The Trouble With Temkor

Gross!

I had another session of the Wanderers of Dhim, and in this particular arc, they continue their long detour to the ancient city of Sermalga through the swampy, jungled peninsula that leads to Sermalga, but first, they need to escort a large group of refugees to a Ranathim barbarian village that will take them in. While parking the group in an abandoned fishing village (with a crucified and warded skeleton in the center: “I’m sure this is fine” said all the other players, with the Death Cultist player not there that session and right pissed when he found out that they just ignored an unburied body) but one of the Saruthim players went for a patrol to find a missing person and found a bunch of missing people, though not the one he was looking for, and they were locked in battle with a great swarm of temkor.

So what’s a temkor? Deep insiders might recognize it from the prefix for temkorathim, which is Lithian for “worm person,” so they’re worms, a specific sort of hellish worm, the sort we often find in RPGs: an abominable creepy crawly abomination that eats people. Hence why the term is often hurled as insult, and why the Slavers are tagged with it as an epithet.

I’ve been pondering bestiary design for a long time, and making an effort to just do it, and when I began to design the temkor, I ran into some problems and found some solutions I wanted to share with you, how the fight played out, and how this made me feel about monster design going forward.

"Hey, I didn't know I needed that!"

 So, I finished the third session of Undercity Noir a week early, as one of the players couldn’t make it on the normal day.  We finally met the client and his girlfriend, and the introduction is finally finished, and the players have been released into the world.  But an interesting thing happened during the negotiation: “I didn’t know (X) was such an important skill!”

GURPS has this at the best of times: because it has so many skills, people can easily overlook them. However, these characters were built from templates, and I checked, and all the traits they were asking for were present. And one of the characters had all of them, because he followed his template closely and so he just had them without realizing they would be so useful, and the result was a rather amusing moment where the Bounty Hunter sighed and started to explain to the Con-Artist how to do her job. But in a sense, it fit.  So this felt more like players realizing certain skills had more value than they realized, not that they didn’t realize they were options.

Will

I think they realized this was important, given how many successfully resisted the Keleni Telepathy of the femme fatale, but I just want to point out to anyone poking at Psi-Wars that Will is very useful in a psionic game.  I know, seems obvious, but I’ve had it come up in previous playtests.  I’m not saying you should jack your Will up to 20 on every character, but I am saying you’d get your points worth if you did.

Psychology

So this was the core trait that surprised people.  I had set up meeting the contact as a mini-action scenario (as I like to run the first few sessions as sort of a preparation of how the game will actually play out) and so when it came time to collect all the clues and plan how best to negotiate with the target, I noted that Psychology was one of the skills they could use for this, which I thought made sense, and also caused quite a scramble. Which surprised me, because Psychology is one of the most popular skills in my games, but I sense most players come at this from a different context.

I tend to build my games as very NPC heavy, with layers and layers of intrigue and mystery.  I do this for several reasons, but a lot of it comes down to the fact that I cut my narrative teeth on anime, romances and dramas.  I just like large casts of colorful NPCs with detailed and nuanced motivations.  And in particular, in a Heist, there’s a major clash of personalities.  It’s not just “the cops” that are coming after you, but a specific detective; there are rival gangs, and they have specific leaders; there’s always some new guy added to the crew after the fact, and you need to assess if a good fit; there’s the target of the heist, who has a specific personality and blindspots.  Having psychology allows you to construct a profile, to learn the context of why people do what they do. If you combine it with Empathy or Body Language, you know what they are feeling and why. So with players familiar with my games, it seems to come up a lot. I’m not saying it’s a must have, just that people knew to my games seem surprised at how useful it is.

Holdout

This might actually be missing from some templates, but this came up very quickly, and it makes sense. A lot of previous playtests have been about soldiers or space knights who walk around in full armor, but this is in a city with lots of Imperial Security, lots of camera, lots of angry gangsters.  Carrying a holdout blaster or a force sword into a club carries a lot more risks, and rewards, than it does in most games.  So this has been quite a schooling for me in how holdout works.

Observation

I see some people complain about Observation.  When do you use it? When don’t you? For some of them, it feels redundant if you have Perception.  But to me, Observation is about picking out details discretely. It’s also about picking out pertinent elements of something, such as when you “case a joint.” It’s also cheaper than Perception, so to me it’s always been a no-brainer, but I’m surprised by the number of people who don’t have it in my group.

Running, Climbing and Jumping

It didn’t come up in this session, but like with Psychology, I think a lot of players skip these.  After all, your ability to run really comes down to your Basic Move, Climbing seems pretty niche, and Jumping can default to DX if strictly necessary, so in the intense prioritizing that most PCs will do, while Acrobatics gets a vigorous nod, these parkour skills get less of one.  When is it going to come up, after all?

In Action, they come up all the time.  Action is about chase scenes, and chase scenes use these skills. Sure you can drive too, but there’s always a point when you’ll want to run.  This didn’t actually come up this session, but the previous session and I think I already mentioned it in my thoughts on that session, as this pleased the player who took them, and they really made a difference: the Bounty Hunter who had minimal investment couldn’t keep up, but the Assassin with maximum parkour not only caught up to the target, despite having a very late start, he managed to cut her off before the Bounty Hunter arrived. That tickled him pink.  I mention this more because if you’re a budding Action player, be aware of the value of parkour skills!

I think if I finish my Cinematic Chase Framework, that’ll help people more intuitively integrate chase scenes, as there’s a lot of details in chase scenes that can get lost in the “Look just roll Running until it’s obvious who will win.” Getting a little help in creating the sort of dynamic chase scenes we see in action movies will make the utility of Climbing, Jumping and Acrobatics in chase scenes more obvious.

Thoughts on Campaign Framework Skills

I’ll leave you with one last observation I’ve had with people interfacing with campaign frameworks in general.  In my experience, most GURPS players learn to tune out the garbage and focus on what matters. GURPS itself encourages this, because you can’t even use Beam Weapons in a fantasy game, or Magery in a “Hard” Sci-Fi game.  Thus learning to filter the useful from the useless is a very important skill in a veteran GURPS player.

But part of the process of creating a Campaign Framework is pre-filtering the skills that exist, and adding additional utility to the skills that remain. Once this happens, another element of GURPS starts to rear its head: its emphasis of subtle utility. GURPS has a tendency to narrow down and focus on all the possible things a skill (or advantage) can do, and then emphasize those.  For example, in a typical White Wolf game, Brawl is the skill you use to punch people, and Medicine is the skill you use to heal people.  GURPS, by contrast, introduces a ton of nitty gritty techniques for Brawl and differentiates it into three different skills to determine exactly how you fight; Medicine breaks out into Diagnosis, Physician, Surgery, etc, and one begins to realize the power of knowing exactly what’s gone wrong with someone’s health, how to prescribe exactly the right dose, and how and when to use surgery to fix issues.  GURPS brings these nuanced details into view a lot better than other games, which can take some people by surprise, as they tend to dismiss a lot of GURPS skills as one-note or niche when it turns out, especially in a Campaign Framework, they can have a lot of value. This is not meant as a defense of the GURPS skill system (it can be exhausting to work with sometimes), just as an observation of what I notice happens with players when they interact with the details of a Campaign Framework.

Thoughs on the Undercity Noir Playtest after 2 sessions

I apologize for the lack of posting.  I’ve been a bit paralyzed by Undercity Noir’s nature.  Whenever I run a playtest, I find it dominates my time, because I’m busy fixing the bits that the game is missing, but I can usually make that up by talking about the playtest.  Now, though, I can’t do that, because I intend to run it twice, which means I would spoil things if I ran it twice.  So what can I talk about?  Well, I can talk about how particular systems worked and what my experience with them was. So let’s hit a few high points.

How did Character Creation Go?

Without a hitch. Though I will note that three of the five characters wanted templates that either didn’t exist, or didn’t exist until recently.  We have a bounty hunter, a con-artist, a hacker, an assassin and a psion. The bounty hunter worked fine, and the player even praised the variety and options, and I regularly find that I’ll ask for a skill vital for bounty hunting, he’ll say he doesn’t have it, double check, and then see that he does.  So the template did exactly what it was supposed to do, which was cushion someone who didn’t have a great deal of knowledge of the game and guide them to where they needed to be.  The con-artist seems to be missing a few important skills: Holdout, which is not just about weapons, but also about hiding small things, and Diplomacy, which I likely left off deliberately because of the Diplomat template, but in retrospect, the skill that sets the Diplomat apart from the Con-Artist is Law (International) and their access to high levels of rank, patrons and diplomatic immunity, not their ability to talk circles around people.

The Assassin is an old template, but it’s going through a lot of revisions, mostly in the form of martial arts.  I see the Assassin as the “space ninja” in contrast to the “space samurai” of the Space Knight. Their role is to kill quietly and with weird, exotic weapons, and this requires exploring a lot of weird, exotic weapons.  I’ve been slowly collecting them, and I think I have enough material to finally start posting these, but I always run into a sort of creative inertia, where when I start I have no ideas, and by the time I’m done I have too many. But the general build seems to be holding up so far.

The Hacker is an interesting experience.  In principle, this probably could have been the Spy template with a Criminal background, but the Spy comes with some broader baggage that assumes its tied to an international entity: criminal spies are closer to rogue agents than to criminal hackers.  So the player took the new Criminal mini-template and attached the Hacker Skillset to it. It seems to work fine, and it’s a more relaxed approach to design, less strict about what you can do and perhaps better for more experienced players.  I wonder once the skillsets and mini-templates are finished, how often we’ll see them used to recreate something that could possibly be an existing template?

The Psion is the trickiest, because he’s not actually a psion: he’s a mystic in drag.  The player clearly wants to be a zathare sorcerer, while Psions are designed to be closer to an X-men or a character from a psychic scifi film or movie series whose focus is on having weird powers, like the Psi from Monster Hunter.  You can stretch that to fit it onto an occult sorcerer, but it is a stretch.  He seems to be handling okay, and has even used his psychic powers (complete with Extra Effort and Techniques!) as well as tinkering with their occult elements.  So he seems to be happy, but clearly there’s a lot of interest in the mystic template(s).

I had originally planned on giving no CP for the adventure to see if everyone could just handle the entire game with what they originally had, but they talked me into CP.  First, they’re fun.  Second, watching where they put their CP will tell me what’s missing and what people are interested in. Third, the plan is for this to be short (though one player predicted this would go longer than I thought, and he seems correct thus far, as after two sessions we haven’t finished what I planned for one), so they shouldn’t get that much additional power. So we’ll see where things go. But so far, the templates seem to be robust and holding up well enough, even to some abuse.

Cut to the Chase

So we had a chase scene. It was light and low stakes; I often start sessions/campaigns with low stakes fights or action sequences, to feel out the system with the players.  I suspect it’s part of the reason the session used up its allotted time so quickly, because resolving mechanical scenarios tend to eat up time.  But I don’t think anyone was bored, or at least I didn’t have that impression.

I personally have issues with how most chase scenes work, and GURPS Action is no exception: you roll until someone catches up, or someone pulls away. If we’re talking a flat plane, then you know who is going to win after the first roll, or the first couple of rolls.  If I have Running 15 and you have Running 14, then I will win eventually.  What makes a chase scene work is dynamics.  I borrowed from the Thrill of the Chase from Pyramid and the “Chase flowchart” idea from Damnation City (a world of darkness supplement).  But I found Thrill of the Chase too generic, and Damnation City too specific, so I had to work out specific details myself. Not the end of the world: that’s a bit like complaining that D&D doesn’t design the encounters for you, it just gives you the pieces.  But I could use slightly more specific pieces than I’ve been given, and more worked examples.  I’m working on that now.  We’ll see how far I get.

So the result was a fairly dynamic chase involving a lot of choices and opportunities for shortcuts and making use of movement skills.  The two characters involved in the chase were delighted to find that movement skills mattered.  And that’s my experience with this: the guy who has Running 15 feels like a chump, because in most games (ie DF) Basic Move matters and Running is a cute background skill. In Action, though, being able to parkour over the scene really matters a lot, and that hit the players viscerally.  This won’t be isolated either, because Action is rife with opportunities for chases and parkour.

But still, making those fun, dynamic chases is work. There were two chase scenes, actually, one that was thoroughly prepped and the other was improved, and I have no doubt that the players could tell you which was which.  Better resources offering better support would make the improved one better, or make it so I could more easily plan both.

So, good result, needs more support.

Abstract Wealth

“Hey wait, didn’t you pay for stuff last session?”

In the second session, I remembered that the Bounty Hunter had paid docking fees for his ship, bought some casino chips and, in this session, needed to pay for lodging.  So, we should be using our Abstract Wealth System, right? How did it go?

Well, it went okay. The first thing I notice that a selling point of Abstract Wealth is to not have book keeping, but there’s book keeping.  Instead of tracking how much you spend, you track how many modifiers you get.  He’s currently at -2 or so, and will be for the rest of the adventure. So we have to note that somewhere.  

Abstract Wealth, once you have it in mind, though, puts a lot of things in context. For example, how much should medical services cost? How much should a movie ticket cost? How much is “too expensive” and how much is “cheap?” Because you can find the price of medical services from Bio-Tech, you can extract berthing fees from Spaceships 2, and you can work out how much a restaurant costs from GURPS Basic, and then you can start to see what the average person can afford and what they can’t.  So I could just list these all out in the costs and equipment section, like D&D does, but then I find I also need to do “two tiers”, where I explain that something has a cost (“A restaurant meal costs $60”) and then what its Abstract Wealth value is (“This is trivial for characters with Average wealth”). 

I also notice the players don’t interface much with it.  It’s useful for explaining what costs a lot and what doesn’t cost much, but when a player got a Deep Coin (a particular currency), I didn’t see any questions about how that interfaced with the Abstract Wealth system, he just knew it was about $1000. Likewise, the Bounty Hunter never once asked to use the Abstract Wealth system.  He just paid what was asked and didn’t think about it.

I think the idea of a proper abstract wealth system is to wave your hands and say “Don’t worry about that, it’s handled.” But in practice, I feel like I’m putting a layer of abstraction over the standard wealth system that seems to create more work than it resolves.  I think in practice players will just add or subtract some money from their till on their sheet.  Especially with modern, computerized sheets, you can just add or subtract much more easily than with pencil and paper, and Abstract Wealth helps a bit more when tracking with pencil and paper.  But we’ll see how it plays out. It isn’t natural, quick or especially intuitive.

As an aside, I saw a lot of questions about starting wealth.  Is it 100% or 20%?  Action says 100%, but it’s also going with a “budget.” The premise behind Action is that your commandos and street racers all meet up in the secret compound, and the boss unveils a veritable warehouse of materiel, and the players go and pick out half a million GURPS $s in gear and go “Mwahaha” as they nerd out about it. This doesn’t match the Space Opera aesthetic of a run-down universe like we see in Star Wars (or Firefly or Killjoys or even Dune).  In those settings, characters just have things, like a house and a speeder and clothes, but they also have one special blaster, or one cool piece of armor. That implies the 80/20 split.  But there are also characters who live their entire lives out of their ship, such as a Bounty Hunter.  Would they also have the 80/20 split? Maybe.  They have their clothes in a wardrobe on their ship and they have their space car, and maybe they have a flop on some space station somewhere.  So I’d need to think about it, and perhaps work out what you get “for free” with your 80/20 split, because I tend to lean in the direction of that being a thing: it makes the cheaper weapons more viable, and higher levels of wealth more powerful, but I think there needs to be room for the Poor Bounty Hunter who is homeless yet has a decent gun because that’s where all of his spare money went (Though perhaps that’s Signature Gear)

Games I Didn't Run: Calmquist's One Shot: Part 1

I love it when people other than me run a Psi-Wars game.  I hear rumors of most, whispers and questions, but sometimes, someone will straight-up tell me about a session, and when I get very lucky, they’ll post their notes so I can post them here.

This is from Backer “Calmquist,” who played as Xerxes, the Morathi pirate in the Tall Tales of the Orochi Belt.  I’ve not reformatted or edited anything (though I may post links to some elements for reference, if I get time).

Without further ado:

Out of Game One Shot Background

After quite a while of not knowing anyone in the area interested in RPGs, I got the opportunity to take over DMing Storm King’s Thunder for a group. I planned a Psi-Wars one shot for December (that is when the new movie would come out), but things didn’t work out. Most of the players quit around October or November due to schedule issues, so the one shot also never happened. Recently, I got a chance to play Waterdeep Dragon Heist (still ongoing) which was great because it meant I could play. We were scheduled for every other Monday, and May 4^th was an off week, so I scheduled a one shot.

The Heroes

I created the sample characters because I was bored and because I wanted to have some representative characters available if I ever got the opportunity to host a one shot (it actually took a long time, so I created around a dozen). I actually made most of them before I knew any of the players besides Milmeowna’s. I created her partly because I knew her player liked cats.

Milmeowna Catalos: Morathi Bounty Hunter

Milmowna was born and raised a slave. After escaping her Slaver master, she became a bounty hunter. She an excellent pistolera and has the skills and gear for catching her bounty dead or alive. She has the, Luck, Serendipity and Unconscious Broken Communion (Death) trait, but she lacks the specific Morathi training to make the most of it (this is both due to points and to keep the character relatively simple for a one shot). Luck and Serendipity are the generic advantages with the Probability Alteration PM (again, this is largely to keep things simple for the player).

Milmeowna was hired by Jace Eris to retrieve the “Princess” from some Ranathim pirates.

Nathram Rahar: Ranathim Assassin

Nathram is a Khaftlin in a Cult of Satra Temos. He is greedy, on the edge and fanatical to the Cult. He is destined to be a Tyrant, but he is currently only a slave. Although he is trained in the Fell Form, he is specialized in stealth and assassination. He is wields a force sword and blade, but he is not a weapon master. He is physically the strongest character in the party by far.

He was recommended and sent by Reuben Verge with the latest intel about the “Princess’s” location. Nathram’s secret master has ordered him to gather intel about a rival. Nathram knows that if he assassinates the rival, he will gain prestige and become one step closer to being a true Tyrant.

