Session 6 - Session Notes

Again, this session was back in April so I don't necessarily remember a lot. But, here are the notes I can give:

* Laurel is played by the wife of the guy who plays Flash. In fact, the character was originally based on her (though had no personality in the previous session because I hadn't met her before). She was a little wishy-washy at first about whether she wanted to actually play.

* Because I needed a character for her to play at last minute's notice, I ret-conned that Laurel stayed behind in engineering instead of going along with the other team. Originally, the plot for the episode also included the captain looking for an engineer to hire (hence, why he isn't with the group).

* We kind of forgot that Flash, not Wreck, was supposed to be in charge of the security team. Hence, Wreck ends up giving most of the orders.

* McMillan was named after a book lying around in the house we played at. When I need a quick name, I'll grab it off anything nearby.

* "Rakete Einstechen" is likely horribly garbled German. I don't really speak anything but English, so ramming words together via an online translator is the best I can do. It was intended to be a joke name, "The Pocket Rocket".

* "Vernitchen!" was intended as a nod to the Battle of Britain (I seem to recall that being the one word given by the German commander at the start of the battle, but I can't think of where I read that).

* I did the "we have ways of making you talk" without the stereotypical thick Nazi accent, but it is still along the lines of the classic cliché.

* The gibberish Wreck yelled out was something along the lines of "Argen bargen sticken viken" or something like that.

* Everyone was surprised a plan of the group's actually worked.

* Sven Liefson and Ansfeldt VanSloot aren't named after anyone in particular, but I wanted to be sure to have very ethnic names.

* Dunshire Salvage was a nod to "The Cones of Dunshire", from Parks and Rec.

* I intended that the PCs follow up on the mysterious death of Liefson, hence giving them more information than they needed. Since they did not, they did not discover the foreshadowing (sort of) clue that he was mysteriously poisoned by Polonium, something that hadn't happened in hundreds of years.

* Schlomo being in the bathroom was something the Laurel player ad-libbed. What she actually said during the session was, "He's taking a space dump; it's a real upper decker" which was unexpectedly hilarious coming from her.

* Schlomo mysteriously becomes absent halfway through the session because he had to have a work-related call. Jasper doesn't do much because we kept losing his Skype connection. The session notes are actually a bit of a recon - originally it was Schlomo who stayed on the station and Jasper who went to the surface. Unfortunately, lacking the notes we mis-remembered it during the next session and since it didn't really matter for this one, I opted to make the story make more sense as opposed to being accurate.

* Wreck kept forgetting Parker's name during the session and would use various aliases. He also seemed to think Parker was the ship janitor rather than an actual technician.

* The stuff about hull ionization, etc., is probably Hollywood science. I'm not versed in astrophysics so I just threw out some words that sounded good.

* The creatures being half-dog, half-tiger actually has a story behind it (more on that next session). During the session, we debated whether they'd be "togs" or "digers".

* The Wreck player was positive I was going to have someone steal the rocket if they all left it.

* Laurel probably should have died in her attack, but since it was her first time playing I didn't want to kill her off that quick.

* I actually used Russian translators and wrote out the Cyrillic words. Once again, the translations may be a bit rough.

* The October part of Cold October is a nod to the Red October (from Hunt For Red October) but the Cold part is actually meaningful (see next session).

* April 2031 is a nod to the song by Warrant.






*

Session 7 - Cast of Characters

James "Wreck" Deckard: A former Texan marine who later joined the merchant security service.

Samuel "Flash" Gordon: A former Lieutenant Colonel in the American marines who now works as a ship's security chief.

Jasper P. Jenkins: Another former American marine who works security under Gordon.

Laurel Brien: A former petty officer in the UK navy, now acting as the ship's chief engineer.

Session 7 - Scene 1 (of 5)

Down in the hanger, Wreck examines the area around the ship. He is surprised to see that the hanger has no opening at the top and wonders how the ship can take off. Flash believes the ship is so old that perhaps the salvage yard was built above it later.

