Star Wars Session 0 - A Comedy of Characters

This session was a rehash of the Battle of Theed boxed set. The individual scenarios will stay the same, but the background, leading stories and locations have been changed to a different planet. We'll see how that works. 

The Party is a classic five man band, held together by camaraderie as opposed to being thrown together in typical Star Wars fashion. Their friendships started by a mistake. A young Rodian scoundrel, Malta had a passion for history and drive to be a Jedi Knight, like her storybooks. An oddball, to be sure, but she rapidly became friends with a human Fringer name Dex and his force adept associate Nonin. Nonin is an insightful Devarnian, who tends to blend intelligence with his force powers. He uses these abilities to keep his best friend, Corporal Lidda out of trouble, or at least jail. He also is able to score good day jobs through his charm and Dex's contacts at the bar. Corporal Lidda is a Twi'lek soldier of dubious wisdom. She is a hot head and tends to take offence at anything and everything, which explains her severance from the military. The team does their best to keep her out of trouble. 

The final character has just met the group within the last year or so. Talhana, a Zabrak force adept, has suffered the same misconception that outsiders have with the group. She believed Malta was a powerful force adept leading a band of force users, rather than scoundrel storyteller. In fact, she has only recently discovered that Nonin has any ability to use the force. 

Talhana

The gang is boarding in the apartments over the bar. Exactly how many apartments they have is unclear as Lidda and Dex are co-supervisors and caretakers of the upper floors. They seem to have between 2 or 4 rooms and access to every empty apartment, but often share space to save money or stay out of trouble. Nonin and Talhana take day jobs whenever they can, leaving Malta as the only character without a job. She does have money and the gang believes that she is an accomplished pickpocket but has yet to catch her doing it. As a group, they tend to pool their resources to keep Malta out of their pockets. Malta is often the primary contributor to the gangs fund pool, much to everyone's chagrin. 

Despite all of confusion, the team generally gets along just fine with each other. It's other people, with that same misconception that give the gang trouble. As a result of session zero, they've been fired and kicked out of the bar and apartments. 

As far as equipment goes, no one has armor and everyone has a blaster. Dex has a sporting pistol, Malta has a holdout pistol, while Talhana and Nonin have regular pistols. Lidda, the fiery one, has a blaster rifle and a heavy blaster pistol. The gang is not all about melee weapons but has a variety of axes, knives and clubs or prybars. Lidda has one of each, because why wouldn't she? 

Session 0 - Young Bargel Plays It Safe (SW - WotC)

The setting of this adventure is the planet Tankeren, a far flung planet slightly more popular and populous than Tatooine. It is a temperate world where no sentient life evolved. The citizens of the planet are a wide ranging collection of species that arrived in waves. The planet has been inhabited for thousands of years by this motley crew. Tankern is an agrarian world and IS fairly tribal in nature. Most communities are like Mos Pelgo on Tatoonine, except on a larger scale. 

Tankern was a member of the Republic, but they often forgot that fact due to their local-looking, tribal nature. When the Viceroy Bargel of the Trade Federation arrived, not much changed. 

Viceroy Bargel was directed to take the planet then set up a base for the Separatist forces. The Tankerns didn't care. After "conquering the planet", which involved watching his droids enter every city to little or no notice, Bargel's Base was built. No one complained when he actually named it "Bargel's Base" and declared the surrounding city "Bargel Prime". 

Then everything went wrong. He was ordered to stand his army down as the Clone Wars ended. Ever the diplomat, Bargel declare a holiday: "Separatist Day" while ordering his droid army back to base. Over the next decade or so, the Viceroy hatched a plan to take over the planet's economy for his own purposes. 

It is now 5 years before the Battle of Yavin. 

A local republic has sprung up on Tankeren and Bargel's droid army has been largely shifted his Lucrehulk-class battleship in orbit. The machines have been replaced with flesh and blood assets, mostly from the skilled trades and business community. Bargel has nary a warrior in his outfit, save a small group of thugs, a modest security network and bodyguards. 

The Republic of Tankeren has control of a good many of the Trade Federation's droids as a police force. They hardly do anything at all. Tankeren is not without conflict but the conflicts are limited to tribal skirmishes which rarely end in bloodshed. Such things are beyond the ken of the droid army and few arrests are made. Most of the citizens are farmers, well armed farmers, but still farmers. They escaped the fall of the Republic, the Clone Wars and only heard vague stories of Jedi and Order 66. There is some disquiet at the rise of the Empire, but they have yet to encounter any Imperial Forces. 