Kihita Raelen “Raja”: Keleni Con Artist

Raja was raised outside a typical Keleni community. His parents taught him the ways of Annara, and he still believes it, but the temptations to scam the people around him with his telepathy was too much to control. After leaving home, he made his way through life one scam at a time. He wandered the galaxy and knows his way around. Raja is confident that he can lie, cheat and steal his way out any problem. He certainly has the skill for it.

Raja was not recruited for the mission. He heard rumors about the opportunity and decided to tag along. It sounded like a good scam.

Rosa Sabine: Akashic Knight

Rosa is Viscountess of Pelia (currently an entirely symbolic title). She is devoted to the Akashic Mysteries and to the Order, but she did not have the ability to peer far into the future or see visions (outside of using Dreaming Nymph). Instead, she could see short glimpses into the future (Combat Sense). Because of her devotion and skill set, she became an Akashic Knight to guard the Order and duel heretics who strayed from the Golden Path. She became a Guardian of the Mysteries. Mechanically, Rosa has Status, Beauty and Fashion Sense (and Bloodline Purity for when it matters) for a high reaction bonus. She also has Sabine Blindness.

I did a partial conversion of the Akashic Form to power ups, but I seem to have misplaced my notes. Rosa is a Student and has learned Accept Fate (“The Dead Stance”). She is also a Weapon Master.

Rosa received a disturbing vision (under the influence of Dreaming Nymph) involving a princess, a tyrant, a usurper and a burning tree. After consulting the Akashic Order, she was sent to Jace Eris to avoid the dire future the vision predicted.

(Mailanka’s Notes: I’ve since updated the Akashic Form, but it’s not yet on the Wiki.  Calmquist did not have access to this during his playtest)

The Supporting Cast

Jace Eris

Jace has a minor claim in Anmārwi, but the Empire currently controls his homeland. He currently resides in Persephone. He oversees the “Princess,” Wren, and is one of the few people who knows her secret. Jace is also secretly a follower of True Communion. After learning of Wren’s capture, he hired the bounty hunter, Milmeowna Catalos, to rescue her secretly.

Reuben Verge

Reuben is Marquis of the Sanguine Stars that his ancestors “colonized.” Due to the difficulty of travel, his holdings have not been taken by the Valorian Empire, but they are in dispute from the Slaver Empire. He is attempting increased diplomacy with the Ranathim against the Slavers, but his situation is a mess. He knows of Wren’s identity and sent Nathram Rahar to Jace Eris for support in the rescue (and to forge an alliance with a particularly influential Ranathim group).

(Mailanka’s Notes: House Verge is a house created by Calmquist.  I might go through and collect up various fan-houses at some point, but I don’t have information on House Verge that I can share).

TiaSabine

Tia is a shadow initiated Oracle. She been given a secret task by the Shadow Council. After hearing of Rosa’s vision, she decided to send her on a mission to Persephone to speak with Jace Eris. The Golden Path is dangerously close to being lost, and Tia believes that Rosa may be the one to save it.

Wren “Alexus”

Wren is a descendant of an illegitimate daughter of Lucius Alexus. Her origins are shrouded in secret and known to only a few (including Jace Eris and Reuben Verge). She has hidden in plain sight as an “Alexian Princess” in a holo-film series where she was “taught” proper court etiquette. Wren is also secretly a priestess of True Communion. She has been contemplating taking the name Alexus, but has been reluctant because her claim would be disputed, and claiming the title may do more harm than good for the Alliance. She was captured by an Imperial ship and quickly “rescued” by alleged Ranathim pirates. She is currently bound by a “long and loose chain.”

The Action

Introductions

Nathram Rahar

Nathram was brought to an audience with Marquis Reuben Verge. Reuben’s guards eyed Nathram suspiciously, and Reuben eyed Nathram’s collar disapprovingly and sighs. Nathram noticed that Reuben looked unlike any Human he has seen before. He is obviously human, but he looks almost Ranathim. Reuben commanded Nathram (following Nathram’s master’s orders) to accompany Reuben’s diplomatic envoy to Persephone and tell Jace Eris that the “Princess” was taken by Ranathim pirates and was last seen in Sarai.

Rosa Sabine

During one of her breaks, Rosa took her Dreaming Nymph and had a vision. She saw:

• A dark king wearing a crown of fire

• A princess holding a crown; her shadow wears it

• The king sends his pawns who put the princess in chains

• A new king rescues the princess and brings her to his fortress; his face turns to a skull

• A great tree burns

Rosa succeeded her fright check but was troubled by the vision. She toldTia Sabin of her vision. Tia senther to Jace Eris.

Milmeowna Catalos

Milmeowna spoke to Jace Eris in one of his private rooms. Only a few guards were present. Jace briefed Milmeowna about a missing VIP. She was abducted by an Imperial ship. The ship was found destroyed. The target is believed to have escaped, but her whereabouts are unknown. As he spoke, a guard opened the door announcing that Rosa and Nathram had both arrived with information about the “problem.” Jace invited them in, and they exchange information. Jace invited his guests to stay for dinner while he prepare for their trip.

Kihita Raelen

Raja heard a rumor about a missing “princess” from a b-list holo film series, but the amount of concern indicated that something more was going on. He read a guard’s mind and learns that Jace Eris hired an Asrathi bounty hunter to find her. He also learned that the new Viscountess of Pelia and some shady Ranathim also came to visit Jace. After some investigation and con artistry, Raja faked his way to being the pilot the particular Nomad that the others would take to Sarai.

Sarai

The Checkpoint

The heroes made it to the security checkpoint above Sarai without trouble. Raja tried convincing the officers that the group was there for vacation. The security guards didn’t buy the lie, but they did assume that the heroes were there for the regular shady things that go on there. They could not be bothered to do a proper investigation, so they let the heroes in. It wasn’t worth the trouble.

At the space port, customs agents came to inspect the ship and cargo. Raja did have a proper manifest and everything was in order, but the the agent fabricated a discrepancy. Raja knew exactly what was going on and gave the agent the “facilitation payment” he wanted. Rosa (or her player) was shocked that an Imperial agent would be corrupt enough to ask for a bribe.

Investigation

Milmeowna used her bounty hunter skills (mostly streetwise) to locate an establishment where the pirates were likely to visit. She learned about the establishment named “Cantina” (definitely not stolen from Star Wars). The heroes raised many eyebrows when they walked in. Rosa got a very good reaction from the crowd (everyone else was pretty much neutral). Several guys decided to talk to her. She asked about pirates and interesting things that were going on. One guy told her that Cantina was not a place for someone like her and offered to look after her. After she refused, he and several others pulled blasters on them.

Nathram drew his weapon. Milmeowna quickly dispatched three of them. Rosa parried a blaster and dispatched one. Nathram did get one good kill, and the fight was basically over in an instant. It was BAD-1. They forced the thug, col, to talk. He did mention seeing some pirates escorting someone dressed like a princess. He knew the location of their base and that one of the pirates appeared to be a Mithna (strange), but he didn’t have any other information.

Conflict with Pirates

The heroes arrived near the pirate hideout and tried to sneak in, but Raja was discovered. The pirate guards came to investigate, and he distracted them with his silver tongue for long enough for Nathram to dispatch them from above with Falling Assault. After getting to the door, Nathram rigged the cameras with a loop and broke in quietly. The hideout was dark, but everyone besides Raja could see well enough (Raja didn’t want to alert anyone with his flashlight hand). The heroes made short work of the patrols and opened the door at the end of the hallway.

There was a hologram with a Keleni wearing golden robes and a crown. The pirates (a few mooks, a Mithna knight and a pain glaive guard) were kneeling, and the one who looked like the leader was reporting to his master. Raja was flabbergasted that a Keleni could be a Tyrant. The Tyrant said that the princess made it to him safely and was with him aboard the Throne Ship. After that, the figure turned around and greeted his guests. Nathram was already sneaking around to get a proper kill, but the Tyrant was knew he was around somewhere. The Tyrant mocked the heroes a little and ended the transmission.

After the Tyrant left, a fight broke out. Nathram attempted a quick assassination of the pain glaive guard, but the guard was just aware enough to avoid the attack. Nathram quickly pushed the guard back to a wall and cut the bottom of the glaive. He ended the fight shortly after that.

Milmeowna took out one mook immediately while the two others dove behind desks. She used gunslinger acrobatics to move around the room and take out the rest of the mooks.

Rosa fought against the opposing knight. The fight was close, but Rosa’s combat sense made her very defensive. Rosa finished her fight with Mirror Fate (“the Shadow Strike”) and forced the knight to surrender (breaking his oath).

Raja didn’t contribute much to the fight, but his Telereceive, Detect Lies and general communication skills proved useful during the interrogation. The heroes gained access to a star chart that gave the location of the Throne Ship. They looted the bodies (they came from D&D) and killed their prisoner (which will have consequences).

Before they could finish the interrogation, a large group of mooks arrived. Raja shot the door control to buy time. The pirates eventually broke through, and started shooting. Milmeowna used her tangler grenade and pistols to defeat several mooks, and Nathram did some slicing. Rosa took a real beating from the mooks. She took a direct hit from a plasma pistol (which didn’t make it through her duelist body suit but did cause knockback) and got punched in the face (which did a whole point of damage through her masque).

After finishing the mooks, the heroes made it back to the ship to head to the Morass to find the Throne Ship and the Princess.

The Retrospective

What Went Well

The players all enjoyed it. Rosa’s player never watched Star Wars and thought her Space Knight character was very cool. Raja’s player enjoyed playing a charismatic con artist. The characters all got a chance to do something cool and fulfill their niches.

There was a decent mix of investigation and action scenes. The duel was fun.

The players asked several lore questions (a double edged sword for a one shot) and seemed to enjoy the setting.

The players generally spent enough (but usually not too much) time planning for a one shot. They were not too reckless, but they did attempt to make good use of their time given the limitations.

What Went Poorly

It was a one shot, so we went through the scenario at a faster pace than I would normally prefer.

There was a sizable chunk of lore questions all at once. Normally, that would be great, but it was a one shot.

I forgot a few descriptions that I planned. I also didn’t make as much use of the disadvantages as I should have.

The “mini boss” fight was too easy. The other ones were meant to be over in an instant, but the main fight was supposed to be a sort of combat tutorial.

Ideas and Improvements for Next Session

Next session will be in the Throne Ship attempting a rescue and escape. There will be sneaking around and trying to locate the princess. I hope for a good stealth scene. The party may split (which would be appropriate in genre), so I will need to plan for that.

I want to put the disadvantages into play. I also want to remember my descriptions of the corrupted throne ship.

I am hoping for a multi part chase with an epic duel at the climax, but we will see what happens in real life. There will be no ship combat because I don’t want to deal with the action vehicular combat rules with new players. If they make it that far, I will probably handle it with hand waving and Communion.

Other Thoughts

The players have never played GURPS, and most of them have not played a sci-fi RPG, but everyone enjoyed the experience and had fun. Hopefully we can do it again some time.

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After Action Report: Tall Tales of the Orochi Belt Part IV – The Storm Comes

Last we left our heroes:

• Sir Axton Kain, Space Knight of House Kain, who has no heart.
• Viscontessa Shay Sabine, Space Knight of House Sabine, who sees the future on the petals of dreaming nymph
• Baron Mallus Grimshaw, Ace Pilot of House Grimshaw, who disapproves.
• Sir Tyro Pavonis, Ace Pilot of House Sabine, who sees without sight (but was unable to make the session).
• Walker Lee, Scavenger and War Hero of the Orochi Rebellion, and caretaker of one Jethro Page
• The Dread Pirate Xerxes, Captain of the Calico and its killer crew, and Asrathi Witchcat, but otherwise not a bad bloke.

They had captured the smuggler station “Port Mongo” after executing its previous owner, Mongo Corpulain, for the crimes of murder, human trafficking and Orochi poaching, and then carefully captured the rest to minimize casualties.  Then, they discovered that an Orochi Swarm descended once more on the damaged, inoperable station.

Outlining the Scale of the Disaster

The session begins with the grim Malachi Harrow, fighter ace and all-around great guy (in his estimation) standing in the hangar of Port Orochi, quietly contemplating the fighters patroling the belt, with its green-clad botanical asteroids, and the tumult behind him.  His black-eyed gaze settles upon his wingman, Mallus Grimshaw and then he notices “Nixi,” the one candy-haired “pleasure clone” who had escaped her confinement and now excitedly works with the head mechanic, Callister Lee, to repair one of the Alliance Corvettes that was damaged in the capture of the base.

“The Hierophant is still on its way, and its in the heart of the Belt.  The Morass between the botanical asteroids are interfering with communication. It should be here in about an hour.”

“That’s a problem” Mallus growled in a suspicious voice.  “The Orochi will be here in an hour. I’ll tell the others.”

Harrow once again eyed the supple body of the girl in coveralls and then glanced at Mallus “Do you mind if…”

“If you wish to socialize with peasants, don’t let me stop you.” The Baron growled, and then turned to join the rest of the command crew.

The silken-haired Squadron Commander of Harlequin Squadron, Talia Sabine, stood at the center of attention as everyone peppered her with status updates while she cradled her wounded arm in a sling.

• The Orochi would be here in an hour.
• The Hierophant would be here in an hour, and they had no way to warn the carrier of the impending attack.
• The base was in total disrepair but Walker Lee thought he might be able to jury rig some repairs, if he was given the proper resources.
• There were a considerable number of prisoners (The smuggler Wyatt Van Carlo, the pirate Scipio Vash, Legionnaire 451, some poor kid, and a bunch of nameless Belter mooks) who needed guarding.

After a discussion, the group decided:

• To put all possible personnel (all regulars except one who would guard, all pilots and any prisoners who they deemed trustworthy and were willing to help, which amounted to 5 prisoners) to the repair of the base under Walker Lee’s command.
• The focus on the repair of the sensors, the force screen, and the long-range weapons; they would not fix the comms, the tactical mainframe, the short-range weapons, or the internal security.
• Mallus and Malachi would board their valkyries and rush to the Heirophant as quickly as they could, based an navigational assumptions, and see if they could manually warn them.

The Final Hour

 A squad of 5 regulars arrive, escorting a tall, bearded belter in a space suit carrying a harpoon and a small child, and an Imperial medical officer, who has his hands up.  Upon the arrival of the Imperial medical officer, he marches directly up to Talia and says:
“I am Lieutenant Commander Venter Weir, Medical Officer of the Resolute, Service Number IMP-6174-1089. As a prisoner of war, I expect be given all the rights of the Sovereign Accord”
“Finally!” exclaims the gleefully vengeful Axton Kain, who happily takes him into custody, but not before Xerxes manages to hiss and spit at the Imperial.  Axton escorts him towards his lancer, leaving the man to his devices.
Upon seeing the roughness of the doctor’s treatment, the man with the child bellows “Hey! Don’t treat him like that! He done saved Emma’s life.”
This creates a flurry of questions: the man’s name is Ford Francesca, and he is a homesteader of the Veridian Field and a botanical asteroid farmer.  He had come to the station “to drop off his supply of Obtusa mats, and to see about mabye picking up a wife” as he heard they had shipments of “wives” here.  During the attack, some debris had wounded his child (who was, of course, there to meet her “new mommy”) and the doctor had worked hard to save her life.

After some initial hostility, the group decides that Ford is no threat. When asked if he can help with repairs, he readily agrees, but he asks again about a “wife,” and then notices Nixi, who is in the midst of being “talked at” by Malachi Harrow.  He approaches, looks her over and declares her “Awfully young looking,” and not really his type.  He asks to see her teeth, and after blinking, the clone shows him her teeth, and then he asks if she’s good with children and can cook.  She says she doesn’t know, but she likes fixing things.  He nods, satisfied and asks if she’d like to join him on his homestead as his wife and be an Asteroid Farmer.  She shrinks back, confused and uncertain from the attention of both Ford Francesca and Malachi Harrow, who bristles that his monologue about his fighter ace victories were interrupted by the bumpkin.
 While the rest of the group watches in tense silence, Callister quietly coaches Nixi, asking if she thinks she’d like that, or if she’d rather do something else.  She thinks for a moment and says “I think I’d rather stay and fix ships.”
To her surprise and everyone’s relief, Ford just sighs and says “Well, fair enough” and shakes her hand “It was nice to meet you.” And then he returns to help with repairs.

The point of this scene was, first, to highlight what Callister stands for. It’s to draw a parallel between how he coaches Nixi, and how he likely coached Kerin Kethim, the Ranathim mechanic who likely had similar circumstances when he first found her.  But more importantly, the “pleasure clones” (Eros-model Bioroids from Biotech) are meant to represent the underbelly of the Orochi Belt.  One of the moral questions I want to pose to the PCs is “how will you govern?” Will they rule over them like lords, will they govern like representatives? Will they impose their outsider morals or will they try to understand how the belt works.
The “clone-trade” represents a necessity in the Belt, in that there are many workers, but not a lot of companionship.  In some places, like Rust City, this results in brothels, but the miners and farmers still seek wives, a common problem with frontier-life.  But then the moral question arises as to whether the clones are a moral option for this.  The initial assumption that the clones are “slaves” is probably over simplistic: they’re not legally property here.  But at the same time, there’s doubtless some coercion going on, and even if there isn’t, are the clones, with little life experience, really in a position to consent to the life they have? Even if they are, is it moral to construct “artificial women” for the purposes of being the wife of a miner?  And if it isn’t, what conclusion do we draw from the fact that the Senator, their ally, is clearly married to one?
So far the conclusion seems to be “This is a space opera game, we rescue the beautiful clones!” but you can see with Ford that they’re willing to make some compromises here.  Mongo, who used and abused and then murdered his clone definitely gets the axe.  Ford, who’s brusque with them, but would probably be brusque with anyone, treats them like people and asks.  How will they feel about the edge cases in Rust City and elsewhere? This is a question we’ll return to several times.

