Showing posts with label Star Smuggler. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Star Smuggler. Show all posts

Sunday, November 1, 2020

Pluses and Minuses, Pools and Podcast

In Star Smuggler, characters make to hit rolls. They have to roll over a certain number which is varible with 2 dice. Although the rules do not say it, the character receives one die for skill and one die for the quality of their weapon. The rules establish that if you have no skill with a weapon, you can't make a to hit roll. However, theoretically, if you ignored that rule you could have an unskilled character blasting away with a very, very low probability of hitting. 

For starship and boat weapons, the roll is different. You need to roll 1 or 2 to hit. A pair or more of ones indicates a critical. The player receives a 1d6 per roll based on the tech level of their weapon, up to a maximum of 6d6. 

In other parts of the game, there is a standard roll of 1d6 or 2d6, where the character can have pluses and minuses modify the roll. The roll is usually used to determine what of 6 or 12 things happen next not how good you are doing. The evaluation of "good" or "bad" happens as a result of reading a paragraph or two describing an event. Getting in a fight is supposed to be bad, but if you have large party of characters that idea is flipped on it's head because the player can dominate the battlefield. Getting a cool new item is supposed to be good, but if you don't have room for it, it's useless. 

The D&D player in me only noticed the standard roll of 1d6 or 2d6 with modifiers and could not conceptualize why giving modifiers to weapons fire does not work. I know, I've tried. It's because those rolls are from a dice pool, a concept that is totally foreign to me.  

This is a case of knowing your rule sets and having a great background in games, mechanics and theory helps a lot. I am all about D&D while I find Traveller to be entirely opaque. Traveller fascinates me because I can't figure out how the game master and players use the game mechanics to make great things happen. I've heard of people playing one Traveller campaign for decades, as I have been doing with Star Smuggler. The basic mechanics make that happen. 

In D&D, my campaigns fizzle after a few weeks or months because the characters reach a point where the truly fantastic has to happen over and over each session to make the game go. The rules lose their gritty danger as the characters improve. That's baked right into D&D while Traveller has a totally different mindset where it's not likely that your character will mechanically improve at all. They get better and smarter, but everyone is still one blaster shot away from death. It's the psychological threat level that changes, not the characters abilities. It's all in the scope of the story. 

This is probably the reason why I've been listening to Safco Cast so much. I am sure most listeners are looking to Jeff Koenig and Bob Loftin Traveller experiences, I am listening for their Gaming experience. It's this whole "new" world of Traveller that fascinates me not for the world itself, but the whole mechanical framework that makes the play happen. In the last episode I listened to, they spoke all about dice pools and it really sorted out some issues I had with Star Smuggler because of my personal experience with D&D. Bob and Jeff are truly enlightening, because of the way they present the Traveller rules while also looking other systems like Cepheus and make great comparisons in how things are done. 

Amazing. Why don't you give them a try? 



Saturday, October 31, 2020

Revisiting Star Smuggler - Session 005a

The Zephyr
Week 5 in going to involve some gun running, so the crew purchases a full load of hypercharges for 2000 secs. This reduces their funds to 1175. 

Imperia is an expensive planet, everything is at least double normal prices. However, the main limiting factor is space on the ship. The best way to think about this problem is how to remove as much stuff from the cargo hold. Some items have a specific home. The 27 side arms are in the vault and take up 3 CU. The Regen tank is in medical, taking up 4 CU. The vacuum skimmer is cool, but it really has to stay in the cargo hold taking of 10 of 60 CU. The heavy side arms, robots and u-suits can be distributed in the crew quarters. The hoppers have their own spaces. Naturally, 19 fuel units can be divided among the hoppers. Additionally, the four repair units can be placed in Engineering while the 20 life support units can be placed on the hoppers for storage. 

There is now 50 CU available for items in the hold. The hoppers are too overloaded for use, not all the crew could escape on them due to the overpacking of equipment. Additionally, they should not be deployed because they crew doesn't want them damaged. 

I need 1 fuel unit and a few more repair units. I can sell 2 U-bots, the side arms and some of the life support units. The crew lands at the Industrial site and finds an empty room to search. None of the items in this area are worth screwing up a trade opportunity, so they move on. Looking at the table for the Industrial site, I need to roll a 5 (U-bots), a 7 for repair units, 8 for fuel, 10 for life support and 11 for side arms. There are a maximum of 5 rolls per day as they take 2 hours each. 

I get 5, 6, 10, 7 and 6. That's U-bots, a repairman, life support units, repair units and another repairman. Hmm. U-bots are 50 base price. The roll is a 3, or 5 times normal cost. They sell the bots for 500. It turns out life support units can't be sold here, so that roll is no good. Repair units are 5 each. The crew is going to take a chance on these and purchases 50 of them for 250. 

The next day, day 3, they roll again. They have excellent luck and sell all 50 repair units for 20 secs each or 1000 total. They also decide to sell the four in storage for an additional 80. The engineers are praying they have some good rolls, but no. They get a 3 which ends day 3. 

Day 4 doesn't go well. They purchase one fuel unit at a price of 2. Now they have a solid 20 fuel units or 10 per boat. No other good items appear. 

Day 5, the crew hits the jackpot and can buy side arms at cost of 15 each. Side arms are good cargo because a box of 10 takes up 2 CU. It's now a question of how much cash they have. They have 2503 secs. They buy 123 of them, when combined with the 27 they already have, they have a total of 150 weapons. They take up 30 CU, so they have a bit of breathing room. 

They take the rest of they day to get to the rough areas and I will roll for entry on the next morning. 

Day 6, welcome to the roughs. The Zephyr encounters nothing on the way in to the area, but attempts a contact. They meet up with some rough characters, gun runners who have a ton of arms. The crew is loaded for bear with the ship and hopper guns, so this is not a concern.  

They offer to buy the side arms for 5 each times 10. They take in 7500  less the 1845 they paid for them. The ship's account is up to 8158. 

On day 7, they try again to meet up with the arms dealers. It doesn't work out, instead they meet up with a party of royal guards. Nothing comes of it. 

The next day (EDIT - DAY 8!, I goofed), they get lost and have to boost the ship to a higher altitude to find their way out. A wasted day. 

On day 8 9, they move to orbit and dock at the space station. They may a payment and end the week with 6958. Each crewman receives 74 secs. 

I am going to cut off at the end of Day 8 9. As a player, my inclination is to return to something safe and sure like that cargo run from Regari to Palatek. As a game master, this is where I would kick the players in the butt to make fun stuff happen. 

Thursday, October 29, 2020

Revisiting Star Smuggler - Session 004

The Zephyr
Week four didn't start out as planned.  The crew is on Nipna and is looking to get off world. The ships took a heavy beating on the last day of the week and the crew has decided repairs are in order. 

In this run through of the game, each character is an independent crew member and has a stake in the ship. While I have been avoiding splitting the crew, I decide that it is reasonable in this case. 

The engineers, Mel and Sarah pour over the ship and the hopper to get all the repairs done on day 1 of week 4. Emily and Patrick are there with heavy hand weapons and the ability to fly the ship away in case they get a bad roll again. 

Jason, Burnie and Alex take off to look for better guns for the ship. The Zephyr has one empty turret and the other only holds TL-1 guns. This proved to be a problem as they could barely defend the ship. The hoppers with TL-6 guns are far more effective. 