The former Viceroy, has been converting his Lucrehulk-class battleship back into a trade vessel. It is a hub of global trade for the planet, specializing trading in the gobi fruit, a nutritious staple of the Tankeren diet. He hopes that it will find it's way to other systems as an exotic good. Bargel has almost entirely divested himself of his army and his relationships with the Trade Federation. His former warship is a sitting duck for Imperial Forces or anyone else who means to take the planet. Bargel has cultivated this situation, building several space and ground stations to take it's place. He hopes that the sacrificial offering of his ship will appease anyone who drops in to bomb the planet. 

Empire, Rebels, Tankerians, whoever, can have the planet. He just wants to be their grocer, middle man and wholesaler. That's much safer than taking a stand against anyone. 

In the introductory session in this campaign, the players are in The Capital city of Tankeren. The planetary Republic has just voted on changing the name of the base and capital from Bargel Prime and Bargel's Base to something else. They just can't decide on what. For now, it is just The Capital. Since Bargel plans to retire safely, he has been lining the pockets of electors to push them into making his name disappear. Not completely, he doesn't want a mystery to attract attention. Just low key would be nice. Bargel Prime and Bargel's Base were fine in his youth, but now is the time for a new name so he can slip into his planned role as a historical footnote as a little known fruit seller in a galactic empire.  

Unfortunately, the vote didn't end well. Conflicting proposals over a new name sparked city wide riots and general strike in The Capital. Bargel is dismayed to find his droids being deployed to the surface by the city's leadership. He isn't sure what caused it, fires, looting or the strike, but all world wide communications are down. He cursed the day he set up the network with the Capital as the data hub. 

Bargel is in the dark, as much as the characters are. 

After an egregious faux pas suggesting the name "Danker" for The Capital, the barkeep has kicked party out on the street. The rioters were mixing it up with the droid's police action. While Jedi are legendary creatures on Tankeren, force adepts are not. Two of the party's members are recognized as being One with The Force, so the rioters have faded back so these two and their friends can use their witchy ways on the droids. 

All the party needs to do is steal a speeder or ship and get out of this mess...

Quick Switch Sci-Fi - Invasion of Theed

Last week, I posted a bit about Star Frontiers. I've got a strong urge to play a Sci-Fi themed game. Star Smuggler is all played out. I'm still waiting on some friends to play Traveller, but our county just shut down due to the pandemic scatter all of us to the winds. I was going to introduce my Star Smuggler characters to the Star Frontiers worlds, but the rules are too far apart to port anything except name and general talents. 

Then I saw Invasion of Theed from 2000 sitting on my shelf. I got it for Christmas one year, poured over it for a bit and forgot about it.

Now, it's actually exactly what I am looking for. I had thought it was a super boxed set module, but it isn't. The set is basically a starter set. It's everything you need to play WotC's d20 Star Wars. They billed it as an adventure game, but it's more than that. 

In the box is two booklets, a start sheet, counters and tokens, a folio of character sheets and maps. I don't know if dice were originally included, but requires the standard D&D dice. Apparently, it also came with a Chewbacca figure, but that is long gone. 

I have a thing for maps and artwork, but this set's clear winning component is the character sheets. They are full color, two-side 11x17" sheets with all of the statistics you need plus gameplay hints. I had no idea they were this good. 

I now have the urge to buy a large format printer/scanner combo. 

I'll point you back to my review of the d20 Star Wars Core Book. I didn't set out to write a review, but this set is easily a five star product. Maybe even a five gold star product like Nate Treme's Moldy Unicorn. I don't give those out easily, maybe one every year or two. I'm pretty surprised at that, because I didn't think much of it when I received it back in 00 or 2001. 

As an abridged rule set, not much is missing. Since your using pre-genned characters, you don't need to roll anything to start. Oddly, the characters stats don't appear on the front of the sheet. And that's not bad. The front page mentions all of your combat abilities so it doesn't matter what the stats are. 

Another oddity of the rules are the lack of armor class and such. All actions are determined by "a roll". No "attack roll", no "saving", no "fortitude" stuff, just a target number and the word "roll". 

