Revisiting Star Smuggler - Session 006 Smugglers!

Since this will be a hell week, let's recap what resources the ship has and where. 

The ship's account has 8358 secs. In cargo they have: 

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

The ship also has 4 point of damage from the space battle they fought. The engineers are screaming for resources, so they drop in to the space station. That takes a couple hours and the crew searches for repair units. The engineers insist on 20 repair units, which costs the ship's account 200 secs. They now have 8158 left. 

The next two days are spent doing repairs. I decided Mel and Sarah can each repair a point of damage per day. The rules don't say you can do this, but they don't preclude it either. 

It's now day 4 and the crew decides to leave for Palatek. It takes 3 hours to get to a safe jump point. 

The entry roll indicates they find a status unit floating in space (e103). They take it on board and make their way to the planet. Since they will be hauling cargo, they want to open the status unit and get it out of the way. This means they want to go to the space station for a 5 CU status unit. 

About the odds. You can buy status units at the spaceport on a roll of 2. There is exactly one way to roll that, or 2.78%. At the space station, stasis units are available on 9. There are many ways to roll a nine, 4 to be exact and that is 11.11% chance or four times as often. On the station, you only get 5 rolls per day but that's half the rolls at four times the chance. 

It takes them 2 days worth of rolls to succeed. 500 secs spent (7658 left).

It was more than worth the effort. They find 4 CU of Dyla-Weed. It has a base price of 16,000 secs in any slum. The downside is, they can only sell one per slum per planet. They'll be rich, if they are willing to deal with the illegal stuff. 

To make this choice, I make each character roll against their cunning. Emily, the medic Drey and Jason want to put it out the airlock, but the rest of the crew pleads with them to keep it. There is a lot of grumbling, but they come around. 

For once, these guys are actual smugglers. 

Day 7, they come up with a plan. They will go to Byzantium then Imperia to make the sales and refuel the hypercharges. 

You know, this won't go smoothly. They make the sale at Byzantium, pocketing 48,000 secs. On the very next jump to Imperia, the ship runs into an meteor which blows a hole in the boat bay and one of the boats. The engineers weep. 

As the crew sets down on the planet, the engineers start repairs while the rest of the crew makes the sale. They make another 160,000 secs. They have also used 2 more repair units, leaving only 14. They also have to refuel the ship which takes another day. 

Since the crew is doing something illegal, they quietly make a payment and tell Duke they are doing cargo runs. Because smugglers never do anything illegal. The ship's account is now at 213,683. None of the crew accept payment at this time because they are trying to hide the fact that they are drug runners. 

Technically, the crew is in a win condition. But I want to see how usable this system is a general RPG, so we'll continue again next week. 

Rough Cut - Beacon Harbour

 I inserted my new longboat like houses and roughed out the walls. The tower evolved a bit but I like it. 

Not bad for a quick map in Worldographer. What I do not like is the sharp lines around the cobbles and dirt areas. I'll have to fix that. I also have an issue where the edges of the boat houses are too light. It gives them a "glow" that I don't like. 

The area has morphed into something living from such a simple pencil drawing. Oddly, I noticed that I accidentally changed the name from Banner Harbour to Beacon Harbour. I kind of like the new name. 

Bit Off More Than I Can Chew - Beacon Harbor

As mentioned before, I wanted to do a map of The Fortress at Titan's Gate. 

I selected this tiny part to get started in Worldographer. I figured each square was 10 feet across. These structures are massive.

And then found I didn't have the right icons. Plus, the icons available don't seem to match the style. Well, Worldographer has standards to make your own icons. So off we go to painting with GNU Image Manipulation Program. 

This is one of those viking type longboat houses. I only need one because the software will let me rotate and scale as needed. It's rough, but coming along. 

#TBT Post - Top Posts

It's a best of post for Throwback Thursday. 

My top book review post is for the Moldy Unicorn by Nate Treme. I love that little book. 

For my own products, The Hex Pack was number one. It's such a simple product, but it is adaptable to everything from B/X to Traveller. 

My top D&D post is a semi-tie. The best D&D post is a link to Benjamin Connell’s 3.5 D&D sheet. It's not my content yet it's a top contender for search results every month. I have no idea why it is that popular, even if it's my favorite character sheet. 