They managed to purchase 2 sets of TL-5 guns for a total 3200 secs. They also sold the old guns for 600, which leaves the ship with only 1464 in the ship's account. They crew feels they are dangerously low on funds as hypercharges cost 500 and a ship payment is 475. They have less than 3 weeks of cash in the bank and nothing has been paid on the principal. 

On day 2, they lift of and head for New Karma. 

New Karma is a rather dangerous planet. It is both rich and low tech, but there is a heavy risk of becoming wanted or being attacked at random. Additionally, this planetary system is the most obscure of all of the systems in the game. I mean that literally. There is a lot of rolling for one event that forces you to another event. You can't really see threats coming by flipping to the next entry. 

Luckily, the ship is undetected on entry to the system and proceeds to land in the Ruins. 

Over the next six days, the crew manages to accumulate some goods. In order, they are: 

A skimmer with no fuel, 
10 damaged u-suits that require an RU for repair and a roll to see if it works, 
A damaged U-bot, 
Another undamaged skimmer with no fuel,
A ship's boat with 4 hits of damage, 
An undamaged U-bot, 
A TL-1 side arm, 
A undamaged GM-bot. 
A damaged GM-bot. 
A repair unit. 

That brings us to day 7. 

The engineers burn up four RU to fix the ship's boat. I deem that two engineers working together, can repair one point of damage each. While they are doing that, the rest of the crew creates a cache for the 2 skimmers. 

One of the quirks of this is system is you have to have enough space in terms of CU to fit things in the ship. The rule sort of hint that you can put a boat inside the cargo bay, so that is what they do. 

Now the ship is using all three bays for boats and the largest bay also holds a skimmer. There are 10 CU left, unless I want to start packing things in the hoppers. I am going to do that. Two have guns, so that means 10 of a combined total of 75 CU of space is taken. I also divide the life support units and repair units among the hoppers. That is another 23 CU of 75 taken. I have 42 left. The crew loads in some heavy hand weapons, side arms (just 7) and all of the extra u-suits. 

If they don't take too long, the cached items can be recovered later. The crew decides to go for broke, and try a double jump to Talitar then a single jump to Imperia. At Talitar, there is a single scoutship waiting for us, but they quickly jump again with no incident. 

In the Imperia system, the Zypher only gets a radio check in and can proceed to the surface. The crew decides to stop at the Space Station to try and sell off some goods. They managed to sell the extra hopper for 2500 and immediately pay an interest payment. They have 3489 secs. 

At this point the crew moves the ship away to do some much needed maintenance in orbit, with no random checks. They now have the following in the cargo holds: 

2 Hoppers TL-1, 19 fuel units, 2 GM-bots at TL-5, 2 U-bots at TL-2, 1 vacuum skimmer TL-5 (e153), 3 TL-1 u-suits, 1 TL-6 u-suits, 27 side arms at TL-1, Regen Tank TL-6 (e153), Defense Screens, 20 life support units, and 4 repair units. 

The crew also collects its pay (314 secs) which drives down the ship's account to 3175. 

Sunday, October 25, 2020

Revisiting Star Smuggler - Play Session 003

What I think a Smuggler
looks like... 
We are in week three. The crew is on Nipna and is looking to make a profit. Emily proposes that they move to the colony where they can trade some goods. To further this goal, Emily orders the hoppers deployed, freeing up their 40 CU slots on the ship. Now the Zephyr can hold a ridiculous amount of products, so long as they don't move. 

Over the week they spend a lot of time purchasing low and selling high. It isn't all that interesting. they take on some u-suits, fuel units, repair units and weapons. Emily decides to stock the ships weapons locker with two cases of side arms TL-6 and arm the crew appropriately. Every crew man has atleast a TL-6 side arm plus the Emily and the Gunners all have heavy side arms. They also take on 6 addition TL-6 heavy side arms for future use. Surprisingly, they make the most money off the fuel and repair units. 

By the evening of day seven, they have made 2540 secs. Emily calls it and moves the ship back to the spaceport where they set down and redeploys the hoppers in order to take on more goods. 

Emily is feeling kind of broke, so she personally invests in some repair units and then hopper guns. She manages to make herself 430 secs. Additionally, the crew arms up the hoppers with new TL-6 guns at a cost of 240 secs., which was slightly offset by selling the guns they had for 30 secs each. The rest of the crew takes a day of RRR and are impressed with her trade skills.   

On day 9, things go wrong. Very wrong. It was decided the ship would depart on Day 10. The crew would pick the destination once they made orbit. Since day 9 was a day of RRR except for Emily, they accidentally rolled a contact. They got the dreaded e133 Death Squad again. 

The Zephyr and one of the hoppers are damaged by two titanic explosions as the miner's connected and exploded. 

And here is where the rules go batty. There are some references to explosive hits on a ship and boat, but these guys merely have to touch the ship to cause damage. But how much? I don't know. Since damage is determined by a to hit roll and they don't have to roll to touch something, what happens?  

I can't imagine that someone could miss touching a starship or a boat. They are walking bombs so I decided that they do 1 point of damage to the Zephyr and 1d6 plus a critical to the hopper, just like a blast from ship's guns. The hopper takes 2 points and rolls for breakdown. It's a TL-1 hopper, it doesn't breakdown. 

The next round is brutal. The hoppers open fire with their guns as the Zephyr leaps into the air. They down the spitters while the other two members of the squad mill about. The hoppers lift off and continue the carnage. 

Three rounds of combat and the squad is dead. The crew seriously considers upgrading the Zephyr's guns. 

Day 10 is spent as RRR with no results. They obviously get a visit from the local police, which doesn't really effect anything. The police are just happy to have the Death Squad dead and the Zephyr leaving the planet. The engineers patch up what they can before heading to bed. One hopper has a good sized hole in it (1 point of damage). 

The ship's account starts day 10 at 7404 secs. The crew is paid off 74 secs. each. Emily phones in the ship's weekly payment of 475, leaving 6263. 

The crew will pick a new destination on day 1 of week 4. 

The ship holds the following resources: 2 Hoppers TL-1, 2 Hopper guns TL-6, 1 Ship's Guns TL-1, 18 fuel units, 1 GM-bot TL-5, 1 vacuum skimmer TL-5 (e153), 3 TL-1 u-suits, 1 TL-6 u-suits, Regen Tank TL-6 (e153), Defense Screens, 20 life support units, and 8 repair units, 27 TL-6 side arms, 6 TL-6 heavy side arms. 


Tuesday, October 20, 2020

Revisiting Star Smuggler - Play Session 002

Last post, we ended with the crew of the Zephyr winning big at the gambling tables, only to have Emily get jumped for her money and gear. Mel not only wins big at the high roller table, he also purchase a TL-6 side arm that fires like a heavy hand weapon. Feeling bad for Emily, he gives her the weapon. She wants to hear more about the seller because she wants enough firepower to get even with those hoods that jumped her. 

As Mel explained how he met this arms dealer, (e153) Emily hatches a plot. 

Ok, as mentioned in the prior post, each member of the Zephyr crew is an independent character like Duke was in Star Smuggler. While they lack his skills and stats, they have his equipment and money, plus that independence. In this scenario, Duke holds the title on the ship and is the person that the crew pays interest and principal to. 