The DM facing material is the same way. Which makes this more of a complex board game or linear programed adventure. It seems very suitable for solo play, which is what I aim to do. As near as I can tell, every simplified rule conforms with the Core Rules, which is nice. 

May the force be with you...
... And so with you. 

Saving the Serena Dawn with Heavy Canon

 In the Star Frontiers System, canon says there is no artificial gravity. All deckplans are laid out in stacks of decks where the engines are down. When thrust is applied, the ship has gravity by virtue of thrust. 

Enter the Serena Dawn, the first ship the characters travel on in SF0 - Crash on Volturnus. Crash on Volturnus is a classic module with one canonical flaw. The deckplan requires artificial gravity. 

I used Inkscape to rough up a copy of the map. The light green areas are the bridge, purple are the engines. Early in the mission, the power goes dead, so you can't even say that having the engines pointing downwards out the bottom of this map helps. 

It's a pretty big flaw. Maybe... maybe not. I love the Serena Dawn and I have a simple solution to fix it within canon. 

I roughed out a side view of the ship. 

Obviously, this is just the regular map projected sideways. Even adding details like the higher roof on the storage bay (blue-gray), the computer room (yellowish-brown), projecting the life pod (yellow) and the engines (purple) don't help. 

Or does it? 

What if the Serena Dawn is a Tumbling Pigeon ship? It rotates to create artificial gravity. There is an issue with this. The ship is 38 meters wide by 14 meters tall by 62 meters long. And it's shaped like a brick. 

Buuuuuut. What if this is just one deck. We are told there are observation domes, rec rooms, 1st class and fuel someplace off the map. I didn't extend the map of this deck by enough to show all of this. It also creates a problem where there is no shuttle bay mention and the ship doesn't look aerodynamic enough to land. So how does this help? 

Behold, the whole of the Serena Dawn! 

Oh, that makes a difference! 

The Serena Dawn is a tether ship. In order to have gravity without power or thrust, the whole ship revolves. No power, no problem! So if the engines are on the bottom of each deck, how does it thrust? 

That tether is out of scale. By a lot. The indivual decks pull themselves up the tether to the center point, apply thrust in one direction and as the ship stops thrusting the decks lower themselves down each end of the tether. When they reach the end, they apply thrust sideways at either end to spin for gravity. 

One last problem to fix. How do the characters get off the ship and land on the planet? There are no shuttles and no capacity to land. Except one. Each side of the ship has a stack of decks. When they arrive at the planet, the bottom most deck is released. It's whipped away to the planet by the rotational speed being translated to a straight line by letting go of the tether. The engines point down to give some deceleration, but it would probably use screens to aerobrake. It would be hard on the screens, so I would think they would be one time use. 

The whole deck enters the atmosphere as a unit and serves as a base. Assuming the deck as lander can't get off the planet again, it has the yellow escape pods that can boost the characters back to orbit for pick up. Or an Assault Scout picks them up. Either way, the puzzle of the Serena Dawn has been solved, with heavy canon. 

Star Frontiers: Alpha Dawn Review - 40 Year Update

Title: Star Frontiers: Alpha Dawn
Author: TSR Staff
Year: 1982
Pages: Basic book, 20 pages. Expanded book, 64 pages. SF0, 32 pages.
Number of players: 4-8
Rating: ★★★

Star Frontiers could be called "TSR's game not based on D&D." Chances are this was one game you played when not playing D&D. If were a glutton for punishment, it could also be the game you played when not playing Traveller. 

The main problem with Star Frontiers is, it isn't D&D or Traveller. The secondary problem is, it isn't a tactical game or a board game either. Shockingly, it has elements of all 4 genres. 

Mind blow? 

Yeah. Me, too. 

This tiny box packs in all of the complexity of a multi-book game engine like Traveller or any edition of D&D squished into 116 pages. However, it isn't like either of those. Its system is 1d100 based. It has levels but only 1-6 and no classes. Plus aliens. Real aliens. 

Where Star Frontiers deviates from D&D the most and hugs Traveller the most is your characters are complex and fully formed from the get-go. You are never a knock-kneed dude in robes hoping someone won't blast you into next year because you don't know anything. Like Traveller, you're marketable from day one. That's important later. 

