Strictly (Duke) Springer - Day 009

Dear Diary,

We went back into the ruins again. We found a pair of skimmers. One was intact, while the other was cannibalized for a single repair unit.

Skimmers probably don't have wheels.

Here are today's stats:

1 Antelope starship,
2 Hopper with 15 units of fuel,
1 Stasis pod 2 CU,
24 Repair units.
3 Skimmer,
1 U-bot.
and the ship is fully fueled with 6 hypercharges.

I'd like to circle back and talk about the various "units" in the game. There are repair units, life-support units and fuel units. Life-support or LU, provides air, food and water to all people in a vehicle for a day in a bad air or vacuum environment. On this planet, the air is good and we don't need them.

Fuel units power the hoppers and the skimmers. For a hopper, they provide one movement point, say from the ruins to the spaceport or from the spaceport to orbit. There is a multiplier for gravity.

Skimmers also use fuel units, but one per day. Only a few characters can drive the skimmers. The engineer has that skill, as do skimmer drivers. Skimmer drivers are a quirk, the will not leave the system they were from, so you always need an engineer. Were I to change a rule, it would be this one. I would allow bodyguards and medics to drive, but not starship pilots or navigators.

Obviously, the hopper is faster but the skimmers are more efficient.

#TBT - The One About Character Sheets

Originally published on Jul 15, 2015. It is a #TBT post for Jan 9, 2020. Hard to believe it's been this long since I went to convention.

I played Savage Worlds at a convention a few years ago. The game was adapted to the World of Flash Gordon, you can pick up a copy at DriveThruRPG. Each player chose a pregenerated character from a selection available. There was Flash, Dale, Barin (me), Zarkov, Vultan, Thun plus many others. Having picked our characters, we waited for our eighth player to arrive.

Within a few minutes, we were all chatting and joking. A lot of the humor revolved around radio shows and Flash Gordon in general. Our last player was so late, we started playing without him. We had a good time, playing and making in-character comments all through out. The guy who had Vultan did a pretty good BRAIN BLESSED impersonation. Zarkov’s player used a styrofoam coffee cup to read like a radio announcer.

It was all fine and well until the eighth player showed up. He made some funny faces at the remaining character sheets and eventually picked Dale Arden. He did not engage in any of the humor at the table, even when our “Flash” threw some cheesy lines from the movie at him. After one particularly funny “Flash ‘n Dale” comment, Dale froze for a second and rounded on “Flash”.

“What the f— is your problem?” he demanded.

The table went quiet. It was a bit before we got back to the serious business of playing the game.

After a while, I spoke to our eighth player. He was sort of shy. He stuck to the basics of who he was and what he did for a living. He knew nothing of Flash Gordon. As I explained the story to him, he actually warmed up and was a decent sort of guy. He and I chatted for the whole game. It turns out he wasn’t able to play a game he wanted and just picked anything at random. He was kind of disappointed.

But this wasn’t why he snapped. Oh, lord no.

When were we done, he apologized briefly to “Flash” and left. I chuckled when he was out of earshot. Everyone wanted details. What was his issue with our “Flash”?

Our eighth player’s real name was Dale. He had picked the character sheet with his name on it.

Strictly (Duke) Spinger - Day 008 (RRR) Human Error

Ah, human error is a great thing. I rolled poorly and we had a contact, e88. This is an abandon room where Duke found 30 secs. The error in this was nothing needed to be repaired, so I wasted a day on a contact I didn't mean or need to attempt. I happened to get lucky and scored some secs. 

Dear Diary,

We engage in RRR, again. Some parts are literally watching paint dry.

Here is today's stats:

1 Antelope starship,
2 Hopper with 15 units of fuel,
1 Stasis pod 2 CU,
23 Repair units (one used to repair the boat).
2 Skimmer,
1 U-bot.
and the ship is fully fueled with 6 hypercharges.

Crew:
Emily, weekly pay 15 secs. She has a sidearm and 35 secs.
Ratchet, weekly pay 15 secs. He has 30 secs.
Doc, weekly pay 10. He has the 10 secs that I paid him on day one.

Designated Heir: Emily.

I still owe 120,000 secs. in principal on the ship. I have 380 secs.

Now to the promised content.

Yesterday, I mentioned Dwarfstar, which is a part of Reaper Minis now. I also happened to be listening to back catalog of The History of English. Episode 118 is about the history of trade names. While this podcast isn't on science fiction, it explains many of ideas and terms we still use today. I thought it was apt.

Strictly (Duke) Spinger - Day 007 (RRR)

This is another RRR day, third in a row. Time for an ad, but not a real ad. Reaper miniatures, in conjuncture with Dwarfstar have made many of their old games available. What is great about this is, if you follow the link above and scroll down, you can find tips and methods to use the digital files to reproduce the whole game with great looking counters.

Back to Duke.

Here is today's stats:

1 Antelope starship,
2 Hopper with 15 units of fuel,
1 Stasis pod 2 CU,
23 Repair units (one used to repair the boat).
2 Skimmer,
1 U-bot.
and the ship is fully fueled with 6 hypercharges.

Crew:
Emily, weekly pay 15 secs. She has a sidearm and 35 secs.
Ratchet, weekly pay 15 secs. He has 30 secs.
Doc, weekly pay 10. He has the 10 secs that I paid him on day one.

Designated Heir: Emily.

I still owe 120,000 secs. in principal on the ship. I still have 350 secs in my pocket.

OSR Character Sheet

The people over at Cirsova have a new OSR character sheet for commercial use. That pretty cool. 

I thought of creating an OSR sheet, but 99% of my rational of uploading my AD&D character sheet was nostalgia. I've been using this particular sheet for decades and though other people would be amused by is simplistic design values. My second version was done on the oldest software I could find to continue the sight gag. 

This sheet is pretty cool because it has those nostalgia values AND it's free for commercial use. That super generous. If I do a OSR one shot, I'll totally use this sheet.

You can download my file at DriveThruRPG using the links on the upper right. 

Strictly (Duke) Springer - Day 006 (RRR)

Dilemma time. Having reviewed the game Star Smuggler, I'm playing it and posting the results here one day at a time. If you aren't familiar with the game, you can read the review here or download the whole game there.

I have reached the point where the characters are doing Rest, Repair and Recuperation and not a whole hell of lot happens.

Mechanically, when you engaging in RRR, you roll a die to see if you have a forced contact at the start of the day. Roll a 6, there is a chance of an encounter. There are 7 varieties of encounters for each area and some areas by virtue of what they are preclude some of those 7. The ruins are one of those.

Going forward on RRR days, I'll share stats then I will tell you about things related to science fiction, outside of the Star Smuggler game which will probably contain an ad for something for you to purchase. 

Dear Diary,

Day six is less exciting than day five. We engage in RRR, again. Some parts are literally watching paint dry.

Here is today's stats:

1 Antelope starship,
2 Hopper with 15 units of fuel,
1 Stasis pod 2 CU,
24 Repair units (one used to repair the boat).
2 Skimmer,
1 Damaged U-bot.
and the ship is fully fueled with 6 hypercharges.

Crew:
Emily, weekly pay 15 secs. She has a sidearm and 35 secs.
Ratchet, weekly pay 15 secs. He has 30 secs.
Doc, weekly pay 10. He has the 10 secs that I paid him on day one.

Designated Heir: Emily.

I still owe 120,000 secs. in principal on the ship. I still have 350 secs in my pocket.