When Emily calls him about the most recent payment, she flubs her cunning check and lets slip that she is about to go from legit trader to vigilante. Duke squashes the idea and implicitly tells her to get back to trading. The casino vacation is over. 

The crew makes their weekly payment and have 1375 in the ship's account to work with. Additionally, the individual crewmen have several thousand secs to spend on personal equipment. 

Emily rallies the troops and they spend the next 4 days trading in the Spaceport. They buy low and sell high on Ninpa. One of the quirks of this system is items have a base price which is modified by the wealth of the system. Prices are modified from x1 to x20. This increases rather steeply on high cost planets, but even under the worst conditions the player can make 10 times what they spent because the difference of the highest and lowest prices are based on a 1d6. You're equally likely to get x1 or x2 prices as it is to get x10 or x20.  

While the majority of the crew are looking for resources or salable goods, Emily is looking for more gunmen. At the end of the week, the players obtain a GM bot, 20 life support units and sell off 10 of 30 fuel units. Mel made an opportune purchase of 10 additional GM bots and sold them for a whopping 6000 secs. All said and done, the ship's account jumped to 6769. 

Emily, on the other hand started looking for more stake holders, crew for the ship. She successfully recruited 2 pilots named Jason and Alex, 2 gunners named Pete and Burnie plus Sarah, an engineer. Each of them put up 100 secs. to join the crew topping up the ship's account to 7269. 

Here are the new character's stats: 

Jason - Pilot
Marksmanship - 3     Hand-to-Hand - 1     Endurance - 4     Cunning - 3     Stake - 1%
Equipment - utility suit (T-1), sidearm (T-1).
Money: 550 secs.  

Alex - Pilot 
Marksmanship - 4     Hand-to-Hand - 1     Endurance - 5     Cunning - 1     Stake - 1%
Equipment - utility suit (T-1), sidearm (T-1).
Money: 150 secs. 

Burnie - Gunner
Marksmanship - 4     Hand-to-Hand - 2    Endurance - 7     Cunning - 5     Stake - 1%
Equipment - utility suit (T-1), sidearm (T-1).
Money: 550 secs. 

Pete - Gunner
Marksmanship - 3     Hand-to-Hand - 3     Endurance - 4     Cunning - 2     Stake - 1%
Equipment - utility suit (T-1), sidearm (T-1).
Money: 50 secs. 

Sarah - Engineer
Marksmanship - 2     Hand-to-Hand - 2     Endurance - 5     Cunning - 6     Stake - 1%
Equipment - utility suit (T-1), sidearm (T-1).
Money: 250 secs. 

After successfully getting the require crew for a good hit on the hoods, Emily tried to make contact with the weapons dealer. They ran into a repo team the first day, but this is a non-event because the ship's weekly payment was already made. 

On the second day, the crew met with disaster. On their second day out, they ran into a Mynkurian Death Squad (e133). On a high tech world like Nipna, this could have been deadly. 

For role play purposes, I placed the crew in a bar looking for contacts. Half the party was in one booth while the rest of the party was in a second booth. When the Death Squad entered, they couldn't pick out leaders, so I rolled 50-50 for which table interested them. They picked Emily's table and fired two shots on them. Two of the squad are miners that go after bots and vehicles and explode on contact. Since the party didn't have these items, they hesitated. The "gold slayers" have poison knives and target officers. Since no one was displaying a weapon or insignia, they also paused. The spitters fired two shots at a random character, who happened to be Emily. She was stuck for 6 hits and returned fire burning one spitter to ash with her new pistol. The remaining characters opened fire, too. With TL-1 sidearms they didn't down anyone but the two miners took 1 and 2 points respectively. 

The remaining spitter targeted Emily again. He missed but Emily blew him away. The rest of the crew took down both miners since they were closer. 

In the third round, Emily was forced to flee and no one could shoot the lead "gold slayer". The second "slayer" was hammered by 7 side arm shots. 

In the forth round Emily stood her ground and fired. The "slayer" beat the odds and stabbed her. While Drew administered first aid, the rest of the crew punched and kicked the last slayer to death. 

For the rest of the week, Emily is laid up with injuries. Drew puts her in the Regen tank and she is restored to 9 Endurance. She decides not to risk the tank a second time. The GM-bot does it's thing on the ship and maintains the tank to keep it safe and available. 

Over the next two days, the rest of the crew is very luck and makes 2 contacts with the "weapons dealer". This is e153 High Technology Items. In the reading of the event, the crew makes a roll to see what item they are offered. To role play this one out, I decided that this dealer is a lot like The Collector in Guardians of the Galaxy and what item the characters get is based on the party's internal arguing with each other. 

The crew is dominated by spacemen and they select first the vacuum skimmer with life support and starship defensive screens for 1,500 secs. This comes out of the ship's account as they are items for the ship. The account now holds 5,469. 

Had Emily been with them, I would have had her make a cunning roll to try to get those powerful side arms. But she wasn't and most of the crew are new and pilots or engineers. They think better equipment is the best. 

At the end of the week, each member of the crew receives 55 secs. which reduces the ship's account to 4864. The ship has the following resources on board: 

2 Hoppers TL-1, 2 Hopper guns TL-1, 1 Ship's Guns TL-1, 20 fuel units, 1 GM-bot TL-5, 1 vacuum skimmer TL-5 (e153), 3 TL-1 u-suits, 1 TL-6 u-suits, Regen Tank TL-6 (e153), Defense Screens, 20 life support units, and 10 repair units. 

The characters have the following equipment: 

Emily - Pilot
Equipment - utility suit (T-6), sidearm (T-6, explosive rounds).
Money: 74 secs.  

Mel - Engineer
Equipment - utility suit (T-6), sidearm (T-1).
Money: 3769 secs. 

Drey - Medic
Equipment - utility suit (T-6), PS-bot (T-1).
Money: 74 secs. 

Patrick - Gunner
Equipment - utility suit (T-6), sidearm (T-1).
Money: 1074 secs. 

Jason - Pilot
Equipment - utility suit (T-1), sidearm (T-1). 
Money: 615 secs.  

Alex - Pilot 
Equipment - utility suit (T-1), sidearm (T-1).
Money: 205 secs. 

Burnie - Gunner
Equipment - utility suit (T-1), sidearm (T-1).
Money: 605 secs. 

Pete - Gunner
Equipment - utility suit (T-1), sidearm (T-1).
Money: 105 secs. 

Sarah - Engineer
Equipment - utility suit (T-1), sidearm (T-1).
Money: 305 secs. 

Monday, October 19, 2020

New Star Smuggler Equipment

I have always wanted new equipment for Star Smuggler but balancing them against the rules and scenarios makes it difficult.  

One of the difficulties is, adding more shots per round or increasing damage is not viable. More shots would increase the chance of a critical, while increasing the damage from 1 to an arbitrary number would result in speeding up combat a bit or being an instant kill weapon. Criticals are termed a something that puts a character down and out without zeroing out their endurance.  

For this reason, the new weapons must be more limited but still useful. In the case of a stunner, a critical always blocks the enemy from taking their next action, which is useful. The body pistol is like a tiny sidearm that can't punch through utility suits let alone armor. The upside is it can be concealed from searches. Both make sense in the setting as they can't damage vehicles at all, which is a bonus when the vehicle is keeping you alive.