As far as my own D&D content goes, the top posts goes to a surprise contender: First Born, Unicorn. This post makes the AD&D Unicorn a playable character. It worked very nicely when my wife ran the character through a dungeon. It might not be for anyone, but it just goes to show you how adaptable D&D rules are in general and specifically AD&D. 

I think I need five. So let's have a bit of science fiction. For some reason my review of WotC's Star Wars game outpaces all other sci-fi posts. 

But I already did a book review. So, let's look at the next most popular post. That is Starship Deck Plans for Antelope Alternates for Star Smuggler. That also surprises me because I think it was one of my weaker designs. 

Antelope Variants - Casual Deckplans

 Before coming up with the Zephyr variant for Star Smuggler, I tried a couple designs. These rules are somewhat related to Traveller, Snapshot or Striker as they darn near follow the design principals. Where as these games have tons of fuel to jump, Star Smuggler has a magic McGuffin called a Hypercharge. Ships are limited in range by the six charges they carry. 

This version is shorter than the Zephyr type and has half as much crew space. The bays are arranged differently, giving 4 40 CU bays. I would think it would make a nice causal carrier or carrier escort ship. That block of cargo space could also be a barracks or brig. 

Since I was already going small, this one is even smaller, eliminating the medical area, the weapons vault and both guns. It seems to be a pure hauler. It's bays are also divided into 3 40 CU sections. 

This version is a single gunned hauler. It's huge, those areas near the rear could be more storage space. 

I am not sure where I was going with this design. The center cargo bay has been given over to some sort of controls. Perhaps it is a lab, an advanced scanner station or controls to direct other ships. It has a single turret and a medical bay. The back of the ship has some odd equipment fittings for unknown purposes. 

This is the largest Zephyr type ship, with 4 bays, the massive crew space, vaults and medical. 

And of course for comparison is the actual Antelope II named the Zephyr. I probably should have made the rectangular cargo hold 60 CU as it is slightly bigger than the boat bay but smaller than the main cargo hold. 

The Fortress of Titan's Gate

I'm stuck doing laundry tonight, so I sketched out another inside out fortress.

Sorry, I took the picture in my car. 

A couple of thoughts formed this structure. There is a breech to another demonic dimension at the bottom of the ravine. The walls were built over time to make the location defensible. In the center of the ravine is a ziggarat held by the defenders. Immediately to the east of the ziggarat is The Ironwood, the largest living thing in the battlezone. 

Other areas are named:

Ophidian Contagion,

The Seige,

Vermin Sill, 

Axis of Tears,

The Retort, 

Razor Rock,

The Well of Life,

Mantle of the Soul,

The Pale Plain,

The Peril,

Fool's Stand,

Sanctuary Point, 

The Kinds, 

Downer,

The Titan's Gate,

Jen's Barracks,

Banner Harbour,

Bacon Row,

Pride's Spire,

The Court of the Dead, 

Legion Furrow,

And Minstrels Hall. 

This month I'll be making mini maps and telling stories about these places. I hope you join me. 

The Tek - October 2020

My stats for DriveThruRPG were lack luster. I really need to remaster these or do something new. Working on that now. 

 AD&D Character Sheet For Use with Unearthed Arcana: 2

 Compass Rose Inn Minisetting: 2

 Kobold's Folly: 1

 Swashbuckler Character Class for D&D and AD&D: 1

 These Old Games Presents: The Hex Pack: 1

 Zero to Hero: Uncommon Commoners: 1

My spending on DriveThruRPG was low this month. The only thing I got was Hexcrawl Basics by Three Kingdom Games. 

Webstats are continuing to trend upwards. This month, I fell off again. 

Google Analytics Pageviews - 1,020

Google Analytics Sessions - 770

Pageviews per Session - 1.32

Of particular interest were the Amazon ads, which did three times better than my DriveThruRPG ads. Usually, they are lack luster. I am going to try it again. 

Revisiting Star Smuggler - Session 005b

Ok, this session is part two of Session 005. It starts on the morning of day 10. In my last post, I accidently lost track of one day by not calling it by the number. 

We left the crew docked at the space station, with the intention of leaving for Regari. The crew is most interested in doing something safe like returning to Regari and doing some cargo runs to Palatek. As a game master, this is an unsatisfying development. I decided to throw something interesting at the party. 

On the morning of day 10, there is radio chatter about incoming raiders. Additionally, in the hub of the station, a pair of Mynkurnia death squads appear. The Zephyr wants nothing to do with those exploding suicide troops again, so they detach from the Station and start making for the Spaceport on the surface. 

As they drop into the atmosphere, they get jumped by two TL-6 hoppers, one has TL-6 guns and the other has TL-4 guns. The Zephyr has been surprised and take a pair of hits. 

Wait... I made another mistake. The Antelope II has no hit stats. It's twice as big as an Antelope I but I don't want it to have 20 hits. I give it 15 hits. It also has defensive screens, which will absorb some damage. 

Ok. So the Zephyr takes a beating as it plunges into the atmosphere of the planet. That's one hour of combat. 

In the next turn of combat, they return fire while the crew rushes around to unload the hoppers and make them combat ready. They could simply take off, but the hoppers are holding a ton of equipment. 

The Zephyr has TL-5 guns, while the attackers have TL-6 and TL-4 weapons. These guns lose one die for being hoppers and a second for firing in the atmosphere. I deem that the Zephyr's guns are better because they aren't degraded as much and therefore shoot first. 

My super fancy combat map. 

The hoppers each take two points of damage. But wait! That's not all. The hopper with the TL-6 guns takes a critical, forcing a breakdown roll. It fails and the ship crashes into the ground. The second boat returns fire and hits again. 

The ship is much faster than the hopper so it breaks away and into orbit in hour 3. They fire again on the lone hopper doing two more points of damage. It breaks off and makes for the ruins. 

Hour 5 is getting worse, they see two TL-4 Antelopes with the same type of guns. The Zypher has better guns and unloads on the lead ship for 5 points of damage plus a critical. Life support breaks down. The Zephyr's defensive screens eat up the one point of damage. The hoppers deploy and fire their TL-6 guns on the lead ship. They do four more points of damage, one more hit will kill it. The Raiders are screaming for the damaged hopper to come back and it starts it's climb.

The next round sees the Antelopes pull out of range of the party's hoppers, but they get blasted again by the Zephyr's big guns. The lead ship takes another critical to the engines and goes dead in space. The remaining ship takes a critical, a hit to pilotage. The pilot is killed instantly, stopping the ship dead in space. The guns rip off an ineffective shot. 

Also in this round, the last hopper roars out of the atmosphere and right into the Zephyr's hoppers. It's hit for two points of damage and explodes. 

The Raiders crews had two pilots, two gunners, an engineer and a death squad boarding party. They are trying to affect repairs but everything will take a day. 

In round 7, the hoppers catch up and blast the Raider still capable of shooting. They do two points of damage plus 2 criticals. One critical knocks out life support and a second lucky hit strikes Pilotage, where the engineer was attempting repairs. The Zephyr unloads on the ship for one point of damage and two criticals. These kill the crew in engineering and the turret. 

The Zephyr orders the ships to surrender. They do not. So, the crew moves to the closest ship and begins boarding actions. 

With life support down and heavy hand weapons, combat is over as quick as it started. The second ship manages to damage the Zephyr with two points of explosive damage, but then the rest of the crew goes down. They manage to capture the engineer and a gunner. 

The heroes collect up some weapons and spare change from the dead. The total crew was a pilot, a gunner, a death squad per ship, plus an engineer. The hopper had a pilot and gunner plus half of a death squad each. That nets 288 secs. from both ships' crew. They also collect up an assortment of guns, 4 TL-5 heavy side arms and 4 TL-4 side arms. As per e182, they strip the ships for 1400 secs. in fittings. In this case, Imperial Police take control of the ships from the party and thank them for their help, rather than an explosion destroying both ships. 

This ends the week on an odd note. The fund from fittings from the ships go into the Ship's account and the weapons and crew money is split up amongst the crew. Since the crew has already been paid, they get nothing more than prize money. 

I just purchased some graph paper composition books, which is what I use for note taking and rough gaming information. 

These are exactly what I used to map out all of the Star Smuggler events.