Dreams and Greed

As Nixi heads off to help with repairs, Shay keeps an eye on her, until it becomes obvious that nobody is going to harass the clone, and then she goes off to indulge herself in some dreaming nymph, a psychic enhancing drug from Persephone.  While on her trip, she has visions of unbroken knight pieces near a fire, and an unbroken Queen and Jack near some stones and a far distant place, a junk yard, that she cannot see, nor find, for everyone there is blind; that’s where “the rest of them” are. Whatever that means.
Meanwhile, Xerxes glances around to make sure nobody is looking and then sneaks off to the Orochi processing center, certain that more treasure can be found there.  He communes with the dead briefly, watching visions of what they did just before they died to the Orochi attack, and then sees that a great treasure is locked away in a crate-within-a-crate, secreted there by a belter who hoped to keep it for himself. He finds therein a great, marintine gem the size of his fist, in a deep, most black, green.  He pockets it.

 I’ve been making a point of revisiting disadvantages before the session, to remind people, and I’ve found that it helps immensely in getting people to think about their disadvantages.  Seeing a spare moment of downtime, these two players elected to skip helping out to indulge in their vices.  Well played!

The Inquisition of the Imperial

Axton immediately frogmarched the Imperial officer into an interrogation room and handcuffed him to a table, leaving the one, lone regular to watch the prisoners.

I’m sure that’ll be fine.

The interrogation begins: “Why were you in the Veridian field?”
“I’m here to help people.”
“Right, that’s a likely story.”
“Have you seen how they live? How little medical service they have access to?  Have you actually seen it? Are you here to help them, Aristocrat, or just rule them?”

“I’m here to help.  I’m not here to rule them, I mean, we’re not here to rule them.  We’re here to liberate them from your tyranny.”

“Uh huh.  So, have you seen how they live? Or did you just bust in here guns blazing and seek to control the first place you found?”

“You’re losing control of this interview.” One of the players commented.
“I think he lost it awhile ago.” Another added.

“Look, this isn’t about us. It’s about you.  Odd, isn’t it, that you’re here without your ship.”
The Imperial sat back with a smile on his face.  “Yes, that is odd.  Good that you finally noticed.”
“Well, where is your ship?”
Doctor Weir hesitated.  Then leaned forward.  “I think maybe we can help one another.  You’d like to have access to an Imperial dreadnought, wouldn’t you?  Well, I need something in return.”
Axton’s eyes narrowed “What would that be?”
“I need you to rescue my crewmates.  If you promise to treat them with the same respect that you treat me, then I’ll agree to reveal the location of my ship.”
“I give you my word as a member of House Kain.”
“Do you believe in ghost ships, Mr. Kain?”
Axton pauses and then hits his comms system “Someone get Xerxes in here.

The Messenger

Mallus and Malachi fly, without incident, through the asteroid belt in search of the Hierophant and eventually track it down.  They comm the carrier directly and inform it of the situation.  The comms person asks them to hold, and then returns with the High Admiral who clarifies the situation, and then asks them to guide them through while they prepare a Raptor squadron to support them in fighting the Orochi.

Adventures in Heroic Engineering

Walker focuses on his repairs, and after a critical success and some-on-the-spot updates, they also bring up tactical and comms (making Mallus’ flight less important).  They also clipped some of the cables on the harpoons to create long range missiles, using the advanced sensors (which pick up no imperial ships, but finds the incoming Orochi, including a handful which will be ten minutes early).  Then, once everything is done, the pilots rush off to finish their task.

This was actually a mini-game I cobbled together about resource management: how do you prioritize what to rebuild given time, resources and man-power.  They had the option of distributing Regulars (soldiers) and pulling in pilots and they either had to scavenge parts (which took time) or strip other systems of parts.  Incidentally, all of this managed to conform to the GURPS Spaceships repair rules, if we assume the base is SM +12, which isn’t the craziest thing in the world.
I had intended it for the group, but handed the actual list of times and required resources to Walker’s player, the idea being that he could explain it, as his character had the information and so his player did, but he did what most engineers do, which is explain some stuff, decide it’s too complicated to explain to everyone, simplify it a bit, and then say he’ll handle it, and he did.  As a result, only he got to play with it.
The real cost was that there were no regulars watching the prisoners but the one, and Axton was distracted, and they didn’t activate internal security, because why would you?

The Orochi Storm

Axton steps out of his interview, having uncuffed the Doctor Weir, to go find Xerxes, and finds a belter walking away from the brig, one of the belters he had cleared for work.  The man does a quick, casual salute at Axton and carries on.
“Hey, aren’t you in the wrong part of the base?” Axton demands.  Suddenly, the Belter runs.  Axton charges and bodily tackles him and restrains him.
At that moment, a team of three orochi, including the wounded one that Axton liberated, and a great, white Orochi with a rider on its back, arrive.  They approach slowly with the rider slowly waving until the white orochi comes right up against the base.  She dismounts and approaches Axton.
“Did you rescue Runt?” she asks imperatively, and looks around, “You’re not smugglers at all.  Regime change?”
After a quick discussion, it comes out that she’s Nadia “Viper” Morgan’s mother, Medea Morgan, an Orochi Rider.  She uses her Animal Empathy to commune with the beasts and participated in their raids on the base.  After Axton’s kindness, she’s willing to do what it takes to push the beasts away, but “Red Alpha,” the new swarm leader, is difficult to control, but she’ll do her best.
Then Axton rushes back to the brig to check, and indeed, his one Regular is down, blood all over the floor. He gasps out “They took her, they took the Corporal” and then collapses.  6 prisoners, including Scipio Vash, have escaped. He orders the Doctor Weir to save the Regular, and then, spotting someone leaving, gives chase.
The orochi swarm, led by the great, red orochi, arrive.  Medea goes to commune with it, but is rebuked savagely as she is thrown from her mount by Red Alpha’s attack on Big White. She comms back (as she floats through space) that if they can kill Red Alpha, the rest of the swarm should scatter.
The swarm rushes the base, but the repaired force screen holds them back. The bases defenses open fire, driving the Red Alpha back.  Mallus and Malachi burst through the asteroid field with a raptor squadron about a minute behind them.  Walker comms Mallus and explains the need to focus fire on the big red orochi, who complies. He and Malachi both open fire on the orochi.  Mallus powers his Valkyrie’s “lightning cannon” which dumps all of its power, and some of Mallus’, directly into a single blast of lightning that certainly gets the Orochi’s attention. Malachi fires a reckless all out assault at Red Alpha, who disables his ship with an flip of its electromagnetic tail.
The fighters launch through the barrage of plasma fire rained down upon it by the orochi: one fighter catches fire and explodes, but not before the pilot ejects.  Shay deftly dodges through the fire and races towards Red Alpha and opens fire on its eye, inflicting some damage, but failing to cripple it.  The Orochi roars. The Calico blasts through the plasma fire, its heavily armored front barely singed by the attacks, and then opened fire with its forward mounted cannons to hit Red Alpha about as hard as Mallus had, but still fail to cripple the great beast.
Meanwhile, Axton burst into the hallway.  A single fugitive opens fire on his with a blaster pistol, which Axton ignores as he blasts through him and through some random construction equipment to come to the other side and find… nothing.  He’s completely lost track of his target.

Ah, critical failures at the worst possible time.  Plus he spent all of his impulse buys…

As Walker begins to coordinate with the fighter squadrons and aiming the primary cannons, three fugitives storm into the room, blasting with their pistols.  Walker dives to cover, but not before popping one in the face, painting the inside of his vacc helmet red with blood.  One rushes around cover to smash Walker’s faceplate with the butt of his pistol, while the other goes to seize control of the comms system to radio for help.  Walker tackles the first one in such a way that it slams him into the second guy, which knocks out the second guy.  Then the two struggle on the ground, and Walker manages to pop open the other’s visor and knock him unconscious with a headbutt.
Then he gasps back to the comm system and begins to coordinate all forces onto Red Alpha while the heavy cannons lay down a pattern of fire to disrupt the swarm.
Mallus opens fire on the rest of the orochi to draw them away from Malachi and the Raptor Squadron, and then races away with a swarm of orochi boiling after him.  This gives the Raptors their shot, and the first, second and third torpedo strike home, and the great beast erupts in nuclear fire.  The rest of the swarm, stripped of their leader, scatter back into the belt.

The Aftermath

Exhausted, frustrated and triumphant, Harlequin squadron returns to the Hierophant.  The fighters land, and Kerin Kethim, Ranathim mechanic, rushes to the side of Shay’s fighter to quickly inspect it. After carefully caressing it and looking it over, Kerin murmurs in her broken Galactic Common:
“She is okay.  She is tired. She must rest.  Ah, your talisman, it broke!”
“It served me well.” Shay smiled at her.
“I make you another.” Kerin promises.
Mallus’ wife, Dani Grimshaw-Shinjurai rushes him as he leaves his fighter to give him a fiercely emotional hug while the cameras swirl around them.  Mallus can almost hear the soundtrack they’ll eventually put over the emotional moment.  He plays his role as stoic soldier and husband.
As Senator Sawyer Septum and his wife, Rayna Septum, come to the hangar bay to greet the returning heroes (When Ford sees her, he comments that she’s more his sort of woman and asks if anyone minds if he invites Rayna to be his wife.  They tell him the Senator might have something to say about that). Rayna spots Nixi and she freezes: they could be sister-daughters.  Then she sees the clones being offloaded from Walker’s nomad.
“What’s all this?” she demands.  Her wonder turns to anger as she the situation is explained to her and she learns that she, too, must be a clone, and that, perhaps, Sawyer was less than honest about how he “saved her” from pirates, though the Senator maintains that he did, in fact, rescue her from pirates.  Wyatt Van Carlo seems to recognize the senator, however, and the Senator does question if it is wise to disrupt the flow of clones to their intended destinations, as waiting parties will wonder what happened to them.
The crew re-unite in the grand briefing room. They discuss the situation, which is as follows:

• The Mother’s Touch, the Eleganian Medical Cruiser, fell out of Hyperspace in the inner system of the Orochi belt and is surely in Imperial hands now.
• The remaining Kainian Lancers fell out near the Skollian Ice Fields, between where the characters are now and the inner system.  They are likely in the hands of pirates.
• There was a hyperspatial signature from the remainder of the fleet “somewhere out system.”
• The Empire doesn’t seem to be aware of their presence yet.
• The base is secured, but still heavily damaged (Walker’s repairs were just a jury rigging).

 After much debate, the following positions are clarified:

• High Admiral Lowelin Cole feels they should torch the base, stow the clones in the storage bay, and focus on moving in on the Empire as quickly as possible.  He advocated for going to the Ice Field to recover the Kainian Lancers.
• Sawyer Septum argues for releasing the prisoners, returning the base to them, and resuming its operations as though nothing happened. They should use the smuggler as a cover to insert themselves into Rust City and see what they can do to connect with the resistance while raising as few suspicions about their presence as possible.
• Talia argues for repairing and restoring the base “as it states in the prophecy” and getting to know the belters here, who have great need of their presence.  The clones should be liberated and decide their own fate, and the labyrinth explored.

The heroes naturally decide to side with Talia: they decide to stay at the base, to explore the labyrinth, to liberate the clones (and give them the base “for the Queen must make the fortress her domain and the bloody-haired princess must break her chains”).   They also want to see if they can find some way to rescue the Imperial Dreadnought from the Derelict Planet.
And thus ends the first arc of the Tall Tales of the Orochi Belt.

Retrospective

What I wanted to do with the Tall Tales was get a good mix between space action and personal action, and I think this proves that it works.  There’s been no scenario that the heroes wanted to engage in that my rules don’t cover.  They’re not as quick as I would like… but you can also resolve most chase/action scenes in a few turns, so while mulling over the rules isn’t as blisteringly fast as I would like, the resolution of the fights go pretty fast.  Similarly, I’m finding it pretty doable to go between Action and Chase scenes, which seems the intent of GURPS Action.  All in all, I’m pleased with the rules thus far.

I will say that I’m not convinced of the Conditional Injury rules we’re using.  With the orochi I just used HP, and the fights go so fast anyway that I feel like one-minute-long fight scenes with normal HP might be just fine as is. Yes, it’s harder to get those excruciatingly long fights of two cap ships slugging it out, but I’m not convinced those are a good idea anyway.  Do we need 10-20 turns to resolve a fight? Or is just a few enough?

We missed one of our fighter aces, which diminished my ability to test things as well as I would like, but broadly, both space-combat characters and non-space combat characters have proven equally useful.  I think this is because the “Fighter Ace-ness” is not extremely expensive, which means it’s pretty easy to be “good enough” on 25-50 points.

Naturally, the players would choose to go at the least prepared direction, so I’ll need some more time to prepare, but we’ll see. This is also the direction with the last space combat and the most noodling around with occult stuff, but that might have a side benefit.  The next session will likely be a “downtime session” where people get to know one another again and simply be free to explore a bit.  Axton intends to chase down Scipio and recover the missing Corporal Saga Auric, and the rest are already busily spending their points and expressed enthusiasm for continuing.  Whether we keep going depends on my time and how useful I find it as a “playtest,” but for now signs point to “Go.”

I found this an interesting session as the group seemed very engaged, and while I think I made some mistakes (I lost track of stuff in the space combat fight again. Not rules, but tracking all the players and NPCs.  It might be worth having one of those turn counter systems again, as this is a problem I’ve had since day one as a GM), but they seemed to really enjoy it.  The game has really found its stride and the players have really gotten to know their characters.  It’s been fun to run it, and I think they’ve had fun playing it.
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After Action Report: Tall Tales of the Orochi Belt Part III: Into Port Mongo

Last we left our intrepid heroes, they had entered Port Mongo, a heavily damaged smuggler station in the Botanical Asteroids of the Veridian Belt, having chased off their pirate escort and crashed the the ship of the smuggler Wyatt Van Carlo, and discovered that he carried a cargo of pleasure clones.  Once inside the base, the disgustingly overweight Mongo Corpulain, “Commander” of the base, hailed them, expressed his surprise that the Alliance had an interest in his operation and instructed them that he had no intention to surrender.

Our heroes are:

• Lady Talia Sabine, the NPC space knight commander of Harlequin Squadron
• Baron Mallus Grimshaw, aristocratic adventurer and fighter ace, known for his paranoia and overweening arrogance.
• Viscontess Shay Sabine, aristocratic space knight and fighter pilot and the wingman of Talia Sabine.
• Sir Tyro Pavonis, Aristocratic (and blind!) fighter ace (though not from as prestigious a family as the other two), and wing commander in Harlequin Squadron. He has exceptional psychic vision, but keeps his sensory awareness quiet, preferring to play the role of blindman.
• Sir Axton Kain, cybernetic space knight and presumptive heir of House Kain, currently in command of a platoon of Alliance Regulars.
• Walker Lee, native of the Orochi Belt, rebel hero, and scavenger.  He watches over Jethro, a farmboy from St. Borlaug’s Star near the Belt.
• Xerxes, an Asrathi pirate captain of the Calico and a practicing Witch Cat.  He has a full pirate crew, including the fanatical and blood thirsty Asrathi Sylvar Ro, the heavily armed Born Riksen, the Shinjurai engineer with a bad attitude, Winner Chau, and the innocent Asrathi college student who somehow managed to stumble into being a pirate, Persia Purasinga.

The session begins with Baron Mallus Grimshaw regarding the rest of the fighters jetting about on patrol in the space around Port Mongo, securing it from any remnant defenders.  One brings a hand-carried message from the Hierophant, which is unable to directly communicate with them thanks to interference from the botanical asteroids.  The message carrier brings it to Lady Talia Sabine who stands with Sir Axton Kain and his regulars as they keep watch over their prisoners, the smuggler Wyatt van Carlo and his pirate companion, Scipio Vash. Nearby, the farmer boy from St. Borlaug’s Star sits with the candy-haired clone-girl, who now wears a donated coat and breaths from a rebreather.  She has introduced herself as Nixi but has few memories (and was likely only recently decanted from the cloning biofabricator).

The messenger drops off the communicator and an image of the Grand Dame, Contessa Styliana Sabine, herself appears.  “My eyes are opened, the prophecies are true,” she intones formally, and then continues:

• The Hierophant is unable to communicate with them directly due to interference from the botanical asteroids and the “morass” between them.  They are coming to them, however, but going is slow thanks to all the asteroids.
• No other ships arrived; they have the last hyperspatial signatures of them, so a good idea of where they’ve been scattered across the system.
• They must control the base.  It is clearly the “mountain fortress” of the prophecy, but they must avoid death where possible.
• They have detected some movements at the edges of the belt, some corvette-sized signatures that might be additional pirates.  They’ve sent some fighters to investigate.
• Talia is in charge.

While the message plays, the Shieldmaiden-pattern robot, Elara, approaches Xerxes and his pirate crew.  They discuss the possible haul from the place, with Born Riksen, heavy set and jovial in his heavy armor, bragging about his knowledge of the sort of operation going on.

“Whatever you do, we have to get to the processing center.  I bet they have a scrimshaw blade and some marentine gems.  They’d be worth a fortune!”

They’re interrupted by the arrival of Elara, who invites Xerxes to join Axton, as they have heard he had a vision pertinent to their circumstances. The pirates argue about their deployment; Sylvar Ro bristles at being left behind, his tail lashing as he moves with his reavers to guard the entrance, and Born exaltes at he and his maurauders joining their captain, which only irritates Sylvar further.  And so, Xerxes joins the rest of the group.

They arrive to find Callister Lee and his robot, Nubbins, explaining that they’ve managed to isolate the hangar bay from the rest of the comm systems and surveillance, so they can talk privately here without Mongo overhearing them.  He then suggests that he and Nubbins watch over Nixi while they repair Axton’s Lancer.  Walker, Jethro’s guardian, looking askance at his ward’s mooning over the clone-girl, readily agrees. 

The group describes their best strategy.

• Xerxes expresses concern that the dark Asrathi god, Kilrah, has been trying to contact him and may be trying to disrupt the mission. He believes the base to be under a dark influence, and informs them that Kilrah wants him to kill.
• The group believes it best to keep the pirate and the smuggler alive, but to arrest them and keep them in the brig on Axton’s ship.
• Thanks to one of the Regular’s scouting (Lance Highguard), they know there are several different paths they can choose: the industrial section, the habitats, the command bridge high above, or the bowels of the base, likely where engineering is. 
• They choose to go into the bowels first, to see if they can smoke out Mongo and, perhaps, restart the fusion reactors.
• Talia decides to stay behind with the majority of the Regulars, to keep the hangar secure and to distract Mongo by “negotiating” with him.

