out when I ran through the scenario to generate the timeline posts.

Sathar Ship Design

In my universe, all the sathar ships of destroyer size or larger are also troop transports. While the UPF tend to have small crews and lots of allocated space, the sathar pack in lots of ground troops on to each ship.

You can see an example (and more detailed explanation) of this in my Sathar Destroyer Technical Manual (link goes to product page on DriveThruRPG – it’s a free product) that details the interior of a sathar destroyer. That ship carries over 500 ground troops packed into its bowels.

Based on the ship sizes, I’ve extrapolated that the light cruisers carry about 4,500 troops, the heavy cruisers carry over 15,000 and the assault carriers transport around 10,000 troops in addition to up to 12 fighters. While I haven’t completely fleshed out those larger vessels, this is a close enough estimate for this article.

How Many Sathar Ships Are Involved

Now that we know how many troops each ship transports, we can come up with a reasonable composition for the invasion fleet that is attacking Volturnus.

The boxed text from the adventure gives us the following clues:

All that can be done has been done to prepare the planet for defense against the hideous worms. The initial reports arriving at the Eorna complex beneath the ruins of Volkos are good; the Eorna planetary defense batteries have kept the Sathar fleet at bay, and many of the Sathar shuttles have been destroyed attempting to land ground troops on the planet

The successful landing of a large Sathar army has been detected. After scanning the planet, the Sathar advanced in the direction of Volkos. They should arrive in full battle array sometime tomorrow morning. They number at least 30,000 plus robots and other weapons!”

This tells us that there are at least 30,000 troops on the ground and that there were more to begin with as many were destroyed in the landing attempt.

So, we want a mix of ships that can transport something over 30,000 troops. Based on the mix of ships given in the Knight Hawks campaign book, I settled on the following mix of ships for the fleet:

2 frigates
6 Destroyers
2 Light Cruisers
2 Heavy Cruisers
1 Assault Carrier with 8 fighters

This gives me a total troop compliment of about 52,000 troops plus robots, attack creatures, and heavy weapons. We can assume that about 40% of the troops were killed by the planetary defense system leaving about 30,000 for the assault on Volkos.

The UPF Contingent

We have to remember that this is not a planned engagement in an on-going war. Rather it is a sudden call to arms that has to be filled in at short notice with no idea of what the opposing force will be. In fact, given the overwhelming number of ships that were seen at Pale 50-60 years earlier (in my history), the UPF might be loathe to commit any ships fearing that they are sending them into a deathtrap. Regardless, the ships are sent, but they are assembled on short notice.

The most obviously available ships are the Pale militia ships, consisting of a frigate and three assault scouts. They would almost certainly be pressed into service by Spacefleet as they are only one jump away. If Laco (in Dixon’s Star) had a militia, they too would probably have been involved but Laco is only an outpost.

Streel is headquartered on Pale, and it is almost certain that they have a number of military or paramilitary vessels at their disposal. They might be conscripted by Spacefleet or possibly even volunteered as Streel has a definite interest in opening (and exploiting) Volturnus. Keeping the sathar out of the system and off the planet is just good business practice. So Streel will probably send some ships along.

That leaves Spacefleet. Strike Force Nova might be around. It patrols around the Frontier constantly so there is a chance it is nearby. The nearest large group of ships with a known location is Task Force Prenglar, stationed in its namesake system. The problem is that it’s three systems away from Zebulon. Which means it’s going to take some time to get there and may not arrive in time.

If you just use the distances between the stars as travel time, it’s only 15 days. That’s they way the Alpha Dawn rules described interstellar travel. However, the Knight Hawks rules say you have to accelerate up to 1% the speed of light to make the jump and then slow down at your destination. That acceleration, at 1g takes a little over 83 hours or just over 4 days. And then 4 days to slow down. Assuming some maneuvering at the beginning and ending of the trip and checking vectors and such just before Void entry, a single interstellar hop really takes about 9 days, regardless of distance. Maybe a bit longer on long jumps due to extra astrogation calculation time.

Now we can speed this up a bit by accelerating faster but for a long transit, that has detrimental effects on crew. If you expect to be coming out of the Void into a firefight, you don’t want to have spent the last two weeks strapped into an acceleration chair at 2-3 gees.

We can also speed up the transit by not slowing down in the intermediate systems. Then we only have the astrogation time to worry about. That might work for the Dixon’s Star system, but they will have to slow down in Truane’s Star to rendezvous with the ships from that system and coordinate their jump. So assuming ships from Prenglar blow through Dixon’s Star without stopping it will take them 4.5 days to get to Void speed in Prenglar, 2.5 days in Dixon’s Star to do the astrogation calculations, 4.5 days to slow down at Pale in the Truane’s Star system. Then they need to accelerate and jump to Zebulon which will take another 9 days. All told, that’s 20.5 days of travel. Add to that any time it takes to assemble the Task Force and get the ships ready to leave.