One quirk of the sidearm is anyone can use them, but the rules specifically say that certain characters can't. I believe the spirit of the rule is someone without training is ineffective. A to hit roll requires a number greater than 1, as you must roll under your combined marksmanship skill and the tech level of the weapon. For Duke has a Marksmanship of 5. With the standard TL-1 sidearm, he hits on a roll of 2 to 6 and misses on anything higher. For a medic with no marksmanship ability, he needs to roll under the TL of the weapon, which is 1 to 6. So a TL-1 gun won't work for him. What about a TL-6 weapon? He would hit on 2-6, which is a little weird. 

Stunner:
This is a small device that uses hand-to-hand ability to strike either in melee or at a distance. It is available from events where sidearms are available at the same cost. A box of 20 takes up 2 CU.  

To hit with a stunner, the character either shoots or swings it in melee. Add the character's hand-to-hand rating to the weapon's technology level. If the roll is under this value, a strike has been scored. If either of the dice is a 1 or 6, the target has been hit for a critical. Merely striking does no damage, a critical is needed to have any effect. 

When a critical scored, roll one six sided die. On a roll of 1, the target is unconscious for the rest of the day. On a roll of 6, the target is down for 6 combat rounds (30 minutes). Any other roll causes the target to lose their next action. 

A stunner does not cause physical damage and is useless against vehicles, robots, targets in utility suits or armored u-suit. Victims do not lose any endurance. 

This "weapon" is usable by anyone, such as drivers and medics. 

Body Pistol: 
This is a small, short ranged gun that fires slugs. It is different than a sidearm as it can be hidden. If a character is searched, they can keep the gun hidden with a cunning roll. It is available from events where sidearms are available at twice the cost. These weapons are limited to Tech Level 3 or less, any higher roll will be treated as TL-3. A box of 20 takes up 1 CU.  

The Body Pistol has tactical advantages at a cost. When shooting at a target, it does 1 point of damage on a hit. However, it cannot inflict criticals against vehicles, or targets wearing a utility suit or armor. The point of damage will not penetrate or damage a utility suit. it's the shock of impact and bounce that causes the point of damage to the wearer. Unprotected individuals can take extra damage or be knocked out on a critical. 

Body Pistols are considered gimmick weapons and are only outlawed where all weapons are prohibited.   

Sunday, October 18, 2020

Revisiting Star Smuggler - Play Session 001

Ok, I really dig the Traveller Podcast SAFCOcast. I've tried to play Traveller a couple of times and it is pretty clear I don't grok the rules. I need someone to hand hold me. I've had fun every time I played with a group, but left to my own devices, I get lost in the expansive thing that is Traveller. 

In order to simulate the experience of Traveller without the helping hand, I'm trying out Star Smuggler from the perspective of a party of adventurers rather than a solo captain with a bunch of hired hands. 

In order to make this happen, I have taken Duke out of the Captain's Chair. Duke is now an agent for a ship manufacturer. He is looking for some young folks to fly a new ship. It's a subsidized ship which is far superior to the old Antelope class ships currently plying the spaceways. 

A player can have as many characters as they wish, up to 5 to start. They can be any type of character within the rules for retainers, except psionists. Each one's stats is generated by the rules in the appropriate section. However, they each receive the personal goods that Duke would receive. One of them will have Duke's stats. Every character has a utility suit, a sidearm and 1d6x100+150 secs. If a character cannot make use of a sidearm, they may have one PS-bot. Additionally, each of these characters has a cunning score of 1d6. 

In order to become a member of the crew, these characters must purchase a stake in the ship for 100 secs. This goes into a general account for the purposes of running the ship. This account starts with 750 secs and is increased by sales of goods and purchases of stakes. It is decreased when the crew purchases cargo for transport, improvements for the ship and pays fees. It is also used to pay down principal of 190,000 and make weekly interest payments of 475 secs. It may not be used to purchase personal good for the crew, with the exception of healing, transportation for business and utility suits as replacements for ones lost due to circumstances. 

I've tried a couple of different mechanics and this is the simplest thing I could do. Crew members are differentiated from retainers by virtue of purchasing a stake. The crew can ask retainers to join the crew, but don't have to do so. Retainers receive the listed salary in the rules, while crew members benefit from their stake. The crewman draws 1% of the ship's account per week per stake and at the end of 10 years, when the ship is paid for, they will have partial ownership in the ship. Crew members may purchase additional stakes, but only 50% ownership can be allotted to crew. 

This new ship is an Antelope II class ship and the crew has named it Zephyr. It has 2 cargo holds for a total of 100 CU of storage. Alternatively, one hold can be used for a second hopper. The ship has one hopper to start with T-1 guns. The ship is equipped with 15 fuel units for the hopper. The ship has two turrets, but initially has only one set of guns mounted. As per normal, everything is T-1. EDIT - The ship has 15 hits. 

The most expansive change is the crew space. There are now 32 CU for crewmen divided into two 16 CU sections. This space also houses a 6 CU medical unit, which is a room with space for a medic or doctor to work. There is a weapons hold which can be used for anything, it can only be opened by the crew, not retainers or other non-crew members. The Antelope II has no hiding places as it is a more legitimate ship than the older style Antelopes. 

Ok, now that the rules are laid out, let's detail the characters that crew the Zephyr. It should be noted that all characters have a cunning score and I set it to 4. Each crew member has a stake score listed as a percentage, which represents how much of the ship they own and how much they can draw from the ship's account. 

Emily - Pilot
Marksmanship - 5     Hand-to-Hand - 6     Endurance - 10     Cunning - 4     Stake - 1%
Equipment - utility suit (T-1), sidearm (T-1).
Money: 450 secs.  

Mel - Engineer
Marksmanship - 1     Hand-to-Hand - 2     Endurance - 4     Cunning - 4     Stake - 1%
Equipment - utility suit (T-1), sidearm (T-1).
Money: 450 secs. 

Drey - Medic
Marksmanship - 0     Hand-to-Hand - 3    Endurance - 6     Cunning - 4     Stake - 1%
Equipment - utility suit (T-1), PS-bot (T-1).
Money: 250 secs. 

Patrick - Gunner
Marksmanship - 5     Hand-to-Hand - 5     Endurance - 4     Cunning - 4     Stake - 1%
Equipment - utility suit (T-1), sidearm (T-1).
Money: 350 secs. 

Ship's Account - 1150 secs. 

Week's Event Logs. 

The crew starts off at the Spaceport on board the Zephyr. On the second day, they manage to find a contact (e192) that can set them up on a supply run to Paletek. The deal is, they purchase carvings from the colony on Regari for 5 secs per CU and move them to a city on Paletek, where they sell them for 10 secs. On Paletek, they can buy electronics for 60 secs per CU and sell them to the Regari Colony for 100 secs. All of these prices are base price and are subject to die rolls. 

Normally, I don't go this route, but decided to give it a go. They purchase 100 CU of carvings, make the weekly payment on the ship, then they break for orbit. The Ship's account is rather spare, since this was a combined cost of 975 secs.

By the morning of day 4, they off load the goods with no problems. They make 3000 secs. They use the ship's account to purchase 3000 secs or 50 CU of electronics and make for orbit. By the middle of Day 5. they've sold the cargo again (+5000 secs.) and started return trip with 83 CU of electronics (-4980).  