And so begins the “Dungeon Crawl” section of the Tall Tales of the Orochi Belt.  In addition to the space combat, I wanted to see how well the fighter aces handled on the ground.  This is a BAD 1 scenario, so it should be relatively easy and, as we’ll see, it will be (especially given that everyone is 300 point characters).  I also wanted to put some extra work into bringing everyone together, which is easier in a ground-combat scenario.  I also want to note that I had all of this planned out before I knew what the PCs were like, so some of it might seem tailored for Xerxes, but it actually wasn’t, he just made certain aspects a lot easier!

We did a couple of character things before this started.  First, I talked to Shay’s player about her ST, and I agreed to allow her to reduce it to 9, mostly to better reflect her physical stature; this would prove an interesting choice, as it gave her the option to pursue more psychic powers, but the additional frailty of that lost HP would turn out to matter a lot.  We also explored our disadvantages more clearly, and I required a few people to invoke the Ham Clause on some of their more obscure disadvantages.  This included:

• Shay’s Dreaming Nymph addition 
• Mallus’s secret agenda
• Walker’s Superstitions and his secret and obsession (merged into a single -2)
• Xerxes’ Disciplines of Faith (Though I forgot to consider his Asrathi disadvantages).

This helped bring their disadvantages more to the fore, and made them think a bit more about their characters and their disadvantages.

Into the Bowels of Port Mongo 

And so, the party descended into the bowels of Port Mongo, where dripping coolant echoed through empty chambers and darkness wrapped around them in a suffocating embrace.

Not that it mattered, because everyone had nightvision, mostly via their vacc suits.  I might change that, because the idea of people turning on flashlights in dark parts of a ship fits the feel of Psi-Wars well, as well as certain races, such as the Asrathi and the Gaunt, having an advantage in the dark.  I’ve generally found this to be an issue: a lot of the typical problems of games like DF, Action or After the End, such as darkness, toxins in the air, or temperature extremes, are totally mitigated by ultra-tech vacc suits.  I think we can make the argument that Psi-Wars vacc suits “aren’t that great,” because, after all, people get rid of them as soon as possible, so they shouldn’t be something one lives in, unless you’re a belter.  Something for me to think about.

Finally, the reached the deepest level, where the natural flows of psionic energy grew twisted.  Tyro found his vision distorted and began to see double.  Xerxes performed a minor rite of protection and the Dark God Kilrah saw fit to bestow further distortion of vision upon him, as he faded more deeply into the shadows, like a ghost.  At the deepest part, a candy-haired corpse lay in a hallway of doors, blasted in the chest, a look of stunned surprise on her otherwise vacant face.  Beyond, they sensed even greater darkness, so naturally, they went to explore that too.

Beyond lay a great, vaulted chamber of ancient, carved stone, overrun with the lichens, mosses and vines of the botanical asteroid.  On the far end, someone had sealed an opening with a great, metal door, and noted “Do not enter.”  Axton Kain reached for the door despite a sense of foreboding, but nothing happened when he touched it.

Except gaining a disadvantageous destiny to see that it opened and whatever lay within came out.

The group correctly identified the room at an entrance into the Labyrinth.  Walker revealed that the Veridian belt once made up a planet, Veridian, that was destroyed long before humanity ever arrived.  Veridian was speculated to be a Labyrinthine planet, and there had even been an old Akashic shrine on some of the asteroids to investigate it, but it had been abandoned centuries ago.  The intensity of the twisted psionic energy made the psychics uncomfortable, so they returned to the corpse.

Xerxes performed a rite above her and found himself looking eye-to-eye at her confused ghost, who claimed “I can’t believe he shot me!” After haggling with her confused spirit, he learned that she had been Mongo’s personal assistant, but when the Orochi came to attack, he had shot her, rather than share his safe room with her.  Nonetheless, as she died, she had seen the code he had used to get in.

Xerxes gave the code to the rest, and the door opened easily.  On the other side, a crowd of armed smugglers, including an engineer armed with a bandolier of EMP grenades, circled around the massive, heavily armed hover-chair of Mongo Corpulain where he sat at a comm system near the massive, quiet fusion reactor.  Mongo finished his call to “Legionnaire 451” telling him that the Alliance was negotiating in bad faith, and he had his permission to launch an assault on the hangar.  At that moment, both sides recognized one another and shifted to attack, but our heroes had the drop on them.

Axton immediately charged in and bodychecked the engineer, knocking her off her feet and bouncing her against the wall.  Shay stepped in and swung her resonance sword in an elegant arc, its EMP-powered blade passing perfectly through the force screen around the chair and dealing sufficient fatigue damage to Corpulain to immediately knock him out.  To prevent further catastrophe, Mallus leveled his hand at the group and used his Mass Surge to create sparks flying off everyone’s equipment, including the chair, which shorted out and died completely. The rest came in, opening fire on the stunned, suddenly disarmed smugglers, defeating them swiftly.  In the midst of the commotion, Xerxes fired his plasma pistol at the still body of Mongo, but Shay, sensing it, deflected it with her blade.  When she was further distracted by the firefight, Xerxes crept in under the cover of his broken communion miracle (and her increasingly distracted nature due to her dreaming nymph withdrawals) and killed Mongo with a ceremonial slash of his force blade.  The fighting abated after just a few seconds, with most of the smugglers badly wounded, and only two dead: Mongo, at the hands of Xerxes, and the engineer, after a slash from Axton’s force sword.

I expected this fight to be a lot harder; Mongo was loaded for bear with mini-missiles, a gatling blaster and a force screen and was, thus, a mini-tank.  I’m not sure I should have allowed the ESP blade, which ignores DR, to pass through the force screen or not, but it hardly matters, because Surge is a malediction and thus easily passes through force screens.  We also handled Surge wrong, as it’s resisted twice: first, you roll a contest vs HT, and then if it passes, you inflict surge “damage” and then check again to see if it’s disabled.  Psi-Wars has houserules that make surge more effective, and it certainly showed here.  We missed the first HT contest, but in retrospect, I think it was fine.  The way Action handles things like this is to just do a standard roll at a BAD penalty.  And in Psi-Wars, Psi typically has a less bad BAD to deal with, so it’s probable that the BAD-PSI would be -0, which means his straight roll to see if it worked (plus an impulse buy point when it technically failed) was enough to make it all work.

Walker was a little forgotten in the melee, mostly because he was too slow, and holding up the rear, but I think he got some use out of his plasma flamer.  Tyro was also on the edges, his pistol not especially effective in these circumstances. Mallus, Xerxes, Shay and Axton all shined.  It should be noted that Axton and Shay are Space Knights, though Shay has some points in being a pilot.  Xerxes uses a unique Pirate template that’s mostly space combat focused but with plenty of ground combat elements, making him a hybrid character, and Mallus is pure fighter ace, so its seems plausible that a fighter ace can hold their own in ground combat, which was the point of scenes like this.

Once they had secured the reactor, Walker stayed behind to reactivate the reactor.  The rest high-tailed it for the hangar bay, to find it already under attack by a swarm of smugglers and a giant, heavily-armored super-soldier and a plasma-wielding Maruader.

The Battle for the Hangar

Axton didn’t slow down at all.  He took the entirety of the Legionnaire’s gatling blaster on his force shield, the shots splattering off of it as he charged and slammed directly into Legionnaire, knock him off balance, just as Shay erupted from behind the cover he had provided and slashed at him her resonance blade, the ESP-attuned psi-blade carving a ghostly pattern through the armor.  The giant toppled, his consciousness snuffed out and slumbered upon the ground.  The Maurauder fired shot after shot from his plasma fire, which the rest of the group dodged and Shay battered aside the fire with her resonance sword.  One of the stray plasma shots, deflected by Shay, struck a coolant line, and mist sprayed into the hallway, obscuring everyone and creating an ice slick on the floor.

Tyro steadied his focus through the mist, able to see without sight, and fired his blaster pistol, which did nothing against the tough armor of the soldiers.  Mallus waded through the mist and when he say the marauder, exerted his mind upon the man’s gun, which caused him to drop it as sparks few from the surging weapon.

Xerxes, meanwhile, still benefited from his ghostly miracle, and slipped through the mist and made it into the hangar.  He found Talia wounded in the shoulder, but still deflecting fire with her force sword.  He found Sylvar Ro and nodded to him, agreeing to create a distraction while his reavers got into place.  Once they had, while the Regulars and the smugglers continued their intense firefight, Xerxes suddenly dropped his Miracle and unveiled his force sword on their flank, howling with predatory malevolence.  Distracted, the smugglers dropped their guard just as the reavers fell from the rafters and slaughtered the smuggler mooks with their vibro-blades.

Outside the hangar, the space knights mopped up the smugglers.  One, armed with a plasma pistol, landed a direct hit on Axton Kain, who glanced down at his smoking, but otherwise unarmed, armor, and then laughed through his loudspeakers:

“Nice shot!  Now surrender.”  He leveled his force sword at the man, who dropped his weapon immediately.

Shay took out the marauder with her resonance blade. 

As the the mist dissipated, everyone surveyed their surroundings, checked over their shoulders, and then slowly eased and came out of cover. After taking stock, they determined they now had control over the base . The lights suddenly flickered back to life as Walker commed everyone that he had managed to restart the fusion reactor.  Talia shrugged off concern about her wounded shoulder.  The group gathered and discussed, and then determined to explore the rest of the base.

“Fatigue damage is OP” Shay’s player claimed.  While true, it’s really the combination of Shay’s fatigue damage and Mallus’ surge that’s so effective: what she can’t defeat (machines), he can. Or rather, he can stun for a few turns, which allows people to take it out. Also, while the fight wasn’t nearly as challenging as they seemed to expect, again, we’re talking a BAD 1 fight.  I had hoped the Legionnaire would present more of a challenge than he did but, ahhh, learning curve.  This will prove useful when I need to hammer them with bounty hunters and Imperials later.  Plus I don’t mind it so much when players steamroll a deliberately cautious encounter, as long as they get the sense of menace and threat, and I certainly think they did.

The Rest of the Base

The Habitat Section

Axton led some regulars into the habitat, which seemed deserted (most of the inhabitants having been, uh, defeated by the player characters).  They had a startling encounter with a “Mouser” which scurried off and hid trembling in another room, and then found an imperial medic locked in a medical room.  The room had been sealed off to maintain the atsmophere within, and through a window, they could see him working with surgical tools on a wounded little girl.  Beside him sat a grown man, carrying a long rifle and wearing a vacuum suit. The medical officer looked up and noticed them and then lifted his hands to gesture, indicating the number 5.

Axton snorted “He’s holding that little girl hostage.”  Then, agreeing to not break the seal, he posted a guard. Hearing some interesting comm traffic, he set off for the industrial section.

The Bridge

Mallus, Shay and Tyro clambered up into the swaying remnants of the bridge that overlooked the rest of the base. They arrived to find the computers locked down.  As they set about trying to unlock it, a heavily armored and mining-laser armed Dredgecat slowly powered up and so, you guessed it, Mallus surged it, and then while it was jerking and spasming, cut it down with his force sword.  Then they went back to fixing the computers.  Some interesting comm traffic came over the comms, so Shay and Tyro left Mallus to his devices.  Once they left, he glanced over his shoulder and then inserted some backdoor code so he could get logs of what people did with the computer systems for the base.

The Industrial Section

“Boss, we need to go, we need to get to that Industrial Section first.” Born insisted to Xerxes while the rest of the aristocratic types debated how best to rule their new doman.  “Before that Walker guy gets the good stuff.”

Indeed, after a quick look around, they noticed Walker absent.  So they quickly made their way to the Industrial section, where their Orochi kills were flensed, stripped down and processed.  The Orochi attack had wrought much devastation here.  The entire section was smashed, with flickering lights, half-open doors, and scattered bodies.  They found one survivor, who blubbered his innocence and warned them from the main processing warehouse as it was still there.

They quickly saw what he meant.  They stepped into the vast room, large enough to process several Orochi at once.  The industrial machinery necessary for the processing of Orochi lay scattered and broken across the vast space, as well as great crates, barrels and chests filled with the processed results of the Orochi.  One wall had been torn open to reveal the vista of space and the botanical asteroids beyond.  And in that great rent, dominating the room with its wrath, lay a wounded Orochi, pinned to the ground by a great girder that had managed to spear it.

The Orochi was vast, longer the Axton’s frigate.  Great, needle-sharp, metallic teeth gnashed at the thin air of the room.  Two eyes rolled and searched the room.  Electricity gathered along its mane of roiling tendrils that surrounded its head.  It’s tail, with a spread fin that rippled with magnetic force, lashed at the warehouse.

“$#!+.”  Born muttered.

The group radioed for help and then began to creep around the edges while the Orochi roared and trembled.  Its electric arcs began to spark and surge as it gathered its full power and then launched a ball of plasma which exploded across the room.  The group took cover.

Suddenly, Axton and Shay arrived.  The moment Shay arrived and beheld the beast, her Second Sight struck her with a vision of Viper, their co-pilot, riding a white Orochi at the head of a swarm heading directly for the base. Axton, heedless of the danger, charged directly towards the creature.  The Orochi fired again and they dove for cover.  Axton rolled next to the girder and began to slash at it with his force sword.  Another blast and he gritted his teeth, hiding behind the cover of his force shield, which flickered under the fraction of the titanic force that it absorbed.  Then, with a few more slashes, he carved through the rest of the girder and freed it. It turned, roaring, and flicked its tail to launch itself away from the warehouse.  The flick left an electromagnetic wake that seized through Axton’s cybernetics, leaving him gasping for breath and prone on the ground.

Tyro and a Regular medic rushed to their side.  Once the surging subsided, Axton easily got back to his feet, a little battered, but otherwise fine.  Shay, however, had been pretty seriously tossed around by his blasts, and was in need of urgent first aid.  However, a quick application of TL 11^ first aid later, and she was right as rain.

I used the Cinematic Explosions rules to govern the damage that the Orochi dealt, so rather than dealing with the 6d×50 (2) burn ex damage from the Orochi’s blast, which meant even on a success, they took 1d damage, which bypassed their armor, because don’t quibble with me on how much damage you take when I’m sparing you 6d×50 (2) burn ex damage!  But when you have 9 HP, taking two dice of damage is actually quite scary.  When you have thirty (Axton!), it’s not such a big deal.

While everyone was distracted, Walker managed to snag a set of some marentine gems and three marentine rings (organic gems formed within the Orochi that grant it its sympathetic telepathy with the other Orochi; they can be used as psychotronic components) and three Kusani Spines (a length of metallic “bone” that channel the force of the energy necessary for their plasma blasts; used to create Scrimshaw blades).  Xerxes managed to grab the Scrimshaw blade (a finely crafted “bone” sword made from a Kusani Spine, that can absorb energy given to it to create a plasma sheath around the blade, like a primitive force sword).

Alarms!

As the Orochi flew away, Mallus had enough command of the bridge systems to get a sensor report and he, too, detected the “corvette-sized activity” that the Hierophant (out of communication for the moment, but approaching them as quickly as it could) had detected.  A lot of “corvette-sized activity.”  One could call it a swarm.  Having heard of the Orochi and made a guess as to what attacked the base, he correctly identified them as an Orochi swarm making its way to them.  They had less than an hour to prep for the assault.

(And Xerxes’ player spent an Impulse Buy point to drive the Orochi back to the swarm before they got there, to perhaps spread its message of the charity of the group).

And there ended the session.

Retrospective

I wanted to focus on bringing the entire group together and I thought I did that rather well.  Walker and Tyro were a little on the edge, though I suspect that was because the quicker and more combat-oriented characters were faster on the draw.  Walker was actually very useful, but in a more subtle way.  I suspect to really bring Tyro’s talents to the fore, we need a more dangerous scenario, as his strengths are leadership and tactics, and when you can just win a fight with “Chaaarge!” you need neither, but there will be nastier fights coming up.

Axton’s player really enjoyed itself.  You could hear it in his voice.  But GURPS, in my experience, is a joy to play with tank characters.  Sure, everyone prefers the high DX characters, like Shay, as they can flow through their enemies quickly, but GURPS is so lethal that you know that you must not get hit. But if you invest in enough GURPS traits to shrug off attacks, it’s a lot of fun to just wade through it all.  Shay also really shone, because of her blade and her skill, which suggests that “hybrid” characters like her are fine.

Mallus, also, did very well, though mostly on the strength of Surge. I updated Surge to act more as a Side Effect Stun that only affects electrical critters.  At its base, the original Surge is Burn Attack (Malediction +100%; No Wounding -50%; Psi -10%;  Surge +20%) with a few extra minor modifiers, but this is the core of it. That comes to 8 points per level.  You could also write it as (Malediction +100%; No Wounding -50%; Psi -10%; Symptom, Stun, 1/3 HP, (only against electrical targets -20%; Resistible, HT -30%) +15%) which comes to [7.75] or close enough to 8.  This new version is effectively (Malediction +100%; No Wounding -50%; Psi -10%;  Side Effect, Stunning, +50%; only against Electrical Targets -20%) for [8.5].  So.. yes, this new version improves the value of the Surge effect by a marginal amount (it adds up the more you add in), but the problem with the previous surge is that it effectively did nothing, because 75% of the time (HT 12 is default for most devices) everything would just ignore it.  Hence the change.  One might expect beefing up the effect from “basically worthless” to effective would make it effective. Is it fair? It seems close enough to fair, yes.  And the player dumped 25-50 points into that one power, so one would expect it to be better especially against such weak foes and in such a target rich environment.  He’s already moaning that his pocket ace power is useless against the Orochi, and that’s going to be rather common: he has a power that’s pretty specific, and it won’t always be useful.  So, “Player who invested in something benefited from the investment especially with good teamwork” doesn’t strike me as a problem.  As we ramp up to bigger fights, if it continues to be an “I win” button, we’ll revisit it.  And this is a playtest, so it’s good to see how these things play out.