Flash wants to head back up, but Wreck wants to look around the area more. Flash wants to know if Wreck plans to steal the ship which Wreck agrees he does. Flash suggests they make sure there are no alarms in the area.

The two search around the hanger. Wreck does manage to find an alarm, but sets it off in the process.

Seconds later, the door to the ancient space ship opens and two figures emerge. They appear to be heavily-modified cyborgs.

One of the cyborgs carries a hammer in one hand and a sickle in the other. It immediately jumps down onto the floor of the hanger. The other cyborg is wielding a heavy assault gun and begins shooting.

After briefly considering the merits of trying to deactivate the alarm, Wreck pulls out his laser carbine and fires at the cyborg on the ground. The blast hits the cyborg but it continues running at him.

Flash readies his laser rifle to fire at the cyborg with the gun, but Wreck quickly yells to concentrate their fire. Flash misses with his shot as he is hit by a spray of bullets from the other cyborg. He collapses in a pool of blood.

The other cyborg reaches Wreck and slashes out at him with its scythe. Wreck manages to move out of the way and blasts through the cyborg's head.

Wreck rushes for cover and fires out at the cyborg, but misses. It fires back, but Wreck is protected. The two exchange fire back and forth for a minute until Wreck scores a hit.

The cyborg appears to get upset about getting hit and begins running down the stairs. As it runs towards Wreck, he blasts it again but is unable to put it down.

Grabbing Wreck, the cyborg throws him across the room. He drops his laser carbine in the throw. While still on the ground, Wreck pulls out his autopistol but misses.

The cyborg rushes over to the semi-prone Wreck and kicks him hard in the chest. Wreck winces as he feels his ribs crack. Because of the pain, he has trouble firing his gun.

Grabbed again, Wreck is slowly strangled by the cyborg. With his last ounce of strength, Wreck manages to fire his gun straight into the cyborg's head, killing him.

Wreck sits on the ground, wheezing for breath. Once he recovers, he deactivates the alarm then checks on Flash. Flash has started to regain consciousness.

Flash, still badly injured, asks for help. Wreck believes clearly there are no more cyborgs or they would have shown up by now, so they should look inside the ancient ship to see if they can find a first aid kit of some kind. Flash asks for help getting up the stairs, but Wreck simply tells him to stop being such a wimp.

Session 7 - Scene 2 (of 5)

Back at the Xanthidae, Jasper gets an emergency call from Schlomo. He informs the security officer that Laurel has been badly injured and they need Captain Miller to bring the Xanthidae down to the surface so they can get Laurel into the autodoc.

Jasper complies and informs the captain. A short time later, the ship lands on the planet's surface near the rocket. They get Laurel into the autodoc and a short time later, she is recovered (albeit with a long scar along her face).

When Laurel wakes up, she's pretty mad about getting injured but happy she is not brain damaged. She talks with Jasper and Schlomo about what is going on.

Jasper decides it would be best for him and Laurel to check on Flash and Wreck in the secret underground area below the office. Schlomo elects to stay behind with Captain Miller and Parker on the Xanthidae.

After Laurel changes into a new set of clothes, the two of them head into the salvage yard. As they move to the office, they spot the remains of the creatures killed by Wreck and Flash. Laurel is upset she will not have a chance to get her vengeance on them.

Once they reach the office and head down into the hanger, the two find the remains of the cyborgs. Laurel examines them closely, noticing a strange symbol on each of them that appears to be a hammer and sickle inside of a swastika. She uses her data slate to try and find information about the symbol, but finds no records on that symbol directly.

Laurel is also interested in information about the ship and the area, wondering why the ship is located here. She confirms that the property has been owned by Sven Liefson for the last eight years, ever since the start of the colony.

On the ship itself, she has a hard time deciphering the Russian writing. She is able to pull up a historical photo from the time of the Twilight Wars – a propaganda photo by the Russian Empire with its leader and other government officials standing inside.