One of the limiting factors in this is, unless the crew gets creative with storage, they can only carry 100 CU of goods. The second limiting factor is, hypercharges. I haven't mentioned those, but the Zephyr has 6 and they are out now. 

They off load the electronics for 8300 secs and make their way to the spaceport to buy more hypercharges. For the record, the ship's account has 8495. They spend all of Day 6 shopping. They purchase a second hopper and a set of boat's guns (900+160), 10 repair units (10), and 6 hypercharges (3000). The ship's account is now down to 4425. 

The crew decides they need to take a break and head to Nipna for some R and R. By the morning of day 9, they have burned four hypercharges, landed at the spaceport and walked to the Casino. By noon, they are rolling dice. 

Rather than detail all of the gambling, I will just show how much each character had leaving the tables: 

Emily - 400 secs.  
Mel - 800 secs. 
Drey - 500 secs. 
Patrick - 500 secs. 

They did great, but let's add in some role play. The gang is pretty drunk and foolishly play the high stakes table. Each one puts up 100 secs in 10 secs. increments and tried to score some money for the ship's account. They lost 400 secs but ultimately won an additional 900 secs. Mel returned the tables and ended up with more 800 secs. for the ship's account. The funny things drunk people do. 

The crew, drunk and scattered drew some attention walking out. Emily who was holding the 900, plus her own money got robbed. They took everything from her. Drey, Mel and Patrick were give the same offer to play more games. Drey got cleaned out, but Patrick doubled his money and Mel did amazing multiplying his money and the ship's account money by 5. 

On the morning of day 10, they staggered back home. Emily got there first, followed by Drey then Patrick. Mel was detected on entry to the spaceport and rolled e153. Amusingly, since the rest of the crew planned RRR, they also made a contact which resulted in e153. 

To keep things clear, I'll run more numbers now: 

Emily - 0 secs.  
Mel - 4000 secs. 
Drey - 0 secs. 
Patrick - 1000 secs. 
Ship's Account - 8425

Now that that is squared away, let's talk about e153. It's a chance to buy high tech items. Since Mel was alone with this one, he couldn't consult the crew or spend more than what he had on him. He purchases the high powered sidearm (T-6) which fires explosive rounds for 250 secs. He wanted 4 of them, but it's one per customer. 

This gets a bit weird, but since Mel has a large chuck of the ship's funds on him, the rest of the crew hems and haws over paying 4000 secs for the regen tank. On Mel's return, they are extraordinarily happy to find that he has another 4000 for the account. This means people get paid. It's secs. that they didn't have before. 

Mel feels bad for Emily and hands over his shiney new sidearm. The crew is amped up for more shenanigans. They replace their hypercharges and buy a 5 overpriced utility suits so everyone has one and a spare. Next week they are going hunt down some muggers and get even. 

Emily - Pilot
Marksmanship - 5     Hand-to-Hand - 6     Endurance - 10     Cunning - 4     Stake - 1%
Equipment - utility suit (T-6), sidearm (T-6, explosive rounds). 
Money: 19 secs.  

Mel - Engineer
Marksmanship - 1     Hand-to-Hand - 2     Endurance - 4     Cunning - 4     Stake - 1%
Equipment - utility suit (T-1), sidearm (T-1).
Money: 3769 secs. 

Drey - Medic
Marksmanship - 0     Hand-to-Hand - 3    Endurance - 6     Cunning - 4     Stake - 1%
Equipment - utility suit (T-1), PS-bot (T-1).
Money: 19 secs. 

Patrick - Gunner
Marksmanship - 5     Hand-to-Hand - 5     Endurance - 4     Cunning - 4     Stake - 1%
Equipment - utility suit (T-1), sidearm (T-1).
Money: 1019 secs. 

Ship's Account - 1849 secs. 

Tuesday, October 13, 2020

Star Smuggler... again... and again

Ok, in my last post I created a new ship for Star Smuggler, creatively called "The Antelope II". It's twice as big as the original. 

Crewing the ship will be a problem as will generating weekly funds to pay for it. In order to dance around these issues, I decided to create a new mechanic for Duke Springer. Duke has a statistic no other character has, Cunning. When playing, you roll 1d6 to generate this value. When replaying the game, it is suggest that you reduce this number if the game was too easy and increase it if the game was too hard. 

Since the game already allows a changing value for this Cunning mechanic, I want to use it to rapidly add crewmen. Duke can "purchase" one crewman for a point of Cunning. He cannot spend all of his Cunning on this, he must have at least one Cunning point. 

The available options are all of the retainer types from e062 to e069. The player simply chooses the one(s) he wants, include the Driver who normally won't travel outside of his or her system. In this case, he or she would. Where there is a choice of two, such as gunners or bodyguards, Duke picks the better of them.

Stats are generated just like retainers, but crewmen are different than retainers. Each crewman has a stake in the ship as opposed to drawing a salary. When items more than 100 secs are sold, they take a 1% cut. They keep this money for themselves to buy goods or save, as they see fit. The crewmen can operate independently and can be separated from the ship and/or Duke to perform their jobs. 

Additionally, they purchase their stake in the ship from Duke. When these characters are initially created, they have 1d6+150 secs. which they pay half to Duke for a stake in the ship.
If Duke is killed, one of them takes over his role. 

EDIT 1 - I tried that part and it was too difficult. I have changed it. Each crew generates their starting money and it is pooled. This pool is divided by the following formula: (pool/number of characters+2). Each person has a "stake" in the ship now, but the ship has two stakes. If the characters had 1000 secs. and there were 3 characters, each stake would be the 1000/5=200. Each character has 200 secs. while the ship has 400. The 400 secs. for the ship's stake is what is used to purchase goods for the ship. If a character purchases personal equipment, not for the ship, it comes out of their personal money. 

When items are sold, the funds are also divided up in this fashion, too. The sale of 100 secs. worth of goods would net each player 20 secs. and the ship would take twice that amount, 40 secs. This makes it much harder to generate funds for the weekly payments, but that is the cost of doing business. Save early, save often. 

To pay the 300 secs for the loan, players would have to make at least 1500 secs. a week. If the funds aren't there, all characters will kick in money from their personal savings. It's that or be hunted as a loan jumper. 

If new characters are added, recalculate the cost of each stake by adding the new character to the original formula. This means you need to write the formula down the first time you use it. The new character will then pay that amount to the ship's account to become a crew member. If a crewman dies, nothing much happens. When the sale of good occur, use the new number of crew in the formula. Yes, getting your crew killed will make more money for the survivors. It happens. 

As an added twist, these crewmen also have a Cunning skill. It is 1d6-2, with a minimum of 1. Like Duke, they can use this stat to bring on new crewmen at a later date. This creates the scenario where Duke probably isn't the most cunning person on the ship. As a consequence, if Duke enters a scenario where a cunning roll is needed, the roll is made by the character with highest Cunning present. If Duke desires to do something dangerous, he must accompany that person and pays the price of a failed roll himself.

EDIT 2 - This part didn't make sense. Duke can't decide for another crewman, he can't force them to be savvy. 