All in all, I though the session went well.  Every character had a moment and they all had a chance to interact with one another.  I think it did a lot to cement what the group dynamics will be like, and it introduced them to what their new home will be like for the next few sessions.  I’m curious what directions they’ll choose to go into after this.

For the Next Session

• A quick scramble to deal with the Orochi menace before the unaware Heirophant arrives
• The Imperial Medic! For what dark purpose has he joined the smugglers? Are there more Imperials here?
• Judgement for the prisoners and for their clone-cargo.
• The fate of the rest of the fleet: Revealed!

After Action Report: Tall Tales of the Orochi Belt Part II: Welcome to the Belt

We join our heroes on the Heirophant, the Arcana-Pattern Carrier of the Grand Dame.  Lady Talia Sabine greets her new wingman, the Viscontess Shay Sabine and they walk together to the briefing.  They briefly discuss their philosophy of war, and Talia reveals that she fights this war out of a sense of duty to the people: that the Alliance was meant to protect the Galaxy and have hidden behind the protection of Caliban too long, and that she wants to finally step forward and do her duty as a noblewoman.

This has been important for me to establish.  Talia thus far hasn’t had much of a chance to make an appearance or reveal herself as a character, and I wanted to let her breath a little.  More importantly, I want to lampshade one of the major themes of the campaign: how will you rule? Talia represents the idealism of noblesse oblige.  She believes that Maradonians like herself are a cut above the rest and have a right to rule, but this is a responsibility and a duty to use their gifts to rule well.  This will contrast with the Grand Dame, who has a more cynical view of power, Callister Lee, who doesn’t believe in the nobility of the aristocracy, and Sawyer Septum, who both believes in the power of the common man and has a rather cynical view on power.

The Briefing 

Then they gather to attend the briefing, which Talia herself must give.  The plan is revealed as thus:

• The Alliance has reports of three imperial dreadnoughts (the Victor’s Gambit, the Resolute and the Sovereign Triumphant) and 5 Dominion-Class heavy cruisers.  Their reports also indicate that the Victor’s Gambit and an escort of 2 cruisers often go on patrols to other, nearby systems and might be cut-off by the hyperstorms.
• This garrison is focused on Beauregard Station, near the gas giant Goldstrike.
• The plan is for the fleet to fly to the third of the stars of the Orochi Belt.  They will use the star as cover from imperial sensors, thus arriving at its far side.  They will secure the area (“the Veridian Field”)
• Once secure, they will branch off and try to infiltrate deeper into the system, acquiring allies and activating rebel cells, and then bring out their fleet from behind “Jolly Green” and reveal their presence in a coordinated effort with the rest to strike at the Imperial Fleet.
• They must do all of this before the Hyperstorms subside, so they can mount a proper defense against the inevitable retaliation of the 137th Imperial Fleet off of Zaine.

Nobody has any real questions, but the Orochi Belters mutter among one another that that’s the part of the Orochi Belt most infested with the Orochi.  This means there will be less of an Imperial presence there, but that’s because there will be lots of Orochi. This makes it a dangerous, desperate gamble.  Lynwood Voss comments that he likes it.

During this scene, we also introduce a few new characters and arrange for everyone’s place in the organizational structure:

• Captain Tyro Pavonis (Played by Nemoricus) will command one wing of Harlquin Squadron, including Lieutenant Kobayahi “Femme Fatale” Zero, Lieutenant Lynwood “Belter’s Brag” Voss, the feisty Flight Officer Sienna “Red” Sky and the regulation-driven Flight Officer Livius “Blue” Kyne. These latter two are introduced for the first time bickering about who won in a fighter simulator contest. Tyro’s mechanic will be Arietta Lee.
• Shay Sabine (played by Shinanoki) will be Talia Sabine’s wingman and her mechanic will be the Ranathim Kerin Kethim.
• Baron Mallus Grimshaw (Gentleman Gamer) will fly with Malachi Harrow and will have Tadashi “Prime” as his mechanic (though he was unable to attend).
• Sir Axton Kain, who commands a full Lancer, and whose highest ranked Regular is an irrascible old cus, Sergeant Wick Rayburn, is asked by Talia to integrate Sabine soldiers into his Lancer, including the handsome and naive parade-regular, Lieutenant Lance Highguard.  Axton makes sure Wick is willing to babysit Lance.  Callister Lee and Nubbins also join them aboard their ship as engineers.

One of my struggles with the campaign concept of Tall Tales is how to bring across the scale of their operation.  This is not a group of five heroes in a single corvette, but several high level officers in the part of a huge fleet.  How do we bring across the scale of that fleet?  To do this, I’ve introduced a lot of minor NPCs, little more than named mooks who have a name, a snippet of description, and a single RP quirk.  I can expand them if necessary, but the idea is just to have some characters I can pull up at the drop of a hat to give a sense of a huge community in the fleet.  The big risk here, though, is that by calling out a name, already overloaded players might feel like they can’t remember all these names, but they don’t need to remember these, unless they interest them.

I also felt like Tyro didn’t get much chance to do anything last session; setting him up with his wing gave him more to do and play with. 

The Duel and Downtime

Before every departs to their ship, Enzo and Mallus have their duel. Both square off in a prepared circle in  the gymnasium.  Both wear dueling armor, with gauntlet and mask, and both wield a force sword (though Enzo wears his gauntlet and wields his force sword on his left, rather than his right). Malachi is Malus’ second, and Arthus Elegans is Enzo’s second.  Dani Shinjurai watches from the side, her tension palpable.  Axton and Shay both attend and sit on Enzo’s side, expressing support for the Elegans.

The duel commences: Enzo locks gaze with Mallus and brings his full Aspect to bear in a Contest of Wills, which he handily wins.  Mallus takes the initiative and makes a doomed effort to disarm Enzo with a quick strike that Enzo casually parries, who then retaliates with a painfully slow and obvious attack to Mallus’ sword-arm, who parries it with a quick retreat, but in so doing falls into Enzo’s trap: with Mallus’ blade drawn out of its best defensive position, Enzo immediately attempts to disarm him.  Mallus retreats again and barely prevents the disarm.  Their blades flash, squeal and swirl during the disarm attempt, and Mallus attempts another disarm, a desperate one where he puts everything he has into it, though Enzo’s blade swirls and spins out of the way and then continues its motion to finally force Enzo’s blade away in a gloriously flashy display, finishing the battle by leveling the blade at Mallus’ throat and demanding he yield, which Mallus does.

I wasn’t sure how best to handle this.  The session is already too heavy on a wide variety of characters, and having a whole, hour-long fight scene for a single player felt excessive to me.  So Gentleman Gamer and I played it out during downtime and merely reported the results in the session.  I’ll put up a detailed breakdown of the fight later.

Enzo claimed three boons.  For the first, he claimed that in his conversation with Kerin in Lithian, she revealed to him that she was a noblewoman in disguise, leaving her heritage behind her in search of a better life.  He claimed she did not want this to be general knowledge, so to not bring it up with her, but in treating her like a commoner, Mallus had insulted her aristocratic lineage and he should apologize for it. He swore all of his on his honor as a nobleman.  For his second boon, he demanded an hour-long private audience with Mallus.  And for the third, he said he would claim it at a later date.

There was some debate among the players as to whether Enzo was lying about Kerin. The answer is “Probably.” By making this claim, he gives Mallus a convenient out: he doesn’t have to violate his sense of propriety, he can just pretend Kerin is a noble and act appropriately.  By staking his honor on it, those who want to question it risk humiliating Enzo (and inviting a duel).  Those who ask Kerin about it risk embarrassing her, especially if Enzo told the truth. Thus, it set everything up nicely to create a situation where everyone can gain face by accepting this as true, and everyone stands to lose a lot if they question it.

During the private audience, Enzo observed to Mallus that Mallus has some training in the Swift Form, but it isn’t complete.  He goes through the core basics with him for an hour, to give him the basic grounds by which he can practice the rest himself if he needs to.  This acts as justification for purchasing Style Familiarity (Swift Form) if Gentleman Gamer wishes.

 Tyro took the opportunity to get to know his wing better. They all flew in the simulators together, and then Lynwood invited him to play Belter’s Brag.  They all did, and Tyro lost terribly, but the group bonded over it.

• Lynwood seemed like a big risk-taker in the simulator, but those risks often netted him results.  His bravery meant he took the initiative, making him good leadership material.  Tyro recognized that he proposed the game as a means of getting the group better acquainted, and accepted it.
• Kobayashi is quiet and reserved, hiding a part of herself from everyone.  She is, however, an excellent wingman, likely someone who is used to flying in larger formations. Through a critical failure in body language, Tyro is convinced that Kobayashi is a secret genius at Belter’s Brag, and is the one to go to to better learn the game.
• Sienna is a Belter and more used to flying a Wildcat than a Valiant and still needs to get used to her new fighter.  Livius is Persephone-born and more used to flying a Raptor than a Valiant and also needs time to get used to his new fighter.  She’s excellent at improvisation, he’s an excellent artillerist.  Despite their constant bickering, they form a good team and have a natural chemistry.

This scene was mostly Nemoricus’ idea, but I went with it.  It gave them all a chance to get to know the group better, and to see more fighters in their natural environment. I had to gloss over things for the sake of time (something I had to do a lot in the session), but I thought it was a nice moment.

Xerxes has his suspicions about Kobayashi and his own vision.  He has Sylvar Ro search over the Hierophant for a secret stash of Kuruma, but he is unable to find one.  He has Winner Chau hack the personnel files of the Hierophant and she comes up with Kobayashi claiming to come from “the most generic and well known district of Denjuku,” which makes Winner express even more skepticism about Kobayashi.

Blood Feeds the Storm 

As the Heirophant nears its destination, all the fighter pilots get the alert to go to their fighters and prepare for hyperspatial shunt.  We briefly get a scene of Axton’s cybernetics being maintained by Elara, his robot.  Then we see the roiling hyperspatial storm, and then a thundrous clap of energy and everyone shunts into real space, scattered across the system.

Axton’s ship has been savaged by the storm.  Nubbins and Callister are able to restore power and gravity, but the pilot is badly hurt.  One of the Regulars is able to take over the controls and pilot the ship.  They look out and see green, botanical asteroids,  a ruined, capital-scale ship armed with harpoons and heavy armor.  They also see a smuggler base bristling with defenses.  Xerxes’ Calico also arrives, but is undamaged.  He offers to assist.  They decide to make their way to the base.

The ship is a Nantucket-Class Orochi Hunter.  While working on the Orochi, Gentleman Gamer commented that there should be “Orochi whalers,” and I actually hadn’t thought of that, so I created two new classes of ship: the Nantucket and the Drogue, the fighter we’ll see later.  Both are built to hunt Orochi.  It’s one of those oversights that, in retrospect, I really shouldn’t have made, and once I realized it was necessary, a lot of the scenario design suddenly made a lot more sense, so thank you for that, Gentleman Gamer.

Speaking of blindspots and mistakes, in retrospect, it was a mistake to drop the Calico here.  I did it for two reasons: first, Xerxes is indirectly responsible for the sheer scale of the damage done during the hyperstorm, while he himself was fine, so the contrast highlighted the “bad luck” of a Witch Cat.  But I also had Xerxes classed as a “boarder” in my head, not a “space combat fighter.”  This is actually wrong.  Xerxes is built as a pilot, just a corvette pilot, and a Tigershark is actually pretty quick.  As we’ll see in the coming space fight, if a Nomad can handle itself well in a space fight, I bet the Tigershark could have as well.  So I put him and Axton here so that they could get to the base quicker and not “hassle” with space combat, but I should have “let” Xerxes fight.  My mistake.

Another mistake: I should have had everyone roll Navigation. It wouldn’t have made a difference, but it would have let us talk about hyperspace some. 

Then Walker and Jethro show up in their Bad Penny, and find themselves in the midst of a bunch of Wildcats and Drogues.  Another nomad, run by smuggler “Wyatt von Carlo” hails them and asks them if “that fat bastard Corpulain sent them” as he’s been waiting for his escort for over an hour now.  Walker convinces Wyatt to just transfer the cargo over to him directly (“A change of plan”) with a critical success at bullshitting, and they’re about to do so when the Hierophant suddenly appears.

On the Hierophant, the claxons suddenly wail.  Everyone gets their last minute check-ups: Arietta complains to Tyro about how weird his fighter is, but that she also upgraded his afterburners to burn hyperium directly.  It’ll be great!  Shay and Kerin have a quick discussion, in which Kerin praises her fighter for “making sense,” and shows her a good luck charm she placed in Shay’s fighter.  Then they launch.

Seeing the wave of fighters explode from the carrier, Wyatt and his escort turn and flee into the asteroids (One of the Drogues takes off like a batt out of hell.).  Walker immediately jams Wyatt’s comms.   Talia gets her command from the High Admiral: “Destroy all the fighters.”  She instead orders her squadron to target the engines and try to keep everyone alive that they can.

So, here again, I tried to emphasize some of the nature of the Alliance.  We have these conflicting orders, we have people making their own minds up, and idealism getting in the way of the chain of command.  Cole believes that it’s too much of a risk to leave anyone alive who might get around the star and warn the Empire. Talia believes that’s no way to conduct a war and so modified the instructions before sending it down, but Shay and Tyro both know the truth.  Insterestingly, they seem to agree with her.

Space Combat

And so, space combat commences.  Walker chases Wyatt into the asteroid field, and both see the base.  Walker targets Wyatt’s engines and blows them out but (accepting a impulse buy point for Shenanigans) and damages the cargo bay slightly as a result.

I didn’t realize he had a B00-M cannon.  Those things pack a wallop! It basically took out Wyatt’s ship in one shot.  The “shenanigans” was to allow Nixie to come crawling out of her cryopod in the next scene.  Similarly, I wanted things to end up in the base, so the Wyatt’s ship needs to coast in a controlled crash into the base, but it’s effectively out of the fight now.

 Tyro’s prognostication module shows him the peril of the Thalline filaments between the asteroids, and so he warns Sienna and then takes off after the Drogue with Kobayashi at his side.  She performs driving fire that makes it harder for the fighter to escape, Tyro’s super-charged afterburners helps him catch up, and he pulls up right behind the Drogue and blows its engines apart by hitting it with all but one of his shots. The pilot ejects and the fighter explodes.

Shay chases after a Wildcat pilot in a dark green wildcat painted with a fanged skull.  It evades her and disappears into the asteroid field. As she flies deeper, he suddenly ambushes her, shoving his fighter up against hers, bumping and jostling through the asteroid belt.

Walker chases Wyatt into the base and joins the Xerxes and Axton in docking at the station.

Tyro is joined by the rest of their squadron and chase the remaining fighters into thalline filaments, trapping them.

Shay and the pirate Wildcat (piloted by Scipio Vash) suddenly find themselves on course for crashing into an asteroid, and they disengage.  She slips through a canyon in the asteroid and takes a short-cut, ambushing him on the far side.  She fires and misses, and then spends an impulse buy point to instead ensure that Talia, erupting from the Asteroid belt, lands a hit instead.  Scipio’ engines are shot, so he too makes a crash landing into the smuggler base.

In the Den of the Hunters

Everyone arrives in the docking bay of the Smuggler base.  The base has been severely damaged.  Lights flicker and sparks spray.  The meat of Orochi dries from hooks, and Drogues and Wildcats stand in varying state of disrepair.  There is still atmosphere, but it’s thin and filled with the toxic pollen of the botanical asteroids.

Axton and his crew pile out and immediately advance on the smuggler. He sends Lance and his soldiers to scout out the entrance to the docking bay.  Axton activates his force sword and commands Wyatt to throw down his weapons and he complies. Walker, Jethro and the crew of the Calico join Axton, with Walker moving towards the cargo.  Scattered cryo chambers show various, nude women (and a couple of men) all with alabaster-perfect white skin and the same candy-red hair as Rayna Septum and the same tattoo barcode on their cheeks.  They look different, but like different “makes and models” of the same basic design.  One, a “teen” model with a cheerleader physique, had her pod damaged and slowly crawls out, bewildered and confused.

Axton confronts Wyatt as a “slaver.” Wyatt protests that he’s “just delivering passengers,” and that he doesn’t know or care where they came from or where they’re going. Talia lands her Valiant and Tyro and Shay join her.  She takes command of the situation and gets a report.  She sides with Axton’s appraisal of Wyatt.

Lance reports that the hallway is dark, but seems to have functional surveillance systems.  Suddenly, a hologram of the base commander, Mongo Corpulain, appears.  An anti-gravity chair, well-armed, supports his considerable and unpleasant bulk. He welcomes them to the base, finds it interesting to see an Alliance presence in Imperial territory, and informs them that he has no intention of surrendering the base to them, but they’re free to negotiate with him.

And there ended the session.

Retrospective

Where the first session was about introducing everyone to the fleet and crews involved in the war, this session was about introducing everyone to the Veridian belt, the more overgrown part of the Orochi Belt. It was also nice to get into some space combat.  In that sense, I thought it worked and was a success.  But I don’t think everyone agreed.  One player commented privately that he’d like to write a post on “what not to do in Psi-Wars” and use this session as an example.  I don’t think he meant it in such harsh terms, but it made me reflect.  What went wrong with the session?

I’ve experienced a lot of tedious and boring sessions in my long and storied career as an RPGer.  After awhile, you get used to them, but I still make an effort to avoid them.  Some of my preferred tactics are making sure there’s plenty to do, and to make sure pacing is quick.  But these often conflict, and they conflicted here.  Like a dad on vacation who wants his kids to see everything in a day, the result is a whirlwind of interesting things that nobody is allowed to spend any time with.  We got:

• The mission
• The duel
• New crew to interact with
• The mystery of the prophecy from last session
• The mystery of the vision from last session
• The mechanics and the changes they made to various fighters
• The interactions of Orochi Belters and Alliance snobs, as well as conflicts between rough-and-tumble Kainians vs sophisticated Sabines
• The conflict of ideals and morals between Cole and Talia Sabine
• Wyatt van Carlo, Scipio Vash and Tommy Scrambles, who they are and what they’re doing out here
• The Botanical Asteroids and the culture therein
• A space fight
• A smuggler base
• Sex-Clone Slavery

All in the space of 3 and a half hours. That’s a lot!  I think I could have easily cut it in half and let it breath a bit.  I find a part of myself gnawing at the idea, saying “Yeah, but if you slow this down, it’ll take forever.” Then maybe it takes a long time.  Players need a chance to explore.

