Play report: Copper GLOG Session 1

On a longish car ride (your definition of what constitutes a long car ride may greatly vary), my older son and I played a session of Copper GLOG, as invented by my favourite ttrpg-blogger of all times, Arnold K. For our randomizer we used even/uneven licence plate end numbers (foreign ones didn't count even if they did end in a number) of cars we passed or that passed us, depending on what came first.

My son chose a ratling warrior as his character class – Fighter level 1, good skill sneaking, special equipment: Bow and arrow. He was sent by his clan to rescue the princess of his clan, the forest ratlings. She had been kidnapped by goblins, presumably for some higher-up ruler, and dragged to the Discarded Giant's Boot, a one-index-card-dungeon I had made up sometime last year. The nameless ratling hero started before the gaping maw of the enormous boot (the entrance into it is about half a kilometer wide), a mountain cave made out of leather of an ancient beast of titanic proportions.

The ratling managed to sneak into the boot's shaft, which contained the hovels of a goblin village. Listening to two of the greenskins converse in one of the huts he found out that the princess had been brought into the boot's tip. He left the goblin village, going deeper into the boot. There was little light coming from holes rotted into the thick leather roof, otherwise it was a detritus-strewn dark cave. A random encounter got our hero his first fight: A giant flea (Level 1) attacked. The ratling managed to fend it off but got hurt in the fight, losing one of his two HP.

He decided to take lunch and move on, triggering another random encounter, this time with a herd of fleas herded by goblin herdsmen, who were driving their disgusting flock towards the village. A successful stealth check meant that the ratling was undiscovered but listening to the goblins only revealed dirty songs the goblin herdsmen were singing.

Delving deeper into the boot, the hero found himself with the choice of going left towards the boot's tip or into a hole gnawed into the heel, where the goblins presumably were mining leather. He decided to explore the leather mine first, went inside and found himself in a hollowed-out area with a big mushroom surrounded by slime on the floor, out of which half-finished goblins were growing. This was their mothershroom, the place where the goblins of the village spawned. On the far end, he could make out cages.

He decided to investigate, sneaking around the half-grown goblins and reaching the caves. One contained five of the fleas, one contained a desiccated skeleton, one a live ratling who begged to be released. The hero freed the prisoner and gave him his bow and arrow, making a Friend for the rest of the adventure. The two of them, however, failed to sneak out – and had to fight their way through four half-grown goblins (Level 0). They succeeded after a long and somewhat tedious battle, losing no HP in the process.

Despite the freed prisoner's fear of the deeper areas of the boot, they pressed onwards towards the tip. They managed to sneak past a giant earwig (Level 2) and saw the lit entrance of a wooden house at the end of the cavernous boot-cave. The house was larger than human-sized (enormous for two ratlings, who stand about a meter tall in our world) and guarded by two goblins. One of them was asleep, the other was picking his nose – the Friend killed both with well-placed arrows.

The two ratlings had to stand on top of each other in order to reach the doorknob. They did and went into the house. On the ground floor, the first door lead into a room full of cages. Six of them contained princesses: The ratling princess, an orc princess, a human princess, an aelph princess, a beetle princess and a kobold princess. The princesses told the two ratlings that the keys to their prison were in the posession of the Orgre (Level 3, two attacks) whose house this was. He was planning to make a Princess Stew, the recipe of which demanded for eight different types of princess.

The two ratlings snuk up the stairs to confront the monster. The orgre had been lying on his bed but smelled the two newcomers enter his bedroom. Grabbing two huge butcher-knives from the nightstand, he got up and a healthbar grew on the bottom of the screen and boss-music started. The two Level-1-ratlings had a difficult time with this boss monster but in the end were successful. The nameless hero slew the ogre with one HP left and the resusciated his Friend who was at 0 HP. He'd have to stay in the back, shooting arrows, from now on.

The two heroes freed all six princesses from their cages – and then armed them with oversized kitchen utensils. They princesses counted as a Swarm of Princesses (Level 6, fights as level 0 single creature but has Lvl HP). The group left the house and went back towards the heel of the boot.

On the way a random encounter delivered an agressive giant earwig their way. The ratling hero attacked in close combat, the princesses did too and the Friend fired arrows. In the end, the hero had to be patched up after the battle (0 HP) but the group succeeded. This marked the occasion of the hero leveling up (10x current level in XP; Defeating monsters results in Monster-Lvl XP). Now level 2 he'd be a better fighter still but do not gain an additional HP yet.

At the leather mine into the heel, the ratlings decided that a large-scale distraction was needed if the group was to get through the goblin village and leave the boot. They snuk past the mothershroom and freed the captive giant fleas which fled into the larger cave, spooking the herds of fleas the goblins were keeping and causing widespread chaos, pandemonium and destruction.

A failed stealth-roll led to the princesses each having to do a roll on their survival. Luckily, only two of them didn't make it out: The human princess and the beetle princess died upon trying to get through the chaos of the goblin village. Five rescued prisoners brought our hero another five XP. He had also accomplished the mission (rescue the ratling princess) and made some valuable new allies. With the ogre dead, the goblins would soon be subject to a new ruler and we decided it would make sense for the orc princess to return with a retinue of her warriors to now become ruling queen of the discarded giant's boot.

The whole thing took about three hours of play time, which we spent with some interruptions, whenever I had to concentrate on more complicated parts of the road. The simple resolution system makes for an easy way of playing hands-free and the minimal bookkeeping helps as well. You can only use a simple dungeon if you want to keep it all in your head – I did cheat in that by placing one dungeon (the ogre's house) inside another dungeon (the giant's boot). But keep it simple and this works just fine. Thanks,Arnold!

Play Report: OPR Grimdark Future FTL – with my kids

 So, we started playing One Page Rules: Grimdark Future – FTL Fleets in our home. And it was quite cool. Let me tell you how it went down between me and my two sons (almost 9 and almost 4).

The Combatants

While I only had one of my projected three gamepunk-fleets finished, my older son had not been idle and had (inspired by what I was doing) made spaceships himself. His own fleet was the Blaze Fleet, consisting of four ships created from scrap parts that we had lying around the workshop. He does have an elaborate back story for his people (beaver-like aliens seeking Earth which they know from received transmissions) but let's not get too deep into the details. The fleet consisted of three heavy ships and one medium ship according to the OPR rules.

My younger son had watched me play Sword of the Stars and liked the ships of the Zuul. He asked his brother to make him some and the result was another fleet of three large and one medium ship cobbled together from stuff lying around (and lots of hot glue). The specialty of this fleet was ramming – every ship had the Reinforced Ram upgrade, which would definetly come in handy.

My own fleet was cardboard-printed. The ships were mantis ships from FTL. As I was trying to gauge, what works in the game and what doesn't (for when I need to battle real enemies, not my kids) and went for a somewhat rounded fleet composition with lots of smaller craft: One medium ship as a flagship, three light ships armed with rocket pods (which would rule against squadrons but my enemies had none ...), two light ships designed for ramming (love those!) and four squadrons of gunships (to be ready for anything).

The Battle

Our dinner table was the battlefield. In the center we placed a round container lid as a central planet. A large D20 was the moon. Some boxes and stones were an asteroid swarm. Four red D10 were objectives placed in orbit. In addition to these standard objectives according to the rules of OPR FTL, each fleet had their own-set goals for an extra victory point: The Blaze Fleet had to keep its flagship alive, the Zuul had to fire on the planet each turn, the mantis had to destroy at least one capital enemy ship.

Turn 1

As my ships were smaller than both enemies, it didn't matter to me that my older son won iniative and my younger son came in last. I split my force: The five small ships went to intercept the Blaze Fleet, firing a first volley of rockets and doing one point of damage to one of the capital ships. The gunship squadrons went ahead and charged into the smallest ship of the Zuul fleet and started harrying it with their light weaponry. My flagship made a beeline towards one of the objectives and fired its plasma cannon, the mightiest weapon in my fleet, at the Zuul formation. To no effect.

The other two fleets also split up: The Blaze Fleet sent two ships towards my formation of light ships, opening fire. Their other two ships went towards the Zuul fleet and the objectives.

The Zuul fleet attacked in two directions as well, sending one ship towards the Blaze Fleet and three ships towards my mantis fleet.

Turn 2

The two ramming ships were in ramming position! So they did their thing and dealt tremendous damage to the front ship of the Blaze Fleet coming towards them (a medium ship, the smallest of that fleet), ramming it into the ship that was following. The missile ships meanwhile swerved hard to the right in order to follow and hopefully support the embattled flag ship of the fleet that was all alone in the vicinity of a victory point.

The Blaze Fleet fired upon my ships and even sent a rocket barrage to my own rocket ships, dealing damage to one caught in the blast despite it being in cover behind an asteroid. The Blaze Fleet also engaged the foward ship of the Zuul, firing all they had. Their flagship collected a victory point

The Zuul gathered a victory point as well and fired on my flagship once again, dealing heavy damage.

Turn 3

Things were getting serious. My two ramming ships did their thing again, driving back the much larger enemy craft. My flagship broke apart when it was rammed by the slow but deadly Zuul ship that was coming towards it. The Zuul medium ship, still followed by my gunships, stopped to turn in order to get back into the fight. The clash of two of the Blaze Fleet's ships and one of the Zuul ships ended with said Zuul ship being destroyed and dropping an objective it had gathered before. My rocket ships got into the fray, hoping to regain the victory point that my destroyed flagship had lost and perhaps even conquer one from the enemy.

Turn 4

The last turn was deadly. My two ramming ships sacrificed themselves, killing their opposing ship and badly damaging the capital ship that was following. The other side of the Blaze Fleet killed off their Zuul opponent and collected its victory point, upping their score to two. Two of my rocket-armed ships kamikaze'd into the badly damaged Zuul heavy ship they were facing off against, destroying it and themselves. My gunships failed to destroy the badly damaged medium ship they were engaging though – my last rocket armed light ship could not risk gathering up the two floating objectives infront of itself because it would have been rammed apart by that ship. Thus, the Zuul flagship could slowly swoop in and gather up these two victory points.

The aftermath

The Blaze Fleet lost one medium ship and won. They collected two objectives and fulfilled their secondary objective of having the flagship survive. The Zuul fleet came in second, with two victory points from objectives. They lost two heavy ships. My mantis fleet came in last with one victory point from a secondary objective. Three squadrons and one light ship were the only survivors.

What I learned

Ramming is fun and very effective. If I had played for victory, my fleet composition would have been dramatically wrong: Had I taken bombers instead of gunships for swarms and had I not taken missile volleys but more punchy weaponry on my three light cannon ships, I would have dealt a lot more damage. Positioning is something you always have to keep up with: As ships have to move half their movement before pivoting, you have to be careful not bump into your own crafts.

The game was great fun. We will do this again. Probably soon. So I'll have to get the other two fleets ready...

The Epic Adventures of Paul the Nice Thief, part 1

 During our quarantine, I started a role playing campaign with my older son, who turned six this summer. I hesitate to call it “pen and paper” because as my player can’t read yet, there is hardly any pen&papering involved. After the first session I did write down the basic facts for his character though, so I guess it qualifies. The system is almost purely narrative-based. As we started playing while walking in circles in our backyard, pushing the stroller with our sleeping toddler, there are not dice involved.

The character is just a scant few points of data: Name, class, health points, experience points, skills (three to begin with) and equipment. I guided my son through the character creation process by asking him if he wanted to be a warrior, a thief, an archer or a wizard. Of course, he chose to be a thief (his favorite in Heroica as well as Pixel Dungeon). I gave him 4 HP for that, as well as the starting skills sneaking, climbing and reading tracks. Then he got to choose a weapon and a starting item of power. He chose a set of three throwing knives and a disguising cape that could render you invisible while immobile and holding your breath.

I decided to start my son’s adventuring career with a classic premise: The dungeon run. A wizard named Xerax has a tomb that is rumored to be guarded by traps and foul creatures. It is located a day’s march from a nearby village and Paul, our thief, has heard of it. Next up: Paul’s first adventure. I will write it up straight-faced – my son playing a grown-up (as he thinks what that would be like) leads to some Vincent-Adultman-situations which are great fun for me. And perhaps for you as well, my fives of readers.

My son as a game master

As a gift for Easter, I produced a Heroica Fanfiction Audioplay for my older son. Fifty minutes of fantasy-action, just for him, including the bosses and monsters he and I made up. I even gave his favorite characters the best moments. This, after repeated listenings over the holidays, inspired a creative frenzy in my son. While I was doing things like household chores, he was upstairs in his room, labouring away with the boxes of Legos that he inherited from me. Then he presented me with an adventure of his own making. He'd play the bad guys, I'd play the heroes. He was going to be my game master (although he doesn't know the term, this has happened totally organically).

His idea of a great adventure was that the Goblin Kings (The Twins, we usually call them, as we have two of them and they together form a boss encounter) have gathered all the monsters in their keep. Except for the Spitting Snake and the Giant Spider, all bosses are there as well. The goblin fortress is seperated from the human village by the bridge. In it there is the main hall full of horrors and troops, as well as three side wings. In one there is first the Kraken, then the Hydra, its den serving as a treasure chamber full of gold, potions, and a key. One is the throne room with the two Goblin Kings. The last one is another side wing. It features two hidden keys and a secret door that leads to another land.

That other land is the goal of the quest, as my son informed me. The kidnapped king of Heroica, father to Prince Alrik, leader of the heroes, is held there – but the heroes don't know that yet. I was allowed to have four active heroes at the time, the other four waiting as backup at the village tavern.

Mathematically, my team was very unlikely to defeat the massed foes in the main hall. My first strike team consisted of the Prince, the Knight, the Priest and the Thief. I had a plan: The team would head straight for the treasure chamber, where the Knight would hold the monsters from the hall off while the other three dealt with the Kraken and the Hydra. Then everyone would retreat with the loot to the village, where the treasure would allow them to heal and gear up.

The plan went reasonably well. While I lost the Knight and the Thief, the Priest and the Prince got out with the treasures. I filled the ranks with the Archer and the Druid and started back to the Goblin Fortress. That's when things got even more RPGish.

My son had used the turns I had spent buying stuff in the village: He had set an ambush with werewolves on the bridge. That failed to stop my heroes. When a single Level 1 goblin came out of the fortress, I decided to negotiate. I told it/my son that he didn't have a chance as a single goblin against four heavily armed heroes. My son conceided. The goblin decided to become a good citizen and went onto the big ship to take a nap. Later, while my heroes were entering the fortress again, he would go to the village oak to nibble on its big branch. As my son explained, goblins love meat and wood. He was the smartest of the goblins and thus decided to be a good guy.

Inside the fortress, my heroes encountered another wave of enemies in the form of miscelaneous smallish monsters and the Dark Druid. Then the remaining goblin forces surrendered – under the condition that my heroes leave the throne room and their kings alone. I decided that these were acceptable terms for Prince Alrik, after he had learned that the goblins didn't have his dad. The heroes went into the wing with the magic door undisturbed and we decided to call it a night and continue the adventure/campaign in my son's other land another day.

It was only half way through that game of Heroica that I realized that I was in fact playing a roleplaying campaign designed by my son. He is only five and can't read or write but the graspable little character sheets made from Lego combined with the simple tactics of the dice rolls and loot system enabled him to become a game master. I am astonished and proud that he put thought into things.

He even heeded my advice from an earlier game and gave me a good reason to go into a dead end full of boss monsters (all the treasure and a mission-relevant key). During my last assault he even realized that his guys should try to kill my healer (the Priest) but after that failed, he figured the smart thing for the goblins would be to give up. I'm glad he isn't one of the bloodthirsty kids that assume that murder is the only way to play this. And I'm very very curious what the land beyond the magical door has in store for my quartet of heroes.

Play Report: Heroica with my son

My first-born and I cleaned up his little childreen's desk and assembled all of the Heroica we have into one big land full of danger and adventure. I knew that this campaign against four bosses and their minions spanning several different regions would take a long while (it wasn't our first big campaign, but the first one involving stuff we had designed and built ourselves). It would replace a chunk of goodnight-reading for a couple of evenings. What we have looks like this:

Our Heroica land is ready to be adventured in.

To the left you see the village with the graveyard. It is connected to the grassy lawn which leads into the secret tunnel (both are my son's work), the forest and the catacombs. Beyond the forest there is the goblin fortress. The four bosses are distributed over the lands, each in their own boss room and guarded by patrolling minions. Each of us got two characters, one to play and one spare. The other heroes were hanging out in the inn, with the exceptions of the king and the red mage, who were imprisoned in the cells connecting the catacombs and the goblin fortress. We play with permadeath to characters, by the way.

Labyrinthmaschine in action

A game is not truly tested until someone other than the designer has played it. Now I have in the past been somewhat careful about letting others even touch the Labyrinthmaschine – I was scared it could break. By now my fears have been alleviated and a small handful of others have been allowed into that particular dungeon of mine. Today, my older son wanted a go – and I let him.

Pen & Paper: Action Set Pieces

I somewhere read that an action sequence needs more than just a static battleground. This is as true for an RPG as it is for any movie - you better have something going on around you, surroundings influencing things, hazards, all that jazz. So this week, I had my players fight - in a pit.

Good action movies know that the set is as important as the action that takes place in it. Take anything Jackie Chan does, for example. The sets and props really take center stage. If he could get a hovercraft for a day, you better believe that there will be a way to integrate it into the plot. The best action scenes are running gun-battles or fighting on a moving train or scenery falling down around the characters, threatening to crush either combatant at any moment. This is something where computer RPGs often fail - and so does traditional gridmap DnD.

You CAN put rules into the game that make things more interesting. Say, this and that hex/square/area spout hot steam every X turns, doing damage. Often this just creates no-go zones for PCs and enemies. If you present an enemy stupid enough to run into danger face-first, the battle threatens to become a riddle. Where do you need to place yourself in order to lure the monster into X? That's why I prefer freeform storytelling in battles, sprinkled with some dice-rolls to keep things unpredictable to both the players and myself as the game master.

The two surviving PCs of a small foray into ancient underground ruins were fleeing. Their friend lay dead, killed by their own bullets, in a crypt behind them. The monsters were chasing. The underground complex terminated in a huge drill-shaft. To get back topside, they would have to climb - there were rusted metal bars forming a ladder, alongside which a steel cable was hanging. The group had used the cable to secure themselves when they were climbing down. So one of them took to the ladder, the other tried climbing the cable, when the praying mantis-like aliens emerged from the tunnel right beneath their feet.

The battle was a vertical chase between the PCs, armed with firearms with little or no ammo, and the aliens that were limited to their raptorial legs. It was tossing down empty guns onto the following monsters, rolling for stamina to stay ahead, rolling acrobatics to swing over to the ladder etc. In a desperate last-ditch, one of the two, the teams socialistic terrorist bomb builder, hung herself upside down by her injured legs to fight one of the monster hand-to-hand - and won. The interesting part was the verticality: You could lose your grip and fall, and there was no regular trading of blows with something that is hacking at your legs.

Thanks to some astronomic luck in dice-rolls, both PCs got out of the hole alive, although said revolutionary almost bled to death on the way up. I really liked the vertical battle and will implement such features more often n the future. Tactical inequality is always nice. The only thing the whole thing was missing was moving parts, like enormous drill looming above coming to life or something but the industrial plant on that planet had been left alone for eight decades. I couldn't imagine it still working, as scavengers had picked over it and ripped out all useful parts. Well - next time.

Pen & Paper: I died last night

So, last night in one of my pen & paper campaigns, my character died. Now I've had characters die before, usually towards the end of a campaign, as was the case here, but this death was somewhat unspectacular and anticlimactic. It also totally blindsided me and came right after a first for me in an RPG. Let me tell you about Dr. Hong-Owen and his not-so gallant death.

Dr. Tyson Hong-Owen (extra-points for anyone who gets the reference to my favorite body of sci-fi works) was a space-archaeologist. Space Indiana-Jonesing was the pitch that our GM had baited me in with so that was the profession I chose for my character. A young, vigorous man in the process of discovering Space-Mayan artifacts and working with passion on discovering their secrets. So when, during the course of the campaign living Space-Mayas showed up, he was on the forefront of first contact with them. And it cost him his life.

Another Dwarf Fortress part 1: Starting Out

I've recently been playing the great/complex/astonishing Dwarf Fortress again. My new fortress is using all I have learned to do in the game so far - and I'm still learning to use more features of the game, my ability to survive growing constantly. Let's see, how far this will get me this time...

The first year of the fortress was easy, as they always tend to be. Seven dwarves with hand-picked skill to get me trough my first winter and get a basic production and growth of the fortress going. A mason, two miners, a carpenter, a negotiator and a cook, I had the essential skills for all my dwarves. The group brought a small group of chickens and a rooster to get egg-production going too.

Adventures in KSP: Going for Duna!

I've been playing Kerbal Space Program for a while now, recording my progress in this blog. Let's head for the second big milestone in my space-program: The flight to Duna...

Creating a spacecraft able to fly to Duna, land there, and get back was going to be a big step for my space program. I decided that the month-long trip would need a crew of multiple Kerbals and a crew container to house them so they wouldn't go mad in a cramped capsule. It was going to be a multi-part spacecraft to be assembled in orbit. I decided to go for a three-section approach: A central command module with the habitat, avionics and power-supplies, