Session 001 - Spiraling Dice

Invasion of Theed is a basic game engine. 90% of the information inside is geared for combat. Each encounter is broken down into three sections: pre-combat, combat, and post combat. The players are encouraged to use non-combat skills outside of combat, but every encounter defaults to combat for success. There is no way avoid it as stated.  

But I changed the setting, so the encounters had to change. This encounter was still a jail break. The characters were to suborn a couple of Neimoidian guards to get the codes to open the jail. They'd fight off some droids and rescue the prisoners or be captured. 

In this campaign, the lead Neimoidian Bergel is an antagonist but not a physical threat. He has relinquished control of the droid army to the leaders of Tankern, the name of the planet. Those republican leaders ordered the droids to quell the riot. As bad as battle droids are at warfare, they are even worse at policing, public policy and PR. The droids were holding people prisoner that the leadership didn't want imprisoned. Since this is a classic republic, there is no chief executive, only a person nominated for given tasks. The droids can't handle this, they want someone to be in charge to give them orders. 

My players were rolling from their last encounter directly into this one. They were still itching for a fight and not much time has passed since their last encounter with the droids. 

However, they gave themselves an excuse to stop and take a breather. They are rummaging through the speeders they stole in the last encounter. They have found a medkit, a toolbox, some tarps, painting supplies and a couple of cloaks and blankets. 

While the main party was doing this, Dex and Malta crept closer to the jail to scope out the place. Since Bergel has the most knowledge of the droids, he sent two representatives to order the droids to release the prisoners. Unfortunately a Republican Representative named Vidda showed up at about the same time and made the same demand. The droids are confused by the lack of combat and leadership. They don't know what to do and keep calling for help. 

Malta and Dex hatched a plan and returned to the speeders to fill everyone in. 

The nice thing about this group of players is they want to make use of non-combat skills. Some of this exceeds the rules in Invasion of Theed, so we are supplementing with the core rulebook. The party dressed Malta and Dex up as medics and made up Nonin to look like a wounded rioter. Malta and Dex have tiny blasters and planned to sneak them into the prison with the medkits and tool box to bust everyone out. Nonin was unarmed. Lidda stayed with one speeder to snipe targets if things get out of hand. Talhana's part was to use her speeder as a barrier between the droids and the side door. 

As Dex and Malta approached, a fourth "representative of the people" showed up. He is a rioter named Manro. For the player's benefit, I was rolling d20s for each party negotiating, whoever got the highest number has the droids ears for that round. It's a mechanic for the player's benefit so they could jam themselves into the conversation by backing different opinions. 

I'm not doing a blow by blow like the last time. Here is the initial map setup. The player's speeders are at the top and everyone else is in front of the jail at the bottom of the picture. 

The droids were pretty easy to fool. The Dex, Malta and Nonin wanted to get into the jail, which the droids were perfectly happy to do. They claimed to be "medical assistance". The droids flustered at this because they were calling for "assistance", but didn't mean medical assistance. I made Malta and Dex roll to keep their weapons hidden and they succeeded. The droids fixated on the tool kit, but Dex claimed they also repair droids. 

I used that to both help and confuse the party. There were 4 security droids off map, the jailers called them in and asked Dex to provide that assistance. He reluctantly rolled to repair one of them and satisfied, the beefy security droids marched off map to take up their hidden positions again.  

The three adventurers made their way into the jail and once the door closed, set about freeing themselves and everyone else from their cells, providing medial assistance and recovering the rioter's weapons. One problem the party had was they have no communication gear. There are some communicators in the jail, but the characters outside didn't have any and no way to pick them up.  

The force adepts are not powerful enough to use the Force to communicate. I deem that the force-sensitive feat and alter feat is good enough for the adepts to know if a party member is in the area and their general state of being, hurt, angry, etc. This is done on a DC 15, where a failure indicates the character knows they have failed. It's kind of the wrong power for the job. Since the characters were looking right at the jail or know the direction back to the speeders, they can detect their friends and the people right outside the door. 

After a great many die rolls for computer use, disable device and first aid, Nonin, Malta and Dex got the side door open and gave the signal. Lidda started blasting away as Talhana brought the speeder over. There were too many people to ride in the speeder, so Talhana switched places with Dex and he used the speeder as moving cover for the prisoners. 

The four people in front of the jail decided to enter and lock the door to get out of the fight. They are unarmed anyway. The droids are in no position to stop them. The party engages in a running gun battle with the hidden security droids and makes good their escape. 

The text indicates the jail holds a weapons cache. Since the characters are all gunned up already, I changed this 8 comlinks and 8 medpacs. Basically what one would find in a police station, sans the weaponry and armor. Droids don't have armor and store themselves with their weapons on their backs.  

The party decides to leave the city and hide in the countryside. To that end, they trade one speeder to the barkeeper from the first encounter for access to their rooms and some gear. The speeder is worth 6000 credits. Lidda demands some light armor, while everyone else sticks to the basics. Of note, they have 3 datapads, three electro-binoculars, a couple of tool kits, and their smaller personal belongings from their apartments. 

The barkeeper is not the nicest person and is already mad at the party, so he short changes the party and intends to dump their remaining belongings outside. The party intimidates their former landlord into forking over 1,500 credits with all of the gear and extract a promise for him to store their belongings they can't take. This will be a hostile work relationship in the future, but the deal seems to be pretty even. What the party got for the speeder was rather minimal, considering they are protecting goods that have no in-game meaning. 

This session went exceptionally well, I particularly loved the attention to detail the party put into their plans and the fact that they took an interest the last adventure so that they remembered that they had stuff in their apartments. Leaving the city will create some problems for me, I may have to create a different one off adventure to get them back into the city. 

The Standard, Non-Standard Ammo Options

There are some games where it is a core mechanic to track ammo. In Battletech, Star Frontiers and D&D, tracking ammo is important. In these games, ammo is a consumable core to the player's ability to play by the rules. How many missiles, gyrojet or arrows can one person pack around? It is tied to believe-ability. 

However, in other games it is in the rules but somehow violates the spirit of the game. Star Trek and Star Wars come to mind. How many characters on TV or in the movies run out of ammo? Only when the plot calls for it. 

Most games will fall someplace between the two extremes, such as any d20 game. Where the amount of ammo does not seem relevant, I prefer to use a different mechanic. In a modern setting with characters carrying normal firearms, I assume that all characters and NPCs are spending a bit of their time reloading as the opportunity presents. This means they almost always have bullets available. 

To add some tension, if the character fails their attack roll by rolling the worst possible number (say, a 1 in 20) then they are out of ammo and need to spend time to reload right now. If the rules have a mechanic for a jammed gun occurring on a one, the first time they roll a one they are out of ammo and if it happens again on the very next roll, the gun has jammed. 

Some games have weapons that simply don't work like a machine gun or semi-auto pistol. A blaster in Star Wars or Phaser in Star Trek are very unlike modern firearms. In the movies, they never run out of ammo unless the plot calls for it. As before, if a character rolls a 1, their weapon has malfunctioned. It makes a noise and nothing happens. To get the weapon working, the player needs to make a successful to hit roll to make it start working again. That seems like an oxymoron rule and maybe it is. The tension comes from the fact that the enemy knows there is something wrong and the hero can't shoot. They are drawing attention to themselves. Having the weapon suddenly go off in the enemy's face is just like Star Wars. And in Trek, fiddling with the controls almost always works. 

On the off chance these advanced weapons experience two back to back failures, then they are out of action until a repair is made, usually outside of combat. 

For most games where ammo tracking is important, I make sure the story provides ample reloads or parts where shooting is not required. My D&D players love "defending the castle walls" because by their nature, defenses have plenty of ways to get more ammo to the defenders. 

Session 001 Setup - Automatic (Detention) for the People

This next session needs some modification. 7 battle droids, starting at a distance were no threat to the players. Also, the event description from Invasion of Theed won't make sense. 

The players will still be doing a prison break as per the boxed set events, but I am changing the scenario up in true Star Wars fashion. The characters have two land speeders they stole in Session 0, plus 7 blasters from the droids they fought. They are properly gunned up, but have no other equipment. 

The theoretical bad guy Bergel, is a former member of the Trade Federation and a Neimoidian. The boxed set describes a jail with two Neimoidians out front, watching droids take captives. I am changing this. Bergel has sent two representative Neimoidians to get the rioters out of prison. "For the People," they say. The droids can't process the thought and call for instructions. 

Vidda, a city representative shows up to also represent "the People". Vidda is being followed by a rioter, Manro who is also claiming represent "the People". Since all four of these people are unarmed and acting rationally, the droids want to hand over the rioters, but can't figure out who should get them. 

The droids are baffled. Vidda should have control of the droids as a representative of the Republic, but Manro and the Neimoidians actions have confused them. These citizens are unarmed, so the droids have broken into two groups, a pair with holstered weapons arguing with the sentients and four battle ready droids guarding the parameter. The droids are trying to figure out who is really in charge and who needs to be arrested, which is flummoxing every living being. The droids plan on arresting two or more people then hand all of the detained people over to the last sentient. 

That illogical path is par for the course when it comes to battle droids. 

The characters will roll in on this mess directly from their last encounter and tip the scale from confusion to gunfire, in typical Star Wars fashion. 

Here is the starting map. 

On the far side of the map are the party's two speeders. On the near side of the map are the droids and sentients. The four droids on the perimeter have cover from 3 columns, while the other two droids are in contact (arguing) with sentients. 

I have left the prisoner tokens off the map as the players can't see them. There is supposed to be weapons cache inside the prison, but I am swapping it out with supplies the party needs. All weapons inside have been taken from the rioters and should be returned to them once they are free. Off board are reinforcements for the droids, plus the cache and supplies have a few surprises for the players if they get inside. 

Obviously, the characters shouldn't come in guns blazing. We'll have to wait and see how they react to this scenario. 

End of Session 0 - Combat

Set up

Session 0 ended in a shootout. The party was ejected from the bar and into a riot on the streets. All sentient and sensible citizens fled when the heavily armed party arrived leaving only droids. Invasion of Theed comes with a great map and tokens. 

The adventure book is broken down into sections describing each encounter, complete with a mini-map to describe how the real map should be configured. In this encounter, droids are advancing and firing on the players. Each square is 2 meters and blasters have a range of 10 squares. Normally, ranges are straight meters.This is the one difference between the Star Wars core book and this boxed set. It's ok. 

Initial party formation.

The characters start off in a boxed in area, at the limits of blaster range. Since the party knows about the riot, they come out the door weapons drawn. They are able to see two speeders and 4 of five droids. Invasion of Theed has wonderful character sheets and rule recaps to assist the new player in running the game. While simplistic, the rule cover everything from movement to cover. The columns and walls block fire and allow a defensive bonus if one hides behind them. 

Lidda starts off on point with her huge blaster rifle. Nonin and Talhana have blaster pistols while Dex and Malta have lighter weapons. The main difference is range. 

In watching the movies and TV shows, the Droids have a rifle like weapon, but they have the same stats as a pistol. Make sense considering their size.  

Round 1 movement

In these basic rules, characters can move 10 SQUARES, not meters and shoot. If a character stays in place or takes a 2 meter step, they can use that move action to shoot twice.  

Because I allowed the players to generate their own characters and select their own equipment, they have some issues with the basic rules. Lidda has a rifle with a range of 40 units. Malta and Dex have a range of 4 and 8, while Talhana, Nonin and the droids have a range of 10. If you are counting squares, know that we goofed up the ranges by using squares for meters. 

Lidda, Nonin and Talhana get the first shots:

Round 2

The party downs two droids and damaged a third. Malta and Dex realize they are out of range, in either meters or squares. Oops. So they don't get to shoot, even though they were planning on it. 

In round two, Dex and Malta freeze. They have cover from Lidda, but Lidda is the droids primary target as she takes a knee and rips off two shots a round. 

More droids fall as the characters chew them up. The droids have a +2 to hit, but don't hit anyone. Again.

The event calls for 2 droids to remain hidden until the characters reach the speeder, but I decide that they investigate the gun fire in round three. Dex and Malta take cover by moving to the column in the middle of the map while everyone else stays in place. 

Round 3

 In round four, everyone gets a shot to devastating effect. 

The adventure book suggested a running battle, but because we weren't careful with ranges, the characters wiped the floor with the droids. Very often, it came down to having 2 shots per round and no movement vs. move then shoot. 

I will keep this in mind for the next encounter and change the event accordingly. 

This whole event was supposed to be in session 1, but it was over in just about 10 minutes, which is far shorter than it took to write this post. I will streamline my photos in the next post. For this first post on combat and movement, I think the maps and tokens were the star of the recap. I won't be posting a round by round synopsis in the future. 

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.