There’s another problem that I see cropping up, which contributes to the above.  The premise of the campaign is that they’re part of a massive military undertaking.  They need a sense of the vast scope of this, how many people there are involved, which means there are a lot of faces, a lot of people involved. It’s realistic that Axton has an entire combat crew, or that Xerxes has a pirate crew, or that Tyro has his own wing.  But the net result cocoons the players off from one another.  They interact with their NPCs more than they interact with one another.  They become islands of story that don’t interact with one another.

When you take the two together, players can’t provide story to one another and people can’t interact with one another’s stories.  They have to wait for me to get to them and their story, and with 5-6 players, that can involve a lot of waiting, and when someone else’s story is going on, they can’t really interact with it.

What I need to do, then, is sit back and let the players breath in a space where they can interact with one another a lot.  Fortunately, the base is an ideal situation for that.  They can discuss what to do, argue with one another as necessary, and go out to explore the base and have whatever combat encounters arise, and then when I want to bring it to a close, there are certain events I can activate.  The problem isn’t that I don’t have enough story for my players to play with, it’s that I don’t give them enough time to play with it.

As for space combat, I thought it went well (though it fell prey a little bit to me needing to push for a particular outcome and losing some details, like what happened to the rest of the Wildcats and Drogues).  It definitely went better than the space combat of Tinker Titan Rebel Spy. I felt like it flowed, was dynamic, and a lot got done in the two-to-three turns we played out. Most of the complaints I heard were:

• It’s weird how gunslingers and aces get so much bonus from Accuracy
• It’s a bit hard to calculate the ranged attack values, and that takes time to work out.
• The die rolls would be better if they equalized around 10, rather than 25-35 like they currently do.

And I guess that was it.  For the first, that’s true, and actually, in retrospect, I should give Ace Pilots half accuracy, rather than full accuracy (as Gunslinger does with rifles) when they Move and Attack.  That might require retooling the rules a touch.  

The ranged combat modifiers are inherited from GURPS, and actually a bit simpler than what we see in normal combat.  I’m not sure how much I can do about this: Pilot Skill, ROF and targeting computer bonus are static, so you know you’re always going to have them except in specific circumstances, and range and size modifier will just change, so can’t be worked out in advance.

This brings us to the weird values that we get.  GURPS Spaceships equalized around 0, but it also dealt with much farther ranges, and it had trade-offs that made it less compatible with other aspects of the game (like how well these weapons fared on planets).  It’s also a factor of how Fighters operate: capital ships and heavy corvettes tend more towards 0 or even negative values.  Fighters are just that fast and that maneuverable.

Some of this will just require players getting used to it, but that itself poses a problem: how often will space combat come up? In TTotOB, it’ll come up all the damn time, but in your campaign? Likely once or twice over the whole campaign and you’ll have to spin up the whole system for that one moment.  If you use it in chases (as its intended), it might come up a lot more than that, so that might not be so bad. 

The other dread aspect of space combat also came up: the fighter aces had plenty to do, but the non-fighters were left to their own devices. In retrospect, I should have allowed them to participate with the fight, and seen what happened, as that was, in fact, part of the idea behind the playtest. But that won’t be an issue with the next big space fight, as everyone is there, present, with their fighters or corvettes, and it should provide an interesting challenge for both Corvettes and Fighters.

After Action Report: Tall Tales of the Orochi Belt, Session 1

Part 1: Introductions

Our session starts with the Calico, Xerxes’ Tigershark-Class Assault Corvette. As Xerxes pilots it into Caliban, we get treated to a view of the mountainous planet below, the distant red sun, and the majestic and terrifying view of the Hammer of Caliban and the Orochi Liberation fleet docked with it.  I introduce his crew:

• Persia Purasinga, an Asrathi med student turned pirate (by accident!). She seems quite pleased to be moving away from piracy and towards “mercenary work,” especially against the Empire, who pushed her into piracy to begin with.  She’s small and cute, with red, tabby fur and large green eyes with a pair of glasses.
• Sylvar Ro, a terrifying and religiously fanatical Jagarathi assassin with “siberian tiger” markings and cold blue eyes.  He argues that they shouldn’t get involved and “let humans kill one another.
• Born Riksen, a native “Belter” to the Orochi Belt, heavy set and half-drunk, who loudly announces his excitement to be part of the liberation fleet, and reminds Persia that they won’t be engaged in piracy, but they might engage in the “legitimate salvage” of Imperial ships they defeat.
• Winner Chau, a Denjuku native Shinjurai punk girl with a white face, black make-up, straight black hair, chunky boots and purple-and-black striped hose who rolls her eyes at everyone and gets back to work on the engine (with her kleptomaniacal robot, Ripper), while listening to tunes via her earphones.

Next, Walker Lee lands his Nomad-Class Modular Corvette, the Bad Penny, on the Heirophant, the flagship carrier of the liberation fleet. As he and his “Pilgrim” companion, a young man named Jethro Page, depart from the corvette, Walker gets tackle-hugged by Arietta Lee (No relation), one of mechanics of the liberation fleet, and daughter to the head mechanic, Callister Lee. They discuss his heroism in the resistance against the Empire in the Orochi Belt, and whether he’ll need any help maintaining his corvette.  The Calico also lands, and Xerxes’ pirate crew interacts roughly with the group.

Then, aboard the Hammer of Caliban, Baron Mallus Grimshaw enjoys one last holo-call with his wife, princess Dani Shinjurai, who instructs him to wear a specific outfit to the gala aboard the Heirophant, cut after the style of the Shinjurai, but appropriate to a Maradonian noble like Mallus, with an orchid motiff.

As an ally, Dani has Fashion Sense, so this allows him to claim his bonus

In a dueling gym aboard the Hammer, Talos spars with Axton Kain, trying to teach him the basics of the Destructive Form, as Axton’s own Knightly Form is unsuited to dueling. Talos makes quick work of Axton, proving his point, when they are joined by Asura Kain, the white-haired, golden-armed daughter to the Archbaron, who complains about the coming party, and the Elegans brothers, Enzo and Arthus. Enzo is a space knight with a thick braid of dreadlocks and a quick and easy grin and Aspect with the Avatar of a lion, who immediately wins Axton over with his smile, and then joins in to perform a quick practice duel, wherein they fight to a standstill.

Then they are joined by the belle of the ball, Lady Thalia Sabine and her handmaiden, Lady Peony Pavonis; the latter, dark-eyed with long, curly hair and Mediterranean features, fetching but betraying a low blood purity, cannot stand to not be the center of attention and thus inserts herself right into the middle of the duel, announces her intention to participate, and then realizes how outclassed she is, and is saved by Thalia reminding everyone of the need to attend the gala.

The group leaves to go to the Gala, where they are joined by the Baron, and walk the promenade, the great ring constructed around the ancient artifact of the Hammer of Caliban. While walking, they encounter Kerin Kethim, a Ranathim mechanic.  She crouches over her son, the toddler Caliban Kethim, as both gaze upon the world of Caliban through the window.  Enzo Elegans approaches, and greets her in Lithian.  After a brief exchange, she reveals she works under Callister Lee on the Heirophant and hopes that her service in the liberation fleet will earn her Alliance citizenship.  Enzo invites her to attend the gala as his date, but she demures.  Mallus is offended by Enzo inviting someone who is clearly not noble to a noble event and says so, to which Enzo retorts by questioning exactly how noble Mallus actually is, to which Mallus responds by drawing his force sword.  Before Enzo can do the same, Arthus intervenes, notes that a formal challenge has been issued, and that the duel can be fought after the gala.  All parties agree and move on.

Kerin is a bit of a relic from my original conception of the Tall Tales, where the players would be serving on a station in the Orochi Belt and have to deal with a sudden Imperial incursion.  The mechanic Callister Lee had a reputation with the station’s… ladies of the night as employing only beautiful women (Kerin and Arietta) whom the women referred to as “Callister’s Whores.”  All of this has had to go to the wayside, but I like the idea of an outsider alien trying to become an insider, and so she’s stuck around, as have Callister and Arietta, and the idea of an “all female mechanic crew” from the “Orochi” side of the mechanics team. 

Note that Mallus has 2-4 points total in his force sword skill, while Enzo is a full-on space knight skilled in not one, but two force sword forms.  Mallus’ player was playing his disadvantages, particularly Code of Honor (Gentleman) and Overconfidence.  Should be an interesting, and quick, fight. But something for another session.

Finally, Viscontess Shay Sabine finds herself in a fighter simulator flying a Valiant against a Javelin. She quickly loses, as she’s more familiar with her own Devil-Pattern interceptor. The opposing pilot, an old veteran of the Alliance navy who stands ready to retire soon, Captain Quentin Scott, steps out of his simulator and explains the need to expand her flexibility into other fighters, because of the limitations of the Devil-Pattern Interceptor.  Then they both notice the time and that she needs to attend the Gala. He says he won’t be going (“It’s by invite only,”) and that some of the mechanics and Orochi pilots are having a small get-together that he wants to attend, because he fears that the combination of Orochi pilots and Maradonian pilots in Harlequin squadron will cause friction and he wants to overcome it.

When it comes to introductions, I tend to let the characters and their background seep over me as I picture what their introduction might be like.  Tyro Pavonis and Shay Sabine came quite late, so I didn’t have much time to introduce them.  I had this idea for a generic “Fighter simulator” intro for SOME pilot, which I gave to Shay because Tyro is blind and thus can only fly a Devil-Patter interceptor. As a consequence of this, plus some unfortunate Will rolls later, Tyro got very little “screen time.”

The Gala

 The Contessa Styliana Sabine, the Grand Dame, opened up the Gala for all the nobles, greeting each in turn as they entered.  Major personalities included:

• The Grand Dame herself, presiding over the gala.
• High Priest Pad Palantir, who would manage an invite only Akashic Mystery Play for certain prized participants as well as reveal the presence of an Akashic Oracle on the Heirophant.
• High Admiral Lowelin Cole, the hero of the Slaver War and a man well past his prime, now in command of the Orochi Liberatoin fleet.  He is round of belly, his dark skin speckled with liver-spots, and his eyes have a rheumy, tired quality to them.
• Senator Sawyer Septum, smiling and pumping hands, and his inhumanely attractive wife, Rayna Septum, who seems unaware of her plastic, fetish-model perfection.

Axton Kain enters early, and mostly focuses on Asura, his frenemy from house Kain, as she proceeds to get drunk and complain that nobody in the gala has the slightest idea of what war really means.  They are interrupted by the Senator and his wife, who are making the rounds thanking nobles for joining their crusade.  Then Rayna Septum spots Mallus Grimshaw, and begins to fangirl over the husband of the Shinjurai princess (clearly a fan of Shinjurai courtly melo-drama).  She goes to approach him.

Meanwhile, Tyro Sabine makes his grand appearance and quickly gets monopolized by Sir Malachi Harrow, a “volunteer pilot” in the fleet.  Malachi has pale features, piercing black eyes, coarse hair and shabby stubble where a beard should be.  He presses Tyro on the relationship status of Peony (whom he used to date) while his natural psychic vampirism begans to drain and exhaust Tyro, who is unable to find a way to escape the wheedling man.

Peony Pavonis also arrives and makes a beeline for Mallus, whom she aggressively flirts with, both to avoid an awkward encounter with Malachi Harrow (a sacrifice she’s willing to allow Tyro to make) and to see if she can add an interesting notch to her belt.  Mallus is very unimpressed with her offer and attempts to shoo her away when she spots something and then vanishes: Dani Shinjurai herself shows up, surrounded by a small swarm of hovercams and in the presence of a media consultant.  She also wears a dress with an orchid motiff. She approaches her husband, who is suddenly the center of attention.  Enzo and his brother both approach and mysteriously congratulate Mallus, while grinning at one another, their psychic senses picking up something about the couple.  Tyro uses their presence to finally escape the malign influence of Malachi, and Asura takes the distraction as an opportunity to drunkenly escape, crashing only a few glasses in the meantime.

Mallus’ player had taken Dani as an Ally, but I couldn’t imagine the Ally being useful “off screen,” as there would be a lot of radio-silence over the campaign.  So, naturally, I had to bring her in.  She created a useful nexus whereby the players could more formally introduce themselves to one another, as Dani would obviously want to meet everyone (with a focus on the PCs, naturally).

The Viscontess Shay Sabine also arrived, and had a polite conversation with the Grand Dame, and then a second, secret conversation using the Sabine Caress discussing the Grand Dame’s political standing with House Sabine (not great), her purpose here (to help protect her fellow Sabines) and whether she would be willing to help and guide the rather underqualified Thalia Sabine with her first command (she agreed).

Then we advanced to the “rolling portion” of the Gala:

• How well they comported themselves, which involved a summation of appropriate reaction modifiers and savoir-faire and dancing rolls as complementary modifiers; Shay managed to impress the High Admiral by dancing with him, and Axton ultimately won the contest.
• A political sub-game, where people carefully tried to figure out where everyone stood and what was really going on in all those private conversations.  This involved a Politics roll with some complementary rolls for things like Observation and Current Affairs.  Everyone picked up a few secrets, but ultimately, Axton won this contest as well (he was rolling very well.).
• Finally, Peony proposed a game of Inquisitor, a Courtly Game that involved swapping secrets (sort of a cross between a drinking game, truth or dare and Werewolf).  Everyone swapped some secrets, and Axton, surprise surprise, won the night with this one too.

The Shindig

In the hangar of the Heirophant, the pilots and mechanics play a game of Belter’s Brag.  These include:

• Lynwood Vos, a roguish pilot who is obviously good enough at the game to be hustling the rest
• Matua Manticora, a Jagarathi pilot with tiger-stripe marks and an aggressive attitude
• Nadia “Viper” Morgan, a skinny and awkward looking pilot with a shaved, stubbly scalp.  She exudes an aura of a viper, hence her name.
• Arietta Lee, with her cloud of curly blond hair and her small, impish face, a mechanic on the ship, with her salvaged Hobnob-pattern robot, Nubbins.
• “Echo,” a Shinjura android with a mannequin biomorphics who looks a great deal like his master, Tadashi “Prime.”

Xerxes also joins the game, while Walker Lee and Jethro Page focus on cooking up some “Rugger Steaks” and keeping everyone happy and drunk.  Matua offers Lynwood a glass of “Asrathi Mint” liquor, which results in a rebuke from Sylvar Ro for  Matua’s “desecration” of the “sacred drink.”  The two argue until Walker intervenes with some folksy spacer anecdote and defuses the situation.

Two Alliance pilots, Captain Quentin Scott and Lieutenant Kobayashi Zero, join the game.  Quentin allows himself to be dealt into the game, but seems less interested in winning than in learning about his fellow pilots and creating a sense of camaraderie. Lieutenant Zero remains quiet as she plays the game, with a carefully perfect “poker face” that makes her virtually unreadable.  She’s beautiful, with a form-fitting pilot outfit, large, innocent eyes, a rosebud mouth, and a vibe of real trouble and danger that make the more experienced men a little nervous around her.  Jethro, of course, is immediately smitten, and she does nothing to discourage his attention (though she doesn’t seem to return them either).

Nubbins is also in the midst of walking around to each ship, especially the Alliance ships (typical for an Alliance-built robot, he’s fascinated by ARC technology), calling out their names.  He calls out “Ashen Dragon,” the ship of Baron Mallus Grimshaw, which causes Echo to exclaim that “Prime isn’t going to like that,” and indeed, his master suddenly starts cussing up a storm, talking about how Dani Shinjurai “deserves better,” revealing himself as a Denjuku native who, like Rayna Septum, has an opinion on the Baron’s marriage. 

Finally, Rayna and Sawyer Septum arrive, having “co-opted” a lot of food from the Gala, and spread it out among the Orochi pilots and mechanics, while the Senator praises them as the real heroes of this effort (to which has had only the paltry contribution of getting it all started).

The game continues: Xerxes wins, thanks to his dangerous, Witchcat abilities, and everyone has a good time and gets to know one another better (with a Carousing contest, though Xerxes begins to get ill from all the alcohol).

The Prophecy

The session rounds out with the Mystery Play, in which the various nobles are ushered into a sacred Akashic Shrine and are given roles to play that emphasize Thalia Sabine’s role as conqueror-liberator of the Orochi Belt, when the Oracle behind a veil suddenly interrupted the play with a well-timed epileptic fit and speaks a prophecy:

Blood invites the storm.
The Hunter scatters three knights
While the thieves take flight;
And the crown loses its light
For Blood invites the storm.
Deep in the mountains, the queen makes a fortress her domain
In the fortress, a princess with hair of blood must break her chain
For the many-headed beast readies itself to destroy her reign
Because Blood invites the storm.
Blood invites the storm
Blood invites the storm
From the mountains they will swarm
The Emperor makes all conform
Blood invites the storm.

At the same moment, Xerxes has a monstrous, deathly vision of an eyeless man clad in strange, twisted, organic armor who is locked behind a great door.  “Kill for me.” He instructs Xerxes who, between the vision and the alcohol, immediately vomits.  Viper also suddenly begins screaming about a strange, eyeless man as though in sympathy with Xerxes’s vision.

The mechanics of the prophecy is that there’s now a Destiny in play: the players need to find a “fortress” and occupy it, and they need to avoid killing.  Each (major) death will give me a “villain” impulse buy point. Except for Xerxes: he gets to make one kill and has a destiny that will help him, and must make that kill.

Thoughts

The Tall Tales of the Orochi Belt is very much an ensemble game.  The point is that the players are part of a larger community of fighter pilots, soldiers and mechanics, and need to learn to work together, as well as to deal with bits of drama.  Ideally, they’ll come together and when the war begins to pick of NPCs, it matters.

So my primary mission with this session was to introduce each PC, help them get to know the NPCs (at least a basic, whirlwind tour), hence the gala and the shindig, and then give them their basic prophecy to set the game in motion.  

