Strictly (Duke) Springer - Day 109 – April 5th.

Every planet has a theme.  Mynkuria’s theme is to win the war with Nipna via unusual tech. Nipna’s theme is to win the war via high tech.  Mynkuria isn’t working out for us, so we travel back to Nipna.

On our way back into the system, we encounter gun buoys. Emily manages to get the ship away before they can fire on us.

We head for the spaceport on the first planet and are detected on entry. We are approached with the opportunity to purchase some high tech items. We’re offered starship defensive screens for 2,500. We take ‘em.

This uses up all of our time for the day, but it was a super effective use of time.

We have 195,790 in cash, have 5 hypercharges.  We now owe 194,863 on our ship. We are wanted on Palatek.

Strictly (Duke) Springer - Day 106, 107 and 108 – April 4th.

On Day 106, we take a day of RRR to heal up the entire crew. We also pay 300 in interest.

On Day 107, we get cracking on those Stasis Units we picked up from e103. In the first stasis unit, we find a wounded pilot. The medics lead him off to the crew quarters.

The next unit is more problematical. We open it and 4 guys jump out. Based on the last encounter, I’m going to decide that Duke tries to talk to them. Everyone except the medics and the newly found pilot are here.

The bodyguards open fire. They have the following stats:
Marksmanship: 4
Melee: 1
Endurance: 6
TL-5 side arms.

Duke makes his cunning roll and they do not surprise us. Lucy, Ratchet, Jon and Mike all have TL-6 side arms so they shoot first. All of them hit, but only Lucy scores a critical. 3 of these guys take a single point, while the last takes 5.

They return fire. They shoot at Duke, Mike, David and Lucy. Each needs a 9. Duke, Mike and Lucy are hit. Duke takes 3 points as a critical, while the other two take one point of damage.

To finish the round, Duke, Lefty, Deadeye, Emily, and Audrey shoot back with heavy weapons. Ace shoots with a TL-1 side arm. All four guys go down in a hail of gun fire.

We call for medical help and all of the wounded, including our newly found pilot, are transported to the city for treatment. This is expensive, but it avoids encounter checks. We pay 600 for the service.

On Day 108, Emily brings the ship to the city to pick up Duke and the gang. Nothing really interesting happens. On entry to the city we have a chance to sell TL-5 or six side arms, but the crew doesn’t want to sell. This is a rest day for Duke, Mike and Lucy.

Emily makes her rolls for the ship as we would like to sell these TL-1 level weapons. No deal on those, but we do get buy life support (1 secs. base), repair units (2 to buy, 1 to sell) and fuel (1 secs. to buy and sell). Twice, each actually.

This creates a dilemma for the solo player. If a player first makes all of their rolls for the day like I did, effectively, they can see the future. So, in order to blind myself, Emily decides to purchase 10 each at the first transaction, then possibly sell some on the second transaction if the price is right.

The first round results in Life Support for 3 each (30 for 10), Repair units for 2 each (20 for 10) and fuel at one each for a total of 10. This is due to the price multipler. We paid a more for the LSU, and base price for the other two. In the second round, the multiplier is 1, so we would lose money if we sold, so we don’t. A player can always refuse to buy or sell based on price, the problem comes in when you know that you have multiple chances.

We have 195,790 in cash, have 6 hypercharges.  We now owe 194,863 on our ship. We are wanted on Palatek.

Strictly (Duke) Springer - Day 105 – April 3rd.

This has been a bad deal all around. We are hauling back to Mynkuria and our entry contact is r328. This gives us an advantage to sneak into the area of our choosing, until we are detected. We pick the military base on Mynkuria. This gives a bonus on detection rolls.

We grab our 13,500 credits, 1,485 goes to the 11 crew members.

Duke decides to make a large payment on the principal of the ship, dipping into our savings. We map our 4 rolls and thankfully get Stasis Units. This time we can buy units in any size we want for a base price of 50 per CU. Since the wealth code is 30, we get them for 50 per CU.

I need two stasis units to open the 2 stasis units we found. For that, we need 2 five CU units. That’s 500 secs. Next, I want to put a Stasis unit in the pilotage and improve the ones in the crew quarters. Another 5 CU unit. The crew quarters are going to be broken in to 4 parts, so that is 4 seven CU Stasis Units. That is another 1400. While I’m at it, I might as well cover engineering for another 350 secs. All told, that is 3,250 secs.

We can discard all of the old stasis units, as they can’t be sold. What waste. This approach hardens the ship against attack. In the crew quarters area, up to 7 people can be protected in each of 4 areas. Each 7 unit device takes up 8 spaces.

This hardens the ship against attack.

We have 196,750 in cash, have 6 hypercharges.  We now owe 194,863 on our ship. We are wanted on Palatek.

Strictly (Duke) Springer - Day 103 – April 2nd.

Duke isn’t pleased with all of the guys packed in the hold of the ship. Emily had the engineers install the TL-6 guns. If we get in a fight, we are going to be in trouble. All we can muster is a pair of Hoppers as the turrets are down.

If we get caught, explaining 45 freedom fighters will be hard. They’ll execute us. It’s really not worth the 13,500 secs. we will get for dropping them off and returning to Mynkuria. Sigh.

Our outboard trip is peaceful and arrival in system is boring. We find a second 3 CU stasis unit floating in space. We haul it on board. There is just enough room to store it in the crew quarters.

They weren’t really specific about where we drop them off so we head to the craters. There is a -2 on entry detection there. We don’t get detected, but we zip right through a radiation zone which causes a hit of damage to everyone on board.

We keep going and land to let these guys off.

The Engineers get those guns installed at the end of the day.

I have updated our deck plans as I notice a few mistakes on the last upload. Boat Guns take up five CU, the two groups of 5 CU of space next to the ship's boats are not inside the boats but in the bay they sit in. I didn't bother to draw in the fighters we were transporting as they got off.

We have 218,686 in cash, have 7 hypercharges.  We now owe 225,564 on our ship. We are wanted on Palatek. 

Pilot Episode - That's Not New or Maybe It Is.

Well, I've finally jumped off the deep end and launched a new project.

I discovered a few things about podcasting at least.

• First, never wear a windbreaker. 
• Two, paper scripts are good for editing, but if you use them while recording, people hear it. 
• Your talking speed is not what you think it is. 
• And item D... It ain't as easy as you'd think. 

But, here it is. It's rather raw but let me know what you think. 

Show notes are as follows:

In this episode, I'll be looking at the 1981 solo game, Barbarian Prince by Dwarfstar Games/Heritage USA/Reaper.

You'll also be listening to Sovereign by Kevin MacLeod, available form the website, INCOMPETCH, linked below.

Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/4397-sovereign
License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

I'll also be plugging “Playing It Wrong” by Charles Thorin, available at TheyMightBeGazebos.Blog or subscribe to his podcast through Anchor.fm.

The most important plug is the website where you can get Barbarian Prince, Dwarfstar.brainiac.com.

Strictly (Duke) Springer - Day 102 – April 1st.

David and Duke need healing and rest, so we are off to the Spaceport. This is a player choice, David was downed by concussion and really doesn’t need healing, just some time off.

We are of course detected on entry. We get an offer transport men to Nipna. They take up 2 CU in the ship and we will be paid 300 for each guy we transport. Emily agrees.

Emily makes the weekly payment of 600 on the ship. We still have a few hours of daylight, so Duke get healed up at a price of 450 secs. Emily purchases more hypercharges (1000) and two sets of ships guns, TL-6 for 1200 each.

3750 secs. well spent, so Emily makes a calculated desision to pay off 14,436 on the principal of our ship. We now owe 225,564 on it.

We have 218,686 in cash, have 8 hypercharges.  We now owe 225,564 on our ship. We are wanted on Palatek.

You probably noticed a lack of ads in these posts. That's because affiliate clicks have jumped off a cliff. However, if you have $5 or $18 or $20 lying around, I would like to suggest The Gardens of Ynn. It is a procedurally generated adventure, which has a curious setting which allows for plug n play into any adventure setting. Personally, I'd use it for D&D, but the book is pretty close to rule set agnostic.

A Great Book from DriveThruRPG Gardens of Ynn

The TEK - March 2020

Sales are dead for 2020. No help for that with problems we all have now. I've rethought my presence on DriveThruRPG and I am now in to raw downloads from DriveThru. Making people happy with fun, free stuff. I still have price listed on my products, but I am encouraging people to pay nothing at all. There are so many other people out there who need help. Please by all means, save your money for them.

March 2020 Downloads via DriveThruRPG:
AD&D Character Sheet For Use with Unearthed Arcana - 6
Compass Rose Inn Minisetting - 2
Kobold Folly Minisetting - 7
Zero to Hero: Uncommon Commoners - 7
Swashbucklers Character Class - 5

I want to share my all time download stats this month:
AD&D Character Sheet For Use with Unearthed Arcana - 93
Compass Rose Inn Minisetting - 137
Kobold Folly Minisetting - 125
Zero to Hero: Uncommon Commoners - 248
Swashbucklers Character Class - 91

I am close to reaching a couple of thresholds on each product. I will be doing a happy dance if I can hit 100 downloads for each and every product and 250 for Zero to Hero. I'll let you know when that happens.

Webstats were amazing, even at 1 pm on the last day of the month.

You can see the spike when everything shut down. I am very happy that readers came to visit in times of worry and stress. Thank you for doing that, it was a ray of sunshine on a very bad day.

Google Analytics Pageviews - 2,466
Google Analytics Sessions - 1,696
Pageviews per Session - 1.454

I had been working with a new ad provider, but I picked a horrible time to change things up. All affiliate clicks have zero'ed out except for DriveThruRPG which is up 474%. Crazy times we live in, when games take a backseat to Amazon.

I would like to thank you. the readers, who make this project a fulfilling experience. In order to continue, I need to hear from you. Post those reviews, leave those comments and make suggestions on social media like MeWe.

Strictly (Duke) Springer - Day 101 – March 31th.

Duke and David are regulated to the ship’s med bay, wherever that is. Emily leads Deadeye, Lefty out to look for stuff.

One of the problems with a high tech world is, you are always detected on entry. In this case, the contact roll leads us right to the table I want to roll on. However, this one time only takes an hour instead of 5.

I probably should have scooted back to the Spaceport Med Center, but we are here.

They find one intact PS-bot and one repair unit. We get one extra chance to roll for stuff, but all we find are damaged U-Suits. They aren't worth the effort so we discard them. While this isn’t a great haul, I can now assign a PS-bot to Audrey.

We have 218,186 in cash, have 6 hypercharges.  We are wanted on Palatek.