Something like Mal and Zoe's relationship where Mal has an idea and Zoe does the tricky work of getting the details right. It also covers a situation like when Simon hired the crew for a heist or when Mal brought Simon (and River) on as crew after they had started their adventures. 

EDIT 3 - The comparison doesn't make much sense now. 

I haven't even begun to categorize the rules and event changes this would require. But it seems rather workable. What do you think? Let me know in the comments. 

Star Smuggler... Again

I unexpectedly have the day off and want to revisit the Star Smuggler Universe. The temptation to reskin the characters as the crew of the Firefly is incredible, but that would take a lot of work. I am stealing some ideas, but not Firefly whole clothe. I have decided to interject some ideas from Traveller into this run through, too.

My understanding of Traveller is super weak, so I am taking some of the larger concepts and ignoring many mechanics. The main idea that I am stealing is weapon mounts are dependent on hull size. I have created a large ship, which I will dub the Antelope II and it's twice as big as a 100 ton ship.

The original Antelope was 100 ton ship with space to carry about 134 CU of goods. Sort of. I seem to get a different number depending on how I count. The Antelope II is 200 ton vessel and has 212 CU of space. That is a multiplier of 1.58 for those keeping score at home. 

Since this is Inktober, I wanted to keep the high contrast drawn vibe from the original game. I used GNU Image Manipulation Program (GIMP) to create a new deckplan, staying as close to the original art as I could. It isn't exactly "ink" but it sort of looks like it. 


As you can see from this schematic, I have stolen a bunch of ideas from Firefly. The ship has space for two hoppers, a medical area and weapons hold. The crew area is much larger than the Antelope, holding 6 rooms or enough room for 32 CU of people. Unlike Firefly and the Antelope I, it has two gun mounts and no secret areas. The 60 CU cargo hold is of center as it was in the original design, but this ship has a second 40-CU hold fore of the main hold and bay. It can hold a second hopper, but that is not a standard option so play begins with just one. 

This ship would require a few of modifications of the rules, which I have not formally written up yet. It looks like I would have to rewrite 3 events and 3 rules: e001, e036, e157.4, r237, r229d and r217. The events cover your first day with the ship, e036 covers buying a new ship and e157.4 references the medical regrowth tank. The rules modified are r217 for starship damage, r229d for search locations and r237 for critical hit locations. In respect to hits and search locations, the only completely new things are the medical space and weapons hold. 

The medical space is simply an area large enough for several characters and the medic could hang out in there. It would count as quarters for searches and would be immune to criticals as it's a vault in the center of the ship. The weapons hold would be searched on cargo hold results and would share the immunity to criticals for the same reason as medical does. The medical space is somewhat like a turret as it has enough room for the 4 CU regrowth tank plus a medic and one patient. The regrowth tank is not a standard option, so the player would have to find one. As far as the extra crew quarters and hold, I would have each of them hit on a 50-50 chance. I think I thought of everything, but I will have to do a play through to be sure. 

Since we are talking about a ship 1.58 times bigger, I figure multiplying everything by that will give me good cost stats. The cost is 190,000 secs with an interest payment of 475 a week. All of these values are simply the original ship's stats multiplied and rounded up. At that price point, the player would get two sets of tech 1 guns and one hopper and 16 hits. 

The overly large size will create crewing problems. I'll look at that in my next post. 

Sunday, July 26, 2020

Star Smuggler Silly Sequence - r332, r335 and r339 - Slaves

I've been monkeying with Star Smuggler, again. Right off the bat, I had Duke march into the Slums in the first hour of play. I immediately got the result r332 - Opportunity to Buy Items, Young Slaves. They have a base price of 100 to purchase and can be sold for the same, but only on planets that have a high wealth modifier. You will make money on this transaction, if only you can get them there without being board by the police or customs. 

This one is interesting because they have no stats, therefore can't do anything. So, why would you want these slaves if they can't do work? Under a first time play condition, the player doesn't know that they only have two chances to sell slaves and many, many more chances to get caught and those almost always result in an automatic loss. It's sort of a sucker punch from the author. 

I imagine Duke is Han Solo with the serial numbers filed off. It doesn't make a whole lot of sense for him to be keeping slaves. What are they doing as he jets around the universe? If he buys people, wouldn't prospective hires wonder if doing a bad job will land them in a cage? It just doesn't work in my mind. 

To alter this scenario, a simple change is needed. Give the slaves stats. There are only 6 professions in the book: Pilot/Navigator, Starship Gunner, Bodyguard, Skimmer Driver, Engineer and Medic. Assigning a number to each gives the slave a set of skills and statistics. 

But what good is that? If Duke purchases a slave then sets that person free, they may sign on as crew. I would suggest a Cunning roll for this. It isn't that Duke is tricking the person, Duke is pitching a glamorous life on a starship. Duke is a business man and expects these crewmen and women will work one week for free. At the end of following week, if he doesn't pay them, they will walk off. He doesn't get a second chance with a Cunning roll because they know he is free-wheeling with promises based on the first one. One thing they would NOT get is a death payment. 

Now the flipside. If Duke DOES NOT free them, every time he gets into trouble the slaves will try to make a break for it, either joining the enemy, seizing the ship or taking the hopper to escape. Every time someone isn't guarding the slaves when trouble starts, Duke has to make a Cunning roll to avoid this. Every darn time! 
 
I kind of like this idea. One other advantage of this change is Duke is not permitted to take a Skimmer Driver off their homeworld. They just won't go. In this case, a freed Skimmer Driver will travel with the crew of the Antelope. 

In this run, Duke has 750 secs to start and a Cunning of 3. He decides to spend about half of his cash on 3 slaves, then sets them free. He makes his Cunning roll twice, but misses the third. It turns out that the two people willing to stay on a crew are a pilot/navigator and a medic. 

I am not sure how to handle their papers. Perhaps they kept them or the slaver gave them to Duke when the purchase was made. Neither one seems right, but that's what I am doing. 

The only other mod to this is ignoring the line about slaves in r335 and r339. Obviously, Duke could be a slaver and sell them, but it seems weird. 

Friday, April 24, 2020

Strictly (Duke) Springer - Day 125 – The Seventh and Final Hour


According to “About the Game”, this system can be used an adventure or campaign guideline. Since I have effectively “won” this game a couple of times over, let’s try this.

The story so far... Duke and the gang were jumped by the police. They shot their way out, but then the military showed up with 3 tanks and 6 troopers. All three tanks are disabled, but still firing on the ship. They have the equivalent of tech level one spaceship guns. The battle has been going on for an hour. The officer leading the tanks had a field disruptor, which forces any piece of equipment to make a breakdown roll. The ship has been hit several times, but has succeeded in it's save. This ship is Tech 6. Tech levels for ships only come into play for breakdown or risky jumping.

Dirtside, combat rounds are 5 minutes. In space, they are an hour. This the second hour of combat. We're going to do a little space combat soon.

2 hr, 00 minutes: Duke has ordered the ship to land and the hoppers to launch in the last round. This hasn't happened yet and he doesn't know why. Duke has taken over shooting from Audrey. He blasts another tank, as does Deadeye. The last tank misses.