The NPC collection is pretty big, and I have an “NPC Directory” on our Roll20 site to help players navigate it.  A real quick summary:

The Brass:

• The Grand Dame, Styliana Sabine, controls the Hierophant and is the “patron” of the fleet.  She’s not in command, but you can bet what she wants, happens.
• High Admiral Lowelin Cole: Hero of the Slaver War and, like, 80 years old, he’s definitely past his prime and likely sees this mission as his opportunity to go out a hero. Ostensibly commands the fleet.
• Lady Asura Kain: daughter of (but not heir to) Kento Kain, Archbaron of Caliban, she represents Kainian interests and commands Kusari’s Pride, a lancer.
• Sir Arthus Elegans: the more terrifying of the Elegans brothers, he commands the Mother’s Touch, the Regal-Pattern Eleganian medical cruiser.
• Senator Sawyer Septum: technically a civilian, this politician represents the legitimacy of the liberation fleet, as his invitation precipitated the mission.

The Pilots

The pilot PCs will need to pick one of these as their wingman.  Shay has already chosen Thalia, and Tyro, as a wing commander, might have a few in his wing.

• Lady Thalia Sabine: The squadron commander of Harlequin Squadron and grand-daughter to Styliana Sabine, and being set-up to rule over the Orochi Belt, if Styliana gets her way.  She’s best friends with Peony Pavonis and more than a little out of her depth.
• Lynwood Voss: An Orochi pilot and a master gambler. He hails from Rust City.
• Nadia “Viper” Morgan: an Orochi pilot, she’s a native of the Botanical Asteroids, and has an aura of weirdness around her.
• Matua Manticora: An Asrathi pilot native to Nekotara (near the Orochi Belt). He follows the Old Ways.
• Captain Quentin Scott: an old veteran of the Galactic Civil War and nearing retirement, he acts as an advisor to Thalia and other high level command staff of Harlequin Squadron.
• Lieutenant Kobayashi Zero: a femme fatale and a mystery who keeps to herself.  Excellent wingman, but with an usual flying style for an Alliance pilot.
• Sir Malachi Harwood: An “adventurer volunteer” who joined the fleet to prove himself to house Harrow and, perhaps, to get closer to his ex-girlfriend, Peony. He’s a psychic vampire who has a bad habit of getting his wingmen killed, but achieves good results.

The Mechanics

The pilots need their fighters maintained!  Each pilot will need to choose one mechanic.

• Callister Lee: the “head mechanic” of the Orochi fleet.  He has a habit of picking up “strays” and tutoring them in how to be a good mechanic; these almost always tend to be attractive women, for some reason.
• Arietta Lee: The daughter of Callister Lee; her and her salvaged Hobnob, Nubbins, are fairly innovative mechanics, but Nubbins has a bad habit of “acquiring” parts from other fighters.
• Kerin Kethim: A Ranathim refugee and mother to a toddler, she’s trying to work her way into being allowed into the Alliance as a citizen.  She hates robots and follows the strange superstitions of the Divine Masks, but is a fine mechanic. She works under Callister Lee
• Chief Petty Officer Canto Cogsworth (Not featured in the session): The head of the Heirophant’s engineering team, Canto has a team of 3 hobnobs who work with precision to make sure every fighter under their care is in tip top shape.  Quite stodgy, though, and demanding of pilots’ time, and requires everything to be “up to spec.”
• Tadashi “Prime” and “Echo:” This shinjurai team-up represent Denjuku’s gift to the alliance; they come with quite a bit of prototype Syntech fighter parts and will spruce up your fighter, but they have opinions on what the best layout and operating systems are and tend to “beg forgiveness” rather than “ask permission” when it comes to modding a fighter.

Other NPCs:

• Talos: Known teasingly as “the Weakest Knight,” Talos is a retainer to House Kain who has been extensively cybernetically modified after defeat after defeat. He has lost more battles than most alliance soldiers have even fought, making him a hardened veteran.  He has an unrequited crush on Asura, and serves on her Lancer.
• Sir Enzo Elegans: A space knight and commander of security aboard the Mother’s Touch.  His empathy manifests as a deep understanding of others and an infectious charisma.
• Lady Peony Pavonis: Handmaiden to Thalia Sabine and technically a space knight (though the other space knights question her qualifications), she mostly has her position thanks to her friendship with Thalia.  She has a reputation for drama.
• Rayna Septum: The “first lady” of the Orochi Belt and wife to the Senator, he rescued her from a pirate ship, though she has no memories from before that event.  She’s extremely beautiful, but with “off-the-shelf” looks: candy-red hair, exaggerated secondary sexual traits and a certain naivety.  Her pale skin is marked with a barcode tattoo betraying Shinjurai origins, and she has a deep love of the Shinjurai royal melo-drama.

The rest of the NPCs are tied primarily to the PCs (allies or crew, etc).  There might be more, but these were the main and most important ones.

It was a pretty tightly packed 4 hours of game that I thought went by quickly, but it split down the middle between aristocracy and commoners, which meant that half the group was idling about half the time, which was unfortunate. That said, the commoners had opportunities to join the gala (Walker is a war hero and Sawyer would have invited him, and Xerxes is there by the invitation of the Archbaron of Caliban, and so could get into the Gala). Both said “Nope, so much nope,” and definitely enjoyed their game of Belter’s Brag and rugger steaks more.

I had planned about three times this much for the session, but I expected this would be as far as we got.  I continue to struggle with a problem I had in Tinker Titan Rebel Spy, where I want to have mechanics (like fights and such), but they take up so much time and I want to move move move with the story, so I need to find a way to strike a balance between the two.  This one could afford to be mostly story, but next session will almost certainly feature more mechanics as the players get their first real taste of space combat.

Tinker Titan Rebel Spy: After Action Report for Session 3

Another month means another session of Tinker Titan Rebel Spy!  What happened last session?  The players finally found made planet-fall, interacted with a new faction, began to unleash the first salvo in their machinations, finally met Director Thorn and then faced the occult might of the Ash Walkers under the baleful, all-seeing gaze of the Prophet of Grist: Cog Thonis, fighting him in the shadow of the Black Pyramid.

If you want additional details, my players have written detailed summaries.  As usual, I’ll be talking about the session from behind the GM’s chair and as the designer of Psi-Wars itself.  I also have some advice for people who want to play Action in general.

The detailed summaries are:

• Libris Ludorum: Psi-Wars Tinker Titan Rebel Spy Session 3
• Radbox Studio: Tinker Titan Rebel Spy Session 3 – A Close Call (A very exhaustive set of notes)

My Goals for the Session

Given the fact that the players had seemed to resolve their planning and internal tensions last session, I expected this session to involve finally getting planetside.  I also knew the thrust of where they wanted to go.  This meant we were tangling with the first major crisis of the session:  How do the players get onto the planet?

• If they simply went directly to the space port, the Governor would intercept them and try to tangle them into his machinations
• The rebels of Grist would also try to sidetrack them and instead involve them in their machinations

How they landed on the planet and where would very much set the tone for how the various parties involved would see them, whether they could become allies, what their presence might mean, etc.  They could also try to bypass everything and go straight to Donlan Thorn, which had its own dangers, and they sort of decided to do both.

Making Introductions

Once this was settled, the next thing I needed to do was introduce them to the broader political spectrum.  I’ve tried to have at least two characters per faction, including both the “head” of the faction, and at least one subordinate.  Thus, I was able to introduce:

• Shin-San Sage, one leader of the rebellion, though the players chose not to interact with him (yet). He’s there to represent a part of the rebellion you can talk to (TTRS plays with moral greyness, so it can’t be entirely “Empire Good, Rebellion Bad,” though to be clear I don’t want to pull a Battlefront 2 and run an “Empire secretly bad!? Rebellion was always good!?” non-twist either.
• Miss Tara Masterton, the assistant to Gideon Voss, and native Gristy.  She’s meant to represent another way to contact and interact with the government of Grist without going through Vos himself.  Though this might not yet be clear, she’s also there to emphasize some of Vos’ personality traits and his governing style
• Special-Agent-In-Charge Kaito Caster, grim security official and mailed fist of Gideon Vos.  He was the guy looming over miss Masterton and then when it was clear the party posed no threat, dismissed the small legion of security guards on hand.
• Deputy Director Hal Stillwalker and his robot, Pawn: Stillwalker is Donlan Thorn’s subordinate, allowing me to show another face of the Ministry of Heritage.  Robots also have a strong presence on Grist, and the cluttered-looking Pawn let me emphasize the ubiquity of robots on Grist.

They initiated a lot of their plots at this point, most of which won’t amount to much (sending spear carriers to do something is never as effective as sending the PCs to do it themselves), but the key one was arranging the meeting between Vos, Starlane, Rook and Greave, which will now take place at the Prestige, a place I’ve wanted to show off for awhile, and stronghold of Vos’s influence (hence why Special Agent Kaito Caster seemed so relieved: they get to have this meeting on Vos’s turf)

At this point, I have most of my actors on stage. Now, I often get comments about “having a diverse cast,” and some people try to remember them all, but I never really worry about it.  Many of these characters are redundant: for the governor, we have Vos, Masterton and Caster; for the navy, we have Starlane (and at least one other character that I haven’t had a chance to introduce yet, but will likely show up in the next session), and for the rebellion we have: Jimmy Scrambles, Cog Thonis, Shin-San Sage and at least one more character that has not yet been introduced.  How can you remember all of them?  Well, you don’t. You pick the characters that interest you and you focus on them, and you do this intuitively.  Starlane and Voss seem to loom large in the minds of the players, while Caster is already getting a “Who was that guy? Oh him!” from the players, while Cog Thonis is someone that despite showing up once in the distance, the players all already know his name.  This means that Caster may fade into the background, while Cog Thonis will loom large.

NPCs, with a few exceptions, should represent opportunities rather than a laundry list of who’s who that you need to memorize.  That said, some people want said list, so perhaps I’ll oblige them. There are, after all, the Game of Thrones fans who find intricate relationship maps fascinating (I’ve had players demand to know exactly how everyone was seated for a particular meeting to know who was closest to the king and who sat by who and why), while other players can’t remember the name of a single NPC.  It’s all good, it just matters that your game conforms enough to their play style that they have fun.

Never Split the Party

Here, I wanted to shift to Rook and Greave (though, alas, Commodore Greave’s player was absent, so it would just be Rook), to start said meeting, but Rook’s player very generously allowed the other players to carry on.  I find that this sort of thing happens often in an Action game, because characters want to focus on their specialty, which means that certain characters either get a strong spotlight, or get left out. I haven’t found a good solution to this, other than to surprise players, though its hard to ambush characters on a starship orbiting a planet, though, and I’m not saying that any of this will happen, but:

• They have an uncontained corruption of Broken Communion aboard their ship, and I just released rules for Broken Communion ghosts, and the Titan that Donlan Thorn discovered has a strong connection to Broken Communion and the Marrow Heart
• Rear Admiral Starlane, Mech Mob (the rebels) and the Cybernetic Union all have access to at least star fighters, and at least two of those factions have access to capital class warships.

Just sayin’

In any case, good sportsmanship, Rook!  I hope the other players are as patient with your scene in the next session!  Cheers!

Panic! at the Ash Wastes

So, then our players arrived in the Ash Wastes to meet up with Director Thorn.  Now, Director Thorn has been complaining about the insurgency, and he’s out in the desert (the “Ash Wastes”), so I can’t let the players just bypass all of my intricate plotting without some risk, and that risk is seeing Grist not as the official reports would have you see it, or how the rebellion would want you to see it, but how Grist actually is, with its wild storms and desolate wastes and dangerous, religious fanatics: the Ash Walkers.

So, as they flew and made their amazing rolls to fly safely through a sand storm, I introduced Cog Thonis.  Now a lot of these details are available to Patrons as previews, and will show up when Grist gets it full details in Iteration 7, but those players who are patrons already know that there’s a special “Path of Grist” that one (an Ashwalker) can walk, which means I got to give the players my first taste of Communion with a unique, Grist-only miracle: the ability to turn working machinery into ruined hulks, and Cog Thonis did just that to their shuttle and, I think, instantly cemented himself in the minds of all the players for that single act.  It also made clear to me that when you face someone with crazy powers in this setting, there’s little you can do against them, but also, it’s very difficult to call on Communion over and over again.  You’ll typically see it for a single game-changing miracle, which is what happened here.  I’m okay with that.

Once they landed, they got to learn first hand what a misery Grist is: the danger to their lungs, the lashing, ablative storm, the miserable visibility.  They suited up, even the princess, and met Donlan Thorn, who demanded to know who they were, and once answered, told them they should have waited back at the city.  Then they found out why.

Queue the big fight.

I’m not going to dive into the details of the fight, as that’s already been covered, but let’s talk about some mechanics and some elements that came up.

The Importance of Impulse Buys

This fight saw a lot of impulse buys, especially Flesh Wounds from Damari Nash (this is what happens when you send your non-combat squishy to tank the opposing side’s tank!).  Impulse Buys are deeply central to how I see Psi-Wars played, hence why I borrowed the Destiny rules from Monster Hunters (which also puts impulse buy front and center).  I did this because of my experience with Cherry Blossom Rain, and it’s paying off already.

There’s two camps when it comes to fudging dice rolls.  The first side argues that this is something you should do, because it serves the narrative, that it’s a terrible thing when a player character dies simply because of a bad roll.  The other side points out that this removes tension (“I know I can’t die because the GM won’t let me!”) while also hiding the real difficulty of fights, and preventing unexpected developments from happening.

Personally, I think Impulse Buys let you have the best of both worlds.  A good action scene scatters the players’ plans, is dynamic and unexpected, and forces the players to fight for every inch they gain and when they walk out victorious, to feel like they gained a victory.  I also find that players tend to use impulse buys to turn what they hoped would be a cool moment but failed back into a cool moment, or to prevent their death.  Allowing them to see their dice rolls fail, or the 30+ damage they would have taken and then allowing them to buy it away both shows them how dangerous a fight could have been and allows them to keep their characters and cool moments.  They win, but they feel that victory.  I think that happened here: the Ash Walkers came across as very scary despite not seriously hurting anyone at all.

“I’m surrounded by fools!”

I ran the fight without a map or tokens. Now, normally when I run online games, I take a lot of time and work those out because I find they help a lot, they’re better for immersion than you’d think (actually seeing the kind of mobility a character with flying leap has it crazy!); It also, critically, reminds me who is there.  I’m not doing this for TTRS simply out of time constraints: I put very little time to planning TTRS and put most of my time to writing more Psi-Wars material: TTRS serves the design of Psi-Wars right now, not the other way around.

This is the one thing I regret.  I don’t think it’ll change, because I want to finish Psi-Wars more than I want to run a perfect TTRS.  Even so, I definitely found this a flaw.  I say this because the NPCs were really useless in this fight; this was in part because I wanted to bring the PCs front and center, but mostly because I tended to forget them.

“Blood for the Blood God!” Handling Combat Characters in Action!

This is actually something I see asked a lot: “How do you handle a character in (something like action) when the character focuses exclusively on combat?”  We had a nice example of this, especially the contrast that you can sometimes see in such games, especially between the extreme combat character of Sherri Grace and the extreme non-combat character of Damari Nash.

First, I’d like to point out that there’s nothing wrong with a character like Sherri Grace or Damari Nash.  If we were playing Action, a supplement written by Kromm himself, Sherri would be a shooter and Damari would be a Hacker.  Action explicitly has characters like this, and is meant to handle characters like this.  There should be nothing wrong with either character.  And we’ll note that Sherri totally dominated the fight, and while Damari didn’t, he’s been exceedingly useful elsewhere, and both could arguably have been used to better effect, especially if they had teamed up (which is not to kibitz or belittle either character, rather to discuss what goes on here).

I see this question come up a lot in one of two contexts.  The first is “It’s not fair that someone like Sherri Grace dominates combat” (I’m using her as an example; nobody actually complained here).  I think this sort of comment tends to come up a lot from people used to more Dungeon-Fantasy-style games who are trying something new.  In a Dungeon Fantasy game, everything ultimately revolves around combat; this varies based on what edition you’re in and how your GM runs the game, but a great deal of the core gameplay certainly revolves around it, and GURPS DF builds its characters around it, working everyone into combat in some manner.  When such players move into a game with a broader context (GURPS certainly, but you see this in World of Darkness a lot, or Shadowrun for first-time players), where players see that there’s no arbitrary limit places on their combat capability such as in D&D.  Instead, they can put all their points into kicking as much ass as possible, and they think they’ve found a way to “beat” the game (since the game is all about combat, right?) and the GM, who is locked in the same mindset, is frustrated because anything that would challenge that character wouldn’t challenge anyone else.  His delicate combat encounters are ruined, and the players who “played nice” and bought “useless” investigative or social or “flavor” skills feel cheated.

This comes from a misunderstanding of what a game like Action is: it’s not a tactical game, but a strategic game. I talk about the concept in my “How to Fix Scrapperlock” post, and it’s a topic I think is worthy of more discussion, but let me use this very session as an example: if we look at the combat encounter in a vacuum, Sherri seems overpowered.  Worse, she seems to “short-circuit” the encounter, presenting so much power that she’s able to defeat the opponents with ease.  But this is a DF mindset, that sees gameplay as a series of battles. Action, and Psi-Wars, works on a different model.  The challenge here is: getting to Donlan Thorn and retrieving his find.  Look at the characters they selected: Nal Aldru, who is a top-notch pilot, Sherri, an excellent combatant, and Damari Nash, a spy and a master engineer.  Why these characters? Because their strategy was to: fly through the storm, deal with possible threats (though I suspect they expected more trouble from their encounter with the officials in the starport), and to gather any necessary information and have a neo-rationalist present so as to put their best foot forward with Director Thorn. They weren’t looking at this as a combat encounter, but as a complete mission for getting to Thorn. 

In this sense, every character played their part.  Sherri was “overpowered” in the combat encounter, but Nal Adru was “overpowered” in the flight to Director Thorn (through a raging storm while being attacked by Communion!), and Damari Nash was “overpowered” as he was seeing through the storm, picking out targets, picking up on minor deceptions and other details and guiding the princess.  Each character had a role to play.  They were tools selected to perform a job.