Session 7 - Scene 3 (of 5)

Inside the space ship, Wreck and Flash examine the command module. A symbol of a white, blue, and red colored oval with an arrowhead through it can be seen in various locations but neither man recognizes it. Wreck locates a first aid kit in the module and bandages Flash up.

Wreck then examines the technology in the command module; it is definitely pre-Twilight technology. He tells Flash to look over the command module while he heads down the hatch to the lower levels.

Flash starts typing on the ship's computer, hoping to locate the ship's log files. He can't read the Cyrillic writing that comes up on the screen, but does notice a flashing light. Using his dataslate, Flash is able to determine the flashing light refers to a recently-sent communication.

Accessing the command, Flash sees a star map come up. But, not being a navigator, he is not familiar with where the system of the communication's destination is located.

Meanwhile, in the first habitat module, Wreck sees there are six ancient cryobeds. All of the beds are occupied with mummified remains of Russian cosmonauts, apparently the victims of a failed cryosystem.

Wreck takes a moment to look around the habitat module, but finds nothing else of interest so he heads down to the next level. The third level appears to be another habitat module, similar to the one above. The main difference is that instead of six beds there are only five, with one of them much larger and fancier than the others.

The standard cryobeds in this module appear to have failed as well, but the larger bed appears to have survived though is now empty.

The empty bed has a nameplate above it, identifying its owner. Wreck uses his dataslate to translate, coming up with "Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin". He recognizes the name immediately – it is the name of the "Tiger Prince" of the Russian Empire, the great warlord who started the Twilight Wars.

Examining the bed further, he sees that Putin must have been taken out of the ship alive. Medical equipment lies nearby the bed, suggesting Putin was brought out of the cryobed and revived at some point.

Wreck knows the warlord could have survived long enough in the cryobed to be alive now. He also remembers the stories of the genetic experiments Putin was said to have performed that kept him young and more physically powerful than men a third of his age.

In retrospect, Wreck believes the "Butcher of Kiev" and his fondness for genetic manipulation and tigers might well explain the tiger-dog creatures they encountered in the salvage yard.

Flash hears the sounds of people talking outside the ship, with a woman's voice complaining about not being able to find anything out about the ship on her dataslate. He recognizes it as belonging to the ship's engineer, Laurel.

Opening the door, Flash spots Laurel and Jasper. As he greets them, Jasper notes there appears to have been some action in the hanger. Flash agrees, noting he was shot up pretty bad.

He goes on to explain that Wreck is exploring the rest of the ship, but notes he has found something in the command module. When he explains about the recent transmission, Laurel offers to help trace it.

With all of the talking going on, Wreck comes up to see what is going on. Once everyone is together, Wreck explains about the cryobeds and the VIP module for Vladimir Putin.

Flash wonders if the two cyborgs they shot up sent a message to Putin. Wreck suggests Laurel should be able to make better sense of things.

Unfortunately, Laurel is still having issues with her dataslate and has trouble tracing the signal. Wreck, however, can tell from the star charts that it appears to be somewhere in the 6 Canum Venaticorum system.

Just then, the computer beeps and a light flashes, indicating an incoming signal. Flash presses the button to activate the comm system.

Adolph Mueller's voice comes over the speakers in the ship, asking for Mr. Deckard and his friends. Wreck responds back belligerently.

Mueller thanks Wreck for taking care of Commander Cutler and his men, saying they could have eventually proven troublesome to his plans. Wreck mistakes him for meaning the cyborgs, but Mueller clarifies he is not referring to the "soldiers for their new world order", but rather the men they left back at the docking station.

Wreck continues to insult Mueller, mockingly saying he is glad he could help. He then asks what he can do for Mueller. Mueller responds he needs nothing, saying he just called to say, "auf wiedersehen".