David and Ace are in one hopper while Mike and Lefty are in the other. Each hopper can hold 14 CU of things. There are 13 crewmen. If they suit up, but abandon their heavy weapons, each one can carry 7 crewmen. Emily splits the crew up: Ace's hopper holds David, Audrey, Ratchet, and Bones. The second hopper hold's Mike, Lefty, Doc, Jon and Lucy. There is space for 2 more people on each Hopper. The crew in the hoppers are ready to pull in Fuel and Life Support units.

2 hr, 05 minutes: Emily is now at the controls of the ship, Duke and Deadeye have the guns as they break for orbit. Duke is confused by all of this, but rolls with it.


3 hrs, 00 minutes. Emily spots two patrol ships (e108) in orbit, ready to intercept the Buffalo. She switches on the ships ECM, sets the autopilot for max speed and orders Deadeye to a hopper. Deadeye hops into Ace's shuttle and they load one more Fuel Unit and Life Support Unit. Ace opens the Hopper bay doors.

The patrol ships are TL-4, have TL-4 guns and 10 hits. They have neither ECM or Screens. Duke and Emily unload on them, as does Ace's shuttle. They focus their fire on one of the two ships. Splitting fire in the game doesn't work. Duke and Emily roll six dice each, since they have TL-6 guns. The hopper rolls 5 dice, while it has TL-6 guns, against ships they do one die less. A roll of 1 or 2 is a hit, a roll of multiple hits indicates a critical has occurred, too.

Duke hits the lead ship for two points of damage. Emily piles on the criticals, doing 3 points of damage plus 2 criticals. Life support goes down in that ship. David scores another 2 hits plus a critical. The ship's cargo hold is bleeding air.

The ships return fire. They get 4 dice each. They lose one die because of the ECM, but gain one because there is no one at the controls of the Buffalo. I said we were on autopilot, but effectively, all three ships are flying in a straight line with no change in distance. The patrol ships are maneuvering for advantage while our hero's can't.

The Buffalo takes 3 hits, but no criticals. It's down to 8 more hits.

4 hrs, 00 minutes. Emily orders Duke to met her at the last hopper. You know he won't do that.

David scores three more hits on the lead patrol ship. She begins to break up. Duke rains now a barrage on the second ship. He scores 3 hits plus a critical that would have been scored on their ECM system. They don't have one, so the critical doesn't count. Emily is running back to the hopper, so she doesn't shoot.

The Buffalo takes another pair of hits. She is down to 6.

5 hrs. 00 minutes: The crew of the second hopper want to get out of here, but Emily is holding out for Duke. He blazes away at patrol ship, doing one more point of damage. David does the same.

It's not an even trade, as the Buffalo takes three hits. The Buffalo has 3 hits left while the patrol ship has 5.

6 hrs. 00 minutes. The last hour... Emily orders the hopper to leave as Duke hammers the other ship with 2 hits. It returns fire and explosions rack the Buffalo. As the ship burns, the hoppers destroy the last ship.

THE SEVENTH AND FINAL HOUR. Duke was all about the safety of his crew. He had a stasis unit installed in each turret, but as a consequence, there was no room for a U-suit.

Several civilian ships rush to search for survivors. Ace's hopper lands on the Serena Dawn out of Truane's Star while Emily's group makes for a courier ship bound for Mithril...

This adventure with the Star Smuggler Rule set is at an end. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did. I tried to use this set of rules as a jumping off point to see what I could start with a more advanced set of RPG rules. This set has its limits set the stage for future adventures. Half the gang will be moving on to the planet Volturnus in the Zebulon system while the larger group will join the crew of the courier to conduct the survey of Mithril. Fortunately, Lucy's ability to drive a skimmer, and possibly an ATV, will be an advantage.

Perhaps someday, they will meet up with Duke again. Or perhaps, one of them will become a Star Smuggler like him.


Wednesday, April 15, 2020

Strictly (Duke) Springer - Day 125 – April 15th. Hour 1.


According to “About the Game”, this system can be used an adventure or campaign guideline. Since I have effectively “won” this game a couple of times over, let’s try this.

1 hr, 00 minutes: Duke and the gang leave the ship to make a contact at the spaceport bar. On the way, they are intercepted by the police. Apparently, they don’t like smugglers. These police are listed in e017. There are 3 police skimmers with TL-1 guns, each with a driver and gunner (E:6, M:5, H:3). There are two troopers in the back of each vehicle, (E:7, M:4, H:6) armed with TL-1 side arms and heavy weapons. They surround our party and order them to surrender. It’s 12 vs. 13. Game on!

Combat rounds on the ground are 5 minutes. In space, they are an hour.

Duke, Lefty, Deadeye, Emily, David and Audrey have TL-4 heavy weapons and open fire. But Lucy, Michael, Jon and Ratchet have TL-6 side arms and go first. Side arms will only damage skimmers on a critical. They hit 3 times, but fail to do any damage. But it keeps the troopers in the skimmers.

Next go the heavy weapons which should go better. And they do. All three skimmers are disabled and one officer is down. The police jump from their burning vehicles.

1 hr, 05 minutes: Duke and the gang run back to their ship in the distance. The drivers and gunners stay with the burning vehicles while 3 troops chase Duke’s gang and 3 other shoot. They all miss.

1 hr. 10 minutes: Duke and the gang reach the ship’s ramp. Duke, Lefty and Emily guard the ramp while the rest pile into the ship. They exchange fire with the Troopers. One trooper is killed outright, another is KO’ed and the third has a single hit point. Return fire is ineffective again.

1 hr. 15 minutes: Duke hit’s the last of the pursuing trio, killing him. In the meantime, the police have put out the fires and have called for backup. Jon fires up the ship while Deadeye takes one turret and Audrey takes the other.

1 hr. 20 minutes: The police have regrouped. The skimmer gunners have remounted the smoking vehicles and open fire on Duke, Lefty and Emily. Skimmer guns aren’t as dangerous as I thought, Duke shrugs off a single wound and the gang retreats into the ship.

1 hr. 25 minutes: Deadeye and Audrey return fire from the turrets. Two vehicles explode killing the gunners. In the meantime, the police units have recovered their dead, wound and more importantly, their weapons. The police force is down to just 7 guys, but 6 have heavy hand weapons and 1 has a side arm.

1 hr. 30 minutes: Audrey and Deadeye finish off the remaining vehicle as the police take cover. David and Ace head for one hopper while Mike and Lefty head for the other. Jon rotates the ship.

1 hr. 35 minutes: The military is on the scene now. 6 soldiers armed with heavy weapons and 4 frag grenades each. They have the same stats as the troopers, as e018 neglects to give stats. On top of this, the officer has a field scrambler. He fires on the ship and misses. The rest of the men start assembling an artillery piece.

1 hr. 40: I’m making a judgment call here. Starship guns inside an atmosphere use the ship’s computer skill which is 6 instead of the gunner’s skill. I call B.S. because I have TL-6 guns, which is an automatic hit. I’ll roll 1d6 per tech level, minus one 1d6 for being in the atmosphere. That is 5d6, and a hit occurs on a 1 or 2. If I roll more than 2 hits, the each extra hit is a critical. I hit that artillery piece and destroy it. The officer fires back with his discombobulator. He hits and the ship falters, but doesn’t breakdown.

1 hr. 45 minutes: The gunners try to hit that officer, Deadeye misses, but Audrey wipes him out.