The second context is that of the overly specialized character: if you can only do combat, then unless there’s a fight, then the player gets bored unless there’s a fight.  You can see some of this with Sherri, though note she’s decent in a fighter.  You beat this with well-written templates.  Monster Hunters, for example, makes sure every character can do both some investigation and some fighting.  Action puts a little combat and a little non-combat stuff in every template.  Psi-Wars does too, and Sherri’s player will be quick to point out that she’s actually good at streetwise, shadowing, etc, which are things bounty hunters do.

Finally, and not everyone talks about this as much, but it comes up too: there’s the fear that a character with combat capability will eclipse everyone, but you can beat this by having not just multiple forms of challenges, but multiple forms of combat.  Sherri wasn’t actually ideally suited for this sort of fight: she’s best in a fight in an ambush in a dark alley, or in a bar when negotiations suddenly go sideways: She can fast draw to go from “peaceful” to “combat ready” instantly; she’s got an excellent weapon for defeating poorly armored combatants in a close-in environment, and she’s geared to fight well without armor (say, in street clothes).  The fight we had was really much more of a “commando” fight, an open battlefield with clear lines of sight and an overwhelming opposition with very heavy weapons and some decent armor.  Sherri actually did really badly when it came to handling the sniper who was more than just a mook and could shift and change positions so that she could attack from where Sherri wasn’t attacking, and what armor she had was not up to the job of holding off the firepower the Ashwalkers were slinging around.  Likewise, if the opponents had been, say, imperial troopers in armor, she would have been hosed (at least when it came to plinking at them with blaster pistols).  Contrast this with how Rook would have done, able to casually defeat the flankers, even the heavy ash walker, Umber, and if he’d missed a defense, his armor would have certainly soaked the hit, and he has real commandos at his side.

Psi-Wars has multiple “modes” of combat and situations characters can find themselves in, which means alternate ways of defeating their opponents.  Bounty Hunters have different strengths and weaknesses than Space Knights and Commandos.  I also included strategic features (like the gun emplacements and a few vehicles and a couple of hints as to how the snipers operated) that could be used to fundamentally change how the fight works.  If players like Nal Aldru find themselves unable to meaningfully contribute to the fight in their current situation, they can “move laterally” and force their opponents to fight in a new context.

In this sense, at least for now, I’m fairly pleased with how the combat/non-combat split is working out.

Rules Rules Rules: How happy was I with Psi-Wars here?

Two things came up in the fight that troubled me. The first was high ROF and how it’s handled and the second was Gunslinger and UT weapons.

The first thing Sherri did was combine her ROF to spread fire out among all the enemy snipers; there’s no penalties for this in Action, you simply roll to hit and divide your shots among everyone, and you roll for each target separately.  Fair enough, but later, she made dual weapon attacks, and I thought “Hmmm, why not just use the same ROF trick?”  I think the intent of the ROF rule in action is for machine guns and such, and I’m a little bothered that recoil is essentially ignored in this context.  I’ll need to look a little more closely into how high ROF works: it shouldn’t invalidate the usefulness of Dual Weapon Attacks, and a high recoil weapon should be less effective when splitting your fire than a low recoil weapon.

The second is gunslinger. One thing I noticed is that Sherri was very static in the fight. This may be because she was behind cover and saw no reason to move. There will be fights later that encourage more dynamic movement than “a trench fight,” but it got me thinking: in a typical Action game, your weapons are Bulk -2 to -5, and your accuracy for pistols is rarely above 2 and your accuracy for rifles is rarely above 4.  What you gain by standing still is +2 to your shots, and what you gain by moving is a removal of -2 to -5 in penalties.  That encourages dynamic gameplay.  In UT, however, weapons quickly drop in bulk to -1 to -3, while accuracy rises to 5 to 12 pretty quickly.  If a character gains +5 to +6 by standing still or eliminates -1 to -3 in penalties when moving, then the equation very much favors standing still.  Gunslinger is one of those unfortunate GURPS advantages that isn’t actually all that generic.  I could reduce the static bonus for of Gunslinger, but it already struggles to justify its 25 point pricetag.  It might be an idea to improve the benefits gunslinger gives you while on the move.  The point of gunslinger is to look awesome while sliding and shooting your blasters, not to just stand there and blast things.

Stay Tuned!

Next session should unveil at least on more NPC, and then I should be able to back off and give the players a chance to explore Grist a bit; players have been asking for more NPCs (yes, more NPCs) additional allies, and want to explore some of the criminal elements more, and I’ll need to give them a little to play with.

Season Finale?

We’re 5 months into TTRS and I’ve been pondering how much longer it should go.  Oh, to be sure, this could easily last another 5 months, no problem, and then turn into an expansive campaign as the players visit Sovereign, fight some wars, dive into the Cult of the Mystic Tyrant, etc.  But the point of this is to try out the Empire, see where flaws are, and see where it works.  We’re picking out some flaws, though I must say the Empire has a more robust design than I thought (though I think I could simplify their organizations a bit and focus on a little more razzle-dazzle).  So I’m not sure how far we need to go.  We certainly don’t need to “finish” the campaign, but we’ll see.  I don’t see it ending “soon,” but perhaps in 2-3 more sessions, but I’ll have to talk to my players about it.

Tinker Titan Rebel Spy Session 2: After Action Report

Talk. All they ever do is talk

As usual, I’ve had a busy month, but it’s time to get back to the Imperial Psi-Wars playtest, so let’s prep by talking about what happened last time.

If you haven’t already seen them, two players have written their own reports:

• Johnny 3d6
• Radbox Studio

They have more focus on what actually happened.  As usual, I will focus more on what was going on from the GM chair.

Summary

So, what happened? Nothing!  No plot advanced and no major events took place.  Instead, I found that the players pro-actively wanted questions further explored and I, personally, as GM, wanted to give players a chance to flesh their characters out.  I find that the first few sessions are as much of the character creation process as the actual building of a character, because how you end up portraying your character and how your character interacts with the other characters doesn’t always match what you saw when you wrote your character.  So, sometimes as a GM, you need to sit back and give the players some rope, at least until they get bored, and then you can advance the plot.  Today was one such session.

Involving the Uninvolved

The characters who really dominated the first session were Evander Rook and Commodore Greave, and to a lesser extent, Damari Nash.  This is, in part, because the players of Evander Rook and Commodore Greave are very pro-active players, and there’s nothing wrong with this.  But I worried that Nal Aldru and Sherri Grace didn’t get enough of a chance to engage in the game. Nal’s got a pretty pro-active player too; Sherri less so, and he may be a “shy player,” which is fine: the point here is not to really demand gameplay but to offer the opportunity.

My preferred tools for this are questions and the voices of NPCs.  The best tools for this job turned out to be Sherri’s handler, Abbot Chance, and Nal’s companion, Kyra Elso.  Thus, the first scene immediately involved both Grace and Aldru.  I had Kyra confront Grace on why she attacked, rather than captured, pirates.  The point of the confrontation wasn’t really to “attack” Grace (Kyra has no rank over her and the only person Grace really answers to is Chance, who will always take her side, as per Grace’s player’s wishes), but instead to give her an opportunity to account for her choices and also, I hope, to highlight the difference between how Grace operates and most Imperials operate.

Kyra had a similar scene with Nal Aldru, but more about worry.  Where the contrast between Grace and Kyra was meant to highlight the tension Grace might experience as an outsider to the crew, with Aldru, the point was to emphasize Nal’s recklessness vs the typical Imperial “By the book” quality, which is a contrast that Nal’s player enjoys.

Later, I Chance ask for a report from Sherri, which gave another opportunity to allow him to interact with the crew.  The point here was to offer a warm contrast with Kyra’s confrontation: she challenged Grace, Chance comforted Grace, but the point of “insider/outsider” came up again, and Chance encouraged her to socialize and make friends with the crew.  I left this open-ended, and Grace’s player chose to interact with Lieutenant Shao-Chan Song.

Overall, I think this went well and helped bring these two players more fully into the game.  That said, at a few points, Grace’s player complained about being put “on the spot,” which is another indication of a “shy player.”  It may be best to not go out of my way to involve him, but instead ensure that he has a chance to get a word in edgewise when he wishes.  He seems more inclined towards action than towards social interaction in any case.

The Challenge: Investigations and Machinations

You can break up a typical Action scenario into multiple “challenges” that the players must overcome, though these must be broadly defined.  A good way of thinking about them is the way most stealth action games build a level.  You might need to achieve something (“Assassinate the guy” or “Get the thing”) and then the level becomes a puzzle as to how to accomplish your goal, preferably one the player can approach in his own way.

The current puzzle is “How do you get onto Grist?” Which might not seem like much of a puzzle (“You just land?”), but the players have correctly identified that there’s more going on than that.  There are multiple possible factions who foresee possible disruption by the new arrival of the Warmain, and where they choose to arrive, under whose protection, with what assets, and in what context, all matters a great deal.  Thus, most of the players spent the session investigating these factors to get a better handle on them and planning their best possible approach.

The main points of investigation turned out to be the Marrow-Heart and the Rebellion.  For the former, we had a “What’s the worst that can happen?” investigation where they just hooked it directly into a computer to see what they could find.  This was not an approach I had anticipated, but I understood the general principles that operate the Marrow-Heart, so I took it as an opportunity to emphasize the importance of Mina, and to reveal some of the character of Donlan Thorn’s discovery.  For the latter, Aldru interrogated his captured pilot; The key points here are that the rebellion has multiple factions, and that they were sent by someone within the rebellion to destroy Mina’s ship.

The rest turned on politics. They received a call from Governor Voss’s secretary (critically, not the Governor himself, who is carefully maintaining a layer between himself and the players).  I wanted to introduce a new NPC that may factor later, and to give them enough pieces to make their decision.  They also uncovered the location of Donlan Thorn.  With this, I complete their basic options to approaching the world: Approach Voss, approach Admiral Starlane, or bypass both and go to Donlan, despite the danger (a storm hangs over/near the excavation site, which will require deft piloting to approach; fortunately, they have a skilled pilot).

Then, the plan took form: They would send an advance party to meet with Voss’s agents and arrange a meet between the Commodore and Knight Commander Rook and Voss and Starlane, and then that advanced party (Damari Nash, Grace and Nal Aldru) would go on directly to the excavation site.

NPCs and Player-Voice

There’s one comment that I often see on RPG sites discussing the definition of a “DMPC” and how a GM should never include one and, possibly, should never include NPCs either.  I tend to go in the opposite direction and include gobs of NPCs, even some people might consider “Mary Sues,” but I rarely have a problem with accusations of “DMPCs.”  Allow me to offer my own definition, explain how I avoid it, and then show you an example using this game.  

A “DMPC” is an NPC that the players dislike, but are forced to deal with anyway because the GM really likes that NPC. Some people would say that an antagonist falls under that definition, but in my experience, players often love a good antagonist, even if their characters don’t.  The trick here is to introduce plenty of NPCs, see how the players interact with them, and then phase out or background the characters they dislike or do not resonate with.  If I may offer a quick list of the NPCs that showed up in this session:

• Princess Mina Shinjurai, the mysterious and gullible (?) eldest princess of the Shinjurai royal family whom the imperials “rescued” from pirates and now keep in “protective custody.”
• Lt. Kyra Elso, a companion NPC to Nal Aldru
• Abbot Chance, a companion NPC to Sherri Grace
• Commander Badri Hari, a companion NPC to Commodore Greave
• Lt. Shao-Chan Song, a minor NPC who gave a presentation and primarily existed to emphasize the power-difference between an average character and the player characters.
• Miss Tara Masterton, the secretary to Gideon Voss
• Major Mogan Law, the commander of the Warmain’s ground forces
• Commander Blitz, the commander of the Warmain’s starfighter squadrons
• Jimmy Scrambles: The captured pilot.

The players might be forgiven for saying “Who?” at the last three, especially the last two. They said only a few things and then the players paid them no mind.  A quick overview over their purposes and how I see the players interacting with them.

Princess Mina Shinjurai: She is the character I must be the most careful in dealing with.  She borders on a macguffin, as she is vital to numerous plots and plans and thus much of the story swirls around her, but she must not overly drive the action.  By allowing her to fall into Imperial hands and essentially be at their mercy, I can contain any possibility of her being overly controlling of the plot: the players decide what they will do with her, rather than she deciding what to do with the players.  One aspect I enjoy about her character is that she is keenly aware of her situation but, as a princess, has long had to deal with similar circumstances, and thus she plays her role carefully and well.  On the other hand, I see her as someone more adept at handling complicated courtly manners than she is at dealing with spy-vs-spy deceptions, hence how she was fooled by the forgery (or was she..?).  Despite my fears of her overt importance in the story, no less than two players have expressed interest in getting to know her better and involving her in their story, thus she can be brought to the forefront.

Lt. Kyra Elso: Companion NPCs, such as an ally or a dependent, are rarely a problem as a player has explicitly asked for their presence.  Of the three companion characters, she seems the most involved in the story.  In part, I think this is because she has a more extroverted characters as is necessary to deal with a character like Aldru, and they make a good due.  She can sigh and smile as she shakes her head at the rascally antics of Nal Aldru, which his player enjoys, and she can make a good bantering partner, and he likes bantering. Her approachable nature also makes it easier for her to talk with and interact with other characters.  I’ve not seen much such interactions except where I have pushed them, but she’s one of the NPCs whose name is well known.

Abbot Chance: Mostly exists to provide cover and representation to Sherri.  If there are meetings she cannot reasonably attend, he does and can tell her what she needs to know.  He can also advocate for her, and most importantly, he sets the character of the imperial interaction with Sherri.  As he is “gentle” and “fatherly,” the relationship between them is clearly an amicable one and, by extension, the relationship between her and the rest of the Imperials.  Beyond that, there seems little interest in him (was he married?  Does he have a skeleton in the closet?  Why did he pick Sherri and not someone else? Nobody is asking questions like this, so he can fade into the background).

Commander Badra Hari: Another companion NPC, whose primary purpose is to act as a proxy for the Commodore when he’s not around (thus allowing him to leave his ship in competent hands and go have adventures), and to act as a voice to cover any skills that the Commodore should have, if he lacks them.  However, this latter role has proved unimportant, as Commodore Greave has proven most adept.  The former role, though, is critical, as I suspect with less competent staff, the Commodore would reluctant to leave his ship and then you’d have a bored player.  She’s another character whom everyone knows well, knowing her name by heart and understanding intuitively how she’ll react to things.  Even so, she’s not been involved much in others’ play, perhaps because she feels a bit flat: the tough officer who gets things done.  It might be interesting to float a storyline for her, one that the players can interact with, but I’ll have to cautious here, because “Uninteresting but competent” might be the ideal role for her, and should she get too interesting, that might detract from her role as the competent officer who allows the Commodore to have adventures knowing that his dreadnought is in safe hands.

Lt Shao-Chan Song: Her purpose was to emphasize the power-distance of the player characters from their crew, and to humanize their crew.  The vision of imperial officers all as dour, British men in severe uniforms works well for villains, but for heroes, you want to point out that their crew has feelings and human foibles, that the Empire is not just full of humorless mooks, but their ships are crewed by living, breathing people.  Have a cute girl who spills her datapads and panics because she’s late for a meeting does that.  She was important for that initial impression, and beyond that, she doesn’t matter.  Nevertheless, the players have made her matter, and she’s either turning into something of a mascot, or a dark-horse, depending on where the players take her.  She’s a pretty good example of direct player intervention, as the players asked if someone could prove to be psychic after the disruption caused by the Marrow-Heart and then chose Lt. Song to be that psychic character, with the added detail that she have Pyrokinesis.  Furthermore, when Sherri chose someone to be her friend, she chose Lt. Song.  And we have no less than three players vying to add her as a personal ally.  Thus, she matters a great deal, but at this point, I don’t think she needs some sort of story to sustain her, though it might be interesting to explore her latent powers, but we’ll have to see if the story can bear that later.

Miss Tara Masterton: Only just introduced, she’s the assistant of Gideon Voss.  I have her as a contrast with Voss, as he’s Imperial, but she’s a Gristee.  She’s also a Gristee who serves the empire, as opposed to most of the Gristee that the players have met so far (namely Jimmy Scrambles).  She also offers a second point of contact in Voss’s administration, if the players need someone to subvert or negotiate with should Voss prove to be a problem.  They players haven’t expressed interest in her yet, but she was only just introduced.

Major Law and Commander Blitz: These characters represent chains of command beneath the Commodore, which offers me the opportunity to suggest courses of action or to act as a voice of reason should one be necessary.  Neither have proved important however.  I think each had one line in the entire game, and then the players proceeded to ignore them and talk about their own thing.  I think they still serve a purpose, but only as background characters that remind the players that there’s a crew on the ship and chains of command, etc (Thus, when the Commodore orders the troops to mobilize, he’s ordering Major Law to do this, should we need to give that interaction a face).  Otherwise, I sense no real interest in these characters.

Jimmy Scrambles: I wanted to give the players interaction with the rebellion, though I had expected them to capture the Ace.  This didn’t turn out the way I expected, with Aldru casually dispatching the ace.  I could have shifted that character to Jimmy, and in some ways I have, but given his lesser status, I didn’t want to emphasize competence here; it didn’t feel authentic.  So, I use him to show the “Tough-guy” attitudes of the Junk Punks, but have him break easily under intimidation, especially from Nal (who has critically succeeded at intimidating him before).  There’s some surprising interest in him, so I may keep him around and reference him in the future.  He’s still a fairly minor character though.  Also, I can’t take credit for the name: I borrowed it from Jenny Nicholson

Next?

In the coming session, we should start to get into the heart of the game.  My goals are:

• Introduce Gideon Voss
• Introduce more factions and elements of the Rebellion
• Lay down some direct clues on who the Imperial traitor is.
• Have a fight scene.
• Introduce Donlan Thorn.

We have a divided group, which may test patience (it often does, in my experience, as you’re forced to listen rather than to interact), and I suspect given the scale of some of these things, that we won’t get to everything the players have planned.  The biggest risk is that Rook and Greave will be idle for much of the session.