With that, the signal abruptly cuts off. The group suddenly hears a mechanical voice making an announcement in German from the hanger. Listening closely, Wreck hears it say, "...Elf..Zehn...Zwolf..."

Despite not knowing the language, Wreck gets the intent immediately. As the announcement counts down, "Neun...Acht...Sechs...Sieben..." he yells for everyone to get out.

Everyone immediately rushes out of the ship to the count of "Funf...Drei..Vier...Null..." They head towards the ladder at the exit as the count reaches "Zwei", and then the ship explodes in a giant fireball. Most of the group manage to reach cover, but Jasper takes some of the blast before he can get behind anything.

Session 7 - Scene 4 (of 5)

When the smoke starts to clear, the group makes their way out and back to the ship. The badly-injured Flash and Jasper limp their way to the medical bay with the help of Schlomo, while Wreck and Laurel go to see the captain.

Wreck starts to explain about the Twilight era ship they found. The captain begins musing on the price they could get for that when Laurel interrupts him to clarify the ship blew up.

When Wreck brings up Vladimir Putin, Captain Miller is clearly disturbed at the idea that the "Mad Killer of Crimea" could be on the loose.

Wreck challenges the captain, saying he must have been expecting something like this. Miller clarifies that he knew Adolph Mueller was up to something, but has no idea what it is or how Vladimir Putin would fit into things. He expresses his hope that Gail and the team back on Beta Canum-4 will find something.

Given that the Cold October was trapped with a bomb, Wreck wonders about the rocket they took from Cutler. Entering the room, Parker announces he already checked the rocket and it is rigged it with explosives. Parker thinks Laurel could deactivate the explosives in a couple of days, but Captain Miller doesn't think it is worth the time.

Flash suggests simply selling the rocket, which Miller agrees seems to be the prudent course of action. Laurel begins to object, but Miller assures her they'd inform the buyer about the explosives first.

Once the discussion is over, they turn their attention back to Adolph Mueller. Wreck expresses his belief that Mueller is headed to 6 Canum Venaticorum, a known pirate haven.

In an effort to turn a bit of a profit on the long journey and hide their true intentions from the network of pirates and outlaws in the area, Captain Miller has decided to pose as a transport ship heading for the nearby system of R Canum Venaticorum.

While Laurel can remain as chief engineer, Miller informs Wreck, Flash, and Jasper they will need to pose as stewards. Flash decides that he will cook, Wreck can be the waiter, and Jasper will be in charging of cleaning. Wreck makes a joke about Jasper having to dress like a French maid which causes confusion when Jasper takes him seriously.

Laurel is skeptical they will find crew, but Miller is confident there will be at least a couple of people on the station looking for cheap transport. He has Schlomo fly them back while he puts an ad out over the planetary network.

Sure enough, before long the captain has lined up three passengers to come aboard. The first is a middle-aged French businessman. Wreck recognizes him as Marcel Dupres, the man who Jean Danielou tried to start the "Blindeebuff Burger" business with. The second man is a young Texan named Terman Gale. He appears to have been blinded at some point in some kind of accident. Finally, there is a younger female executive named Claire St. John.

The trip starts out uneventfully. Jasper does a great job cleaning the rooms complete with fancy towel animals, earning a nice tip from each passenger. Flash, however, makes a lousy cook though at least Wreck manages to serve everything adequately. Dupres sneers at Wreck, noting how far he has fallen, while St. John complains about wanting her meal cost refunded.

Session 7 - Scene 5 (of 5)

A few days into the trip, everyone is woken up one night when the ship suddenly drops out of stutterwarp and the alarm klaxon goes off. The artificial gravity switches off and the ship is on emergency power.

Flash gets up and yells for Laurel. Laurel doesn't know what is going on, so she heads for main engineering. Although not trained in zero gravity, she manages to find her way along quickly.

