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SWN: Sector "Stepping Stones"

Started by Ladybird, September 25, 2012, 07:10:17 PM

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Ladybird

So, we've just had the second session of my Stars campaign. My party met on a training course, on the planet Celasar; the Pheris Directorate, the local stellar polity, requires explorers to be Licenced, to establish they have some baseline level of competence and aren't just a liability to themselves. I'm playing Celasar as being quite like general North America, an average, if slightly higher-tech, version of the real world. There's only really one settled area, of about sixty million people; I don't have a map of the planet yet.

The party consists of:

Hazanko, the psychic. He's from the planet Celasar, and has ties to organised crime; they paid for his psychic training, and he owes them Quite A Lot Of Money. One day, this will come to bite him in the ass. He has Biopsionics and Telekinesis.

"Blue", the warrior. Blue is a mercenary and will do whatever he's paid to. Blue's player doesn't go in for fluff or backstory much.

Sophia, an expert. Sophia's father died on an expedition to the planet Virelec. She works at a deep space monitoring organisation, as a lowly technician; one day, she wants to buy a spaceship of her own and continue her father's legacy. Sophia will actually make a decent pilot, in time.

Isobel, another expert. Isobel is from the planet Huzonhet (Which is quite far away), and a member of the Preceptors, an ancient organisation devoted to storing and disseminating knowledge. She's been sent to Celasar in order to help learn about the galaxy now, as most of the Preceptor's knowledge is pre-Scream and out of date. She's a researcher / hacker / historian.

Pre-game, I composed information packs for each player; two character sheets, the character gen guidelines, the class sheets, skills list, backgrounds lists, lists of psionic abilities to give to psychic players, and the rules summary page from Other Dust. This should be all everyone needs.

For session 1, we did character gen (Which went okay, except for Hazanko and Sophia's players both rolling all their attributes under 10), and for an introductory scenario, I prepared a simple "dungeon" mission; the characters were on a training course for their Explorer's License, and this was their final test. They had to get through the installation, download some data from a computer terminal, and get out again. To simulate time pressures on an actual expedition, their "ship" (Which was actually a Transit van) would leave after two hours; if they were still in the facility, tough, they died and they fail. Their weapons were bofferred (Low-power laser cells, and foam covering blades), but could be converted if needed.

And then we started play. Blue slashed their transport's tyres to prevent it driving away. In the first room of the facility, there was a picture, looking sortof like a cube, spray painted on a wall. The party looked at it before moving on.

Through the door was a long corridor, with another door at the end, and two doors branching off about halfway down; the doors were each slightly offset, with their corresponding open buttons on opposite walls, so opening the door would mean exposing your back to it. The far door had a keycard scanner by it, which flashed NO POWER when they tried to use it; the way I played this part of the facility, it was very much designed to look abandoned.

Blue pressed one of the door buttons, and two laser bolts flew from the door behind him. Looking throgh it, the players saw another corridor with a door at the end, and four laser turrets scattered down it's length. Each turret had two big target symbols, one with a FIST and one with a CROSSHAIR on it.

Blue pressed the button again and closed the door.

The other door led to an empty-seeming corridor with a door at the end, which Sophia edged down... but she wasn't paying quite enough attention, particularly not to the section of floor that fell away. She dropped onto a crash mat a few meters down. After getting her out of that, Hazanko decided to leap the pit. And he made it... but not far enough to avoid the foam-block deadfall trap on the other side. The lesson we learned here was, pay more attention. The team got him out, and he took one of the foam bricks for later.

Through the door, they were in a large circular room, with a podium at the far side, upon which something sat. Bisecting the room was a wide pit, with a catwalk suspended about five meters down. Catwalk was attached via chains to A Mechanism on the ceiling, which was attached to another chain, which it looked like you could swing across to the other side on. Down the pit was a crash mat, but beneath that, it looked to be very deep. Hundreds of metres deep...

Sophia promptly got on the chain, and tried to swing across... at which point her weight caused the catwalk to rise to floor level, and her to end up suspended in the middle of the pit, below floor level. Hazanko gingerly stepped onto the catwalk... which held his weight. And he crept across the room, watching for pits... or deadfalls... or turrets... until he got to the podium, which had a keycard sat on it. He picked the keycard up, and the podium sank into the floor...

And nothing happenned.

Meanwhile, Sophia - still hanging over the pit - climbed the chain enough to get to ground level, but couldn't make it swing. Hazanko threw his foam block at her, to start her off... and hit, fortunately. She swung, and eventually Blue managed to catch her. When she got off the chain, the catwalk dropped down again.

(This trap was straight out of one of Benoist's posts, but I modified it to just seem dangerous, not be dangerous. Was there another way across, I don't know. Maybe.)

Back to the main corridor, and the keycard panel. Isobel decided to try to hack it; she figured there obviously was power to it, else it wouldn't be able to tell them there was no power. Some hacking later, and she had a power connetion; they swiped the card, and the door unlocked.

(I had concieved this door as requiring two tests to open; the ignored the laser corridor, though, which led to the first test. As it was actually powerred, Isobel's solution would work fine as well.)

Through the door was a large room, filled with ruins on one side, another door oppsosite them, and a small building in the far corner. After Isobel and Blue got far enough into the room, a man dressed as a marauder (I figured him as looking like one of the Legion of Doom) stood up on the building, roared, and pointed an energy cannon in their direction...

A fight ensued. Laser guy went down quite quickly, but then the party were ambushed by some raiders hiding in the rubble. A brief squabble, though, and all but one were down in a display of squibs and boffer chainswords; Isobel threatened the last one, who ran away to the facility entrance. The ones that were down were fine, just playing dead for the sake of the scenario. Hazanko made to kick one of them; the downed raider grabbed his standing leg mid kick, though, and knocked him over, before going back to playing dead.

(This encounter was a combat test, against deliberately weak enemies.)

Party moved on to the next door, which led to a small circular room, with a computer terminal in it! Naturally suspicious, nobody went in, but Isobel decided to hack it remotely using her dataslate; she was rewarded with an option for "Download", but there was another button, flickerring like corrupted data, marked "Level 4". Hazanko threw a foam block into the room; nothing happenned. Isobel downloaded the data they were sent to retrieve. After some discussion, she pressed the "Level 4" button... at which point the door closed, and there was a noise, like a lift descending...

With the data they were sent for, the party decided to leave the facility. They reported their success, and were awarded their Explorer licenses; Hazanko was warned not to be so damn petty. Their instructor genuinely had no idea what "Level 4" was... and then everyone went home.

(No, seriously, Level 4 was a mystery to everyone. Nobody even knew it existed before the game. Except me... maybe one day they'll be back.)

After the game, we discussed it. It was explicitly a tutorial level, because I had no idea what else to put together, not knowing the characters until that evening. We sat and discussed character goals for a bit, and then went home.

And that was it for the first session...
one two FUCK YOU