1 hr. 50 minutes: 3 TL-2 tanks arrive on the scene and open fire on the ship. One vehicle takes a single hit while the other takes a single hit and an ineffective critical. In the meantime, someone retrieves the officer’s field scrambler. One tank lands a hit on the ship for a single point of damage.

1 hr. 55 minutes: Return fire cripples the last tank, but they keep shooting. They don’t hit. The ship is hit by the field scrambler and power flickers again. Duke orders the ship to land and the hoppers to launch.

The police force is down to 6 troopers and the military has 3 damaged tanks and 6 soldiers.

We have 71,573 in cash, have 8 hypercharges. Duke and the ship has taken one hit. And we are in big trouble... 

Tuesday, April 14, 2020

Strictly (Duke) Springer - Day 124 – April 14th.

We land at the space port with no trouble and set about shopping for hypercharges. We are rudderless again since we paid off the ship.

Let’s take stock today by displaying the character sheets again. I’m only missing a few bits. The ship has screens and the hoppers have TL-6 weapons. The pantry is pretty bare. We could probably have a dozen skimmers, a pair of tanks or two hoppers in the ship's holds. But we don't.



On the character sheets, I removed all money and salary. I wasn't tracking that for a good long time.  Audrey should have a military suit from the hold.






We have 71,573 in cash, have 8 hypercharges.  We now own our ship. We are wanted on Palatek.

Digging Deeper into Star Smuggler - Surprises in the Events Booklet - Military Equipment (e018)

In my first post in this series, I detailed the Battleship found in e081. This post will cover the cool military gizmos found in e018. This encounter plays the reader against a military force determined to capture Duke and the gang.

These soldiers have standard equipment such as side arms, heavy weapons and plus some items really meant to take down a criminal lord. The force numbers between 6 and 9 men. 

The first item is a frag grenade. These weapons have a variable tech level, but also are reduced by 3 tech levels to reflect the fact that they are thrown weapons or fire indirectly. The rules don't specify how much damage they would do, but I think we can safety assume they do damage like a heavy weapon with explosive effects. They should be able to do damaged to everything smaller than a ship and probably can't be used against a hopper or ship's boat in flight.

Next up is a dalurium-screen helmet. It protects the officer in charge from psionic attack. I haven't mention psionics before, but it is one of the options for the reader. This helmet makes the officer immune to attack by mind powers.

The third item is a shimmer-screen. It imposes a -2 to hit the target. If the characters take them, they are subject to a breakdown roll and once this occurs, they cannot be repaired.

The four item is really fun, a field scrambler. On a hit from this weapon, it forces a breakdown roll on 4-6. Otherwise it does no damage. It cannot affect ships with ECM.

This equipment is super fun for they player to deal with and expands the setting with new tech not obvious from a read through of the rules. These items aren't overpowered, but do present more challenges and surprises to the player.

Monday, April 13, 2020

Strictly (Duke) Springer - Day 123 – April 13th.

We decide to go right back to where we began, Regari.


I'm not sure what I'll do there, but it'll be nice to be home. We pass through the Palatek system and meet no troubles. The same for Regari. We'll head to the spaceport to refuel.

We have 72,573 in cash, have 6 hypercharges.  We now own our ship. We are wanted on Palatek.

Sunday, April 12, 2020

Strictly (Duke) Springer - Day 122 – April 12th.

We enter the Palace area. We get a chance to steal some statues, but we are here to sell a bed for a base price of 1,100. We have a 10 times multiplier. The crew is hysterical because Duke uses another one of these pheromones to double the price. We take in another 19,850 while the crew gets 220 each.

We move the ship over to the spaceport and try to replace our hypercharges. We end up doing it by the end of the day. Not bad for a day’s work.

Where do we go next?



We have 72,573 in cash, have 8 hypercharges.  We now own our ship. We are wanted on Palatek.

Saturday, April 11, 2020

Strictly (Duke) Springer - Day 121 – April 11th.



We blast off for Imperia. One of the special rules I made for the Buffalo was that it couldn’t double jump. So we have to jump from New Karma to Nipna, Talitar and finally Imperia. Surprisingly, nothing happens on any of these jumps.

We spend the last two hours moving two units in. Tomorrow, we will set down at the palace.

We have 54,723 in cash, have 4 hypercharges.  We now own our ship. We are wanted on Palatek.

Friday, April 10, 2020

Strictly (Duke) Springer - Day 120 – April 10th.

At the colony on New Karma, we find these books have a base price of 12,000 secs. The crew is elated. The multiplier is three, but hold on to your hats. Duke uses one of those pheromone vials and doubles the price. That’s 72,000 secs. Each crewman gets 720 while Duke pockets 64,080. 

Our first 2 rolls are to purchase side arms. We want to sell them so that is annoying. Our last two rolls are to sell skimmers for a base price of 30 multiplied to 90. So we take in another 450 secs. Instead of pocketing these funds, Duke shares it among the crew. It makes the math easy and the crew happy.

We have 249,586 which is more than what we owe on the ship. We pay it off.

We have 54,723 in cash, have 7 hypercharges.  We now own our ship. We are wanted on Palatek.

Thursday, April 9, 2020

Strictly (Duke) Springer - Day 119 – April 9th.

I now have the calendar sync to at least the last digit, which is easier on the mind.

Based on all of the stuff we found, our best bet is to head to New Karma, then Imperia. Skimmers are hot commodity at Colonies and the books we have are worth a lot there, too.

On landing at the colony, we get hit up for custom fees for vehicles. 5 secs. per vehicle, including the ship and boats. How annoying. It burns up the rest of our day and costs us 40 secs.



We have 185,506 in cash, have 7 hypercharges.  We now owe 194,863 on our ship. We are wanted on Palatek.

Digging Deeper into Star Smuggler - Surprises in the Events Booklet - Battleship (e081)

Star Smuggler was a set of rules with two small booklets. The rule set was a 24 page booklet which included everything you needed to play. It was seamlessly integrated with a 20 page event booklet. In doing some careful analysis, I have yet to find a mistake not covered by the short errata sheet.

One of the fascinating things about the rule set is how well it plays off the event booklet. One of the complaints about this game is the number of "game breaking" events that can end your game via a single die roll. Well, those are flaws, those are features of a choose your own adventure style book.

Within the events booklet are hidden 30+ new items for the player to enjoy or be challenged by. They range from axes to battleships and when such items are stat'ed out, they never break the system laid out in the rules booklet.

I'll be taking a look some of these items, as this system can easily be fleshed out into a full rpg, complete with a campaign setting.

The first surprise I would like to look at is a ship described in one of the events - The Battleship. This is a TL-2 ship with 12 turrets and 120 hits. It's a beast. I took the time to stat it up in the normal parlance of the game. To say it's OP is an understatement, but Duke can be victorious over this beast with careful game play.

Using the basic ship, the Antelope, I extrapolated what a battleship might look like. I'm not happy with the re-skin of the Buffalo Transport, so I will be revisiting this ship's layout soon.

The first conclusion that I came to was the fact that this might be a Pocket Battleship. The limitation comes from the description of the ship itself. It's TL-2 ship, which is pretty weak.

Even so, it is a massive ship. The Pocket Battleship is 410 CU in size and it's the largest ship in this image. The Antelope is the smallest ship.


Let me know what you think. I'll be continuing this series on a weekly basis.