Meanwhile, Wreck readies his pistol and blade and emerges into the main habitat ring. He quickly moves towards the bridge using his expert zero gravity training. Flash follows behind, but has trouble. Jasper tries to make a "towel lasso" to help himself along, but the construct doesn't work as well as he planned.

When Laurel reaches the door to main engineering, she sees the blast door has come down. She realizes that the engineering module must have depressurized somehow. When she brings up the sensors on the room, she can tell it has suffered an explosion.

The engineer then makes her way over to the airlock and puts on her vacc suit. Grabbing some hull repair equipment, she heads outside the ship to make the necessary repairs.

Inside at the bridge, Wreck finds there has been an electrical explosion. Flames float through the air along with the unconscious bodies of Schlomo and the captain.

Wreck quickly puts out the flames using one of nearby extinguishers while Jasper manages to grab Schlomo and treat him. As they are working, Jasper finally arrives using another towel-lasso to help him move.

Using his lasso, Jasper grabs the captain and gets him to safety as well. He tries to treat him with the first aid kit, but the captain is badly injured. Flash has better luck with Schlomo, and is able to revive him. Schlomo explains his panel exploded suddenly.

Back outside, Laurel manages to repair the hull breach to engineering. Looking around, she doesn't see other ships and can't tell how the ship was damaged.

After making her way back in to the ship, Laurel heads into engineering and restores main power and the artificial gravity.

Back at the bridge, everyone abruptly drops to the ground as gravity is restored. Wreck calls to main engineering to get a status report. Laurel explains that main engineering was clearly tampered with.

Wreck instructs Laurel to check the security footage for engineering. As Laurel suspected, there is a one hour data block missing from the surveillance video during the time the incident occurred.

Flash suspects a spy is on the ship. As he heads back to check into things further, he has to deal with the passengers. St. John and Dupres are both upset and Flash has to yell at everyone to get back into their quarters.

Wreck and Flash discuss what to do next. Flash wants to check the room logs, but finds that all security data during the time period is missing.

Schlomo tells Wreck and Flash he is having trouble flying the ship and it will need major repairs. The captain, meanwhile, is still badly injured and Jasper takes him to the medical bay.

Technically speaking, Laurel is the highest-ranking officer on the ship and takes control. Before they move out of the area, she wants to find who the saboteur is. The crew attempts to discuss what to do next with the occasional interruption from the passengers (particularly Claire St. John, who insists they head to the nearest safe port).

Laurel decides the next step is to interrogate the passengers. Since Wreck has built up relationships with the passengers while serving them, she assigns him to handle the interrogations.

Session 7 - Session Notes

As before, I am still a couple of weeks behind in getting my notes typed up so these notes refer to a session that happened a month ago.

I tried to start out with an action scene to get things moving a little more with the game. I think that worked, but by the end of the session I realized I cobbled together a mess of side plots that don't really go together well. All that, and I've sidetracked what was intended to be my main plot - the shadow invasion by the sathar aliens.

I'm starting to see how TV shows and book series that started with a good idea went off the rails after a while - sometimes you get too wrapped up in different ideas you like that you forget to sit back and think things through as a whole and to make sure everything going on is driving the events forward.

I'm still not sure how much longer this campaign will last. I'm not feeling particularly proud of this one, the players still aren't sure what to make of it, and it seems to require more thought and attention to planning than I have to give it at the moment.

General notes on the session:
* The Schlomo player couldn't make it this session. Hence, his character becomes more of a NPC.

* The underground hanger with the ship didn't have big doors that opened because it was never intended by me to be operational again. That said, it did point out a plothole that just didn't occur to me - how'd they get the ship down there.

* The cyborg soldiers are modeled after a couple of illustrations in the Rifts: Warlords of Russia book (literally, I used that illustration to show the players).

* Strictly by the book, the cyborg should have easily killed Wreck but that would have been pretty anti-climactic.

* The part about Laurel changing into a new set of clothes referred to a discussion during the game about how she woke up in one of those hospital gowns with her ass hanging out.

* The hammer and sickle inside the swastika is the "Commie-Nazi" symbol from the McBain movie on the Simpsons where he is fighting them off to save the UNICEF pennies. It is to be explained later as part of a joke about future historians drawing incorrect conclusions about 20th century politics because of the destruction of records during the Twilight Wars.

* The picture of the ship was a real picture I got about the PPTS (or PTK NP) Russian space ship. It had Vladimir Putin in the picture.

* The symbol they see inside the ship was the real symbol of the Russian Federal Space Agency (FKA or RKA).

* There aren't real cryobeds on the PPTS, but there was a picture of the seats that looked close enough that I used. As for the mummified remains, I was inspired by the opening of Planet of the Apes when they find what happened to the "new Eve".

* It was a bit of a laugh when it was revealed to be Putin's cryotube. I wasn't originally planning to include anything about Putin in the game nor explain the Twilight Wars as having anything particularly strong to do with Russia. However, with the incidents in Crimea, I thought real life was writing too good a plot to pass up. Plus, the Commie-Nazis will get a great head villain and think of all the wacky things I can add (up next - Cossak troops with shock whips).

* The over the top nicknames for Putin are part of an idea that past historical figures are often vastly inflated by modern mythology. Instead of just being a petty politician from a belligerent nation, Putin is thought of by the people in the 24th century like some sort of super villain.

* I'm not sure the player's really caught what Mueller was saying about thanking them for taking out Cutler. As will be revealed later, Mueller is not necessarily on the side of the German government but part of a massive shadow force.

* I had the computer count down in German because it would take the players a couple more seconds to figure out what was going on, ratcheting up the tension.

* During the game, the French passenger was intended to be Peter Kirouac. But during the session, we confused Kirouac with Dupres and so I changed it to the appropriate name for the write-up since we used Dupres' personality the entire time.

* Terman Gale is pseudo-inspired by Ron Silver's character in Lifepod. The original plot idea I had was to follow lifepod and have them forced to abandon the Xanthidae, but that was when there were less PCs and it would have made more sense.

* The crack about Jasper taking Wreck seriously is an in-joke to something hilarious that happened during the session. Around this time, the Wreck player started cracking jokes about the Jasper player playing a French maid. We didn't think much of it until almost the end of the session when I asked "Jasper" what he was doing and the player was confused. Apparently, he'd been having connection problems on his Skype audio and didn't catch everything. For at least a half hour, he thought Jasper had died of his wounds and he was playing a new maid character.

* The reference to towel animals comes from a discussion we had when posing as stewards first came up. We took a 20-minute break to talk about towel animals and even had a contest where we all tried to make the best one (hint - don't hire any of us for your hotel).

* When Laurel went out to fix the ship, I made the appropriate heavy-breathing in the vast silence of space noises (ala 2001).

*** Final Update on this Campaign ***

It's been awhile since I updated this thread. Basically, we had one more session on this game then I ended it.

I started to type up the notes, but it just wasn't that memorable of a session so those probably will never see the light of day since I won't finish them.

In summary, the campaign just didn't work for us. I lost my inspiration for the campaign and had been floundering for weeks. I got too involved in personal stuff (like buying a new house) to really focus on it. Other players have had a lot of stuff come up too (I'm not the only one buying a new place, and there are weddings and divorces going on in the group).

I've decided that outside of a small arc for Star Wars, sci-fi/space opera type RPGs just aren't something I'm comfortable enough running. I get writer's block too easily (something that doesn't come up as much when I'm doing fantasy or horror gaming).

From here, I'm planning to go back to a D&D type game. I've had good luck with the OD&D one-shots I've ran but am moving towards a more 2e style ruleset to do an AD&D Al-Qadim set campaign. Not sure when that will start up - some of the guys want to play some Car Wars first.

But, once that's up and running I will have a new AP thread for that.

Pity. Good luck with the new campaign. Keep us posted!