What other options are there? In the description of Spacefleet, it describes the two Task Forces and Strike Force Nova and then says that there are other smaller units as well. I decided to take advantage of this.

At the same time as the events are unfolding on Volturnus, Streel and Pan Galactic are locked into what will be known as Laco’s War, the first corporate war. In my games, this war is just starting to heat up. Because of that, Spacefleet had recently dispatched a medium sized Patrol Group to the system to attempt put a damper on the rising hostilities. Patrol Group Virgo, consisting of 2 light cruisers, 2 destroyers, 2 assault scouts, and an assault carrier with 8 fighters, has just recently arrived in Dixon’s Star. That puts them marginally closer only requiring 18 days to get to Volturnus with the advantage that since they are already out on patrol, they can depart immediately.

So once the call comes in from the PCs, Spacefleet takes a day or two to make the decision and then dispatches Patrol Group Virgo from Dixon’s Star. In Truane’s Star they pick up the Pale militia as well as a frigate, 4 corvettes, and 3 assault scouts that Streel sends along on the expedition. With that, the ships arriving at Volturnus from the UPF are:

8 Assault Scouts
4 Corvettes
2 Frigates
2 Destroyers
2 Light cruisers
1 Assault Carrier with 8 fighters

From a campaign perspective, I have the UPF fleet arrive just as the battle on the ground is ending, driving off the sathar ships.

The Knight Hawks Scenario

We now have the order of battle. The sides are fairly evenly matched. The UPF fleet has more ships, but the sathar have slightly more hull points. The UPF’s forces are concentrated into its smaller vessels, lots of little assault scouts and corvettes that can potentially be picked off fairly easily.

This scenario can be played by any number of people. Simply divide into teams and each team takes a side. The UPF forces divide fairly easily into three groups, one playing the UPF ships, one the Pale militia, and one the Streel ships. Although the number of ships and their strength isn’t evenly distributed between those groups. The sathar ships can be divided up any way that team sees fit.

Setup

A planet counter representing Volturnus is placed in the center of the map.

The sathar are the defenders in this scenario. Sathar ships, with the exception of the frigates, are all placed in orbit around Volturnus with a speed of zero. They have just recently finished dropping off all their troops. Since the frigates are not troop carriers, they can start in any hex within 5 hexes of the planet with a speed of up to 5 hexes/turn.

The UPF are the attackers. They all start along one of the short sides of the map. The individual ships can be anywhere on that side, but all the ships have to be on the same side. They must start within 3 hexes of the map edge and be moving at any speed up to 15 hexes/turn. All the UPF ships have to start at the same speed.

Special Rules

Escaping the Battle

A ship is considered to have escaped from battle if it moves off any edge of the map with a) no ships in pursuit, or b) is out of weapon range and has a higher ADF of any pursuing ships.

Preserve the Fleet

Heavy cruisers and assault carriers are important vessels in the sathar navy. If the tide of battle seems to be going against the sathar, they will try to pull back to preserve these larger vessels, sacrificing the smaller ones if necessary (even if it means ramming) to delay the UPF ships and allow the larger vessels to escape.

Victory Conditions

Sathar Victory

The sathar claim victory if they can destroy all the UPF vessels.

UPF Victory

The UPF claim a complete victory if all the sathar vessels are destroyed. If any of the sathar vessels escape, it is only a partial victory.

When I Played

I played this out once using the full Advanced Combat rules of the Knight Hawks boardgame. I wanted to test the plausibility of this mix of ships in the scenario. Basically I was playing to make sure it was possible for the UPF to win. I definitely thought the sathar would have the advantage. It turned into quite the slugfest. However, the UPF got in some lucky early blows with the assault scouts living up to their hype and taking out nearly half of the sathar fleet by round 3 of the game after losing only a single assault scout.

In the end, the sathar fleet was routed, escaping with only 1 frigate, 2 destroyers, and a heavy cruiser. The other heavy cruiser and assault carrier were lost on that fateful round 3. The UPF only lost a Pale militia assault scout, and a light cruiser and assault scout from the Spacefleet contingent, but almost no ship escaped unscathed. The die rolls favored the UPF and it ended up being a very lopsided game. I suspect if played through several more times, it could go either way.

Last Thoughts

Do you like these Knight Hawks game scenarios? Would you like to see more of them? Should I include the statistics for the ships? If you play this scenario out, let me know which rule set you used (Basic or Advanced) and how it turned out.

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