With this first set, you have 4 playable races, Dralasites, Humans, Vrusk, and Yazirians, and one NPC race called the Sathar. Each character has pairs of attributes: Strength and Stamina, Dexterity and Reaction Speed, Intuition and Logic, Personality, and Leadership. These skills are "rockable" meaning you can steal a bit of Strength for Stamina, Dexterity for Reaction Speed and so on. You cannot swap Leadership for Strength. 

This game has no classes per se. It has 3 PSA skill groups Military, Biosocial, and Technological. Each character selects one skill from one group and a secondary skill from a second group. Due to this combining of two wildly different skill sets, no two characters are really the same. Another twist on the rules is they assume every character will use a weapon, even if unskilled in weapon use. Firepower is a great equalizer. 

"Level" is equally odd, there are 6 levels of skill for every skill, and your character doesn't really have a level at all. "Level" is answering "What is the highest level skill you have?" A new character and an old one can basically stand shoulder to shoulder. 

This game is in a boxed set with 3 booklets, a two-part map, counters, and a cover/map for the module SF0. 

The first booklet is the 20-page basic game. It's a module in its own right and teaches players how to play on the map with the counters. While it may seem like an underwhelming first-game session, it is specifically designed to march the players through every rule in the Expanded book. At least in short form. You can expect at least one person from the party to be able to shoot, throw a grenade, hack devices, drive an array of vehicles, do medicine, heal, etc. 

The expanded book does just that, expands on gameplay. The rules #1 oddity is the game is meant to be the theater of the mind, which makes the map and counters rather secondary unless you want to make your own maps. Within the expanded rules is a monsters section, where a couple of typical alien creatures are given and rules to modify or create whole new monsters/aliens are nicely integrated with the character skills. This system is very cool and powerful. 

Rules for vehicles and robots are equally nicely spelled out and are designed to go hand and hand with your character's abilities as are tactics and movement. Even though you are limited to a handful of skills, the system is really robust because there is usually more than one way to progress. 

For completeness, the module SF0 Crash on Volturnus continues the complexity and expands (then contracts) the world around the players. Once your players have gone through this module, they will clearly understand the concept of "Talk First/Shoot Second", a detail only hinted at in the Basic and Expanded rules. 

For 116 pages, the rules are tight and feel well planned. The presentation is wonderful, on par with anything at the time, and perhaps taking a jump forward with the nice maps and counters. Oddly, space combat and ship construction were left out, probably due to space constraints.  

The game system is very inventive, but without continuing support from TSR there the game feels lacking in many regards. The specialty of this set of rules is the home brew campaign which is very doable, which is a good thing because that's all we got after the second boxed set. Back in the day, the two modules based on the films 2001 and 2010 felt odd and out of place in a space opera setting, but that should have been a clue as to how robust the system was when playing out homebrew stuff. 

Many systems when viewed in hindsight have a dated feel where it is a product of its own age. This set suffers this in spades. It's not like D&D or Traveller, where it was reimagined over and over again to keep up with the times. We are forever holding out for Han, Duke, and 3rd Imperium that never came. There are no psionics, no Force, no magic, no sentient killer robots, no cybernetics or the internet. Computers tend to zig-zag from the mighty talking machines capable of full thought, but can't be removed from the 15 rooms they reside in which makes them ignoreable.   

Many times, I have totally ditched the background and acted out scenarios from the Stainless Steel Rat series, Star Wars, and Aliens in this system. It actually gives a good accounting of itself. While I rated it three stars, remember this is three modern stars. As flawed as the support was, the rule still shines. 

Star Frontiers: Alpha Dawn
At DriveThruRPG

I recently picked up the print copy from DriveThruRPG. The printing is excellent and the binding looks sharp and clean.  

The Basic Rules, Expanded Rules, SF-0, plus the maps and counters are all printed within the same book. These are unmodified copies of the originals. The whole thing runs about 200 pages.

The contents/index is in that classic OSR blue while the maps nicely have a border that can allow you to scan. Theoretically, you could cut them out, but I wouldn't want to damage the book like that. Of course, DriveThruRPG saves you the trouble by offering a PDF/Print combo. 

I'm working on a review of the Knight Hawks set from DriveThruRPG and then hope to return to classic ORS D&D themed posts for a while. Sometimes, I get stuck in a rut with Sci-Fi and can't stop myself. 

I can't believe that 2022 marks 40 years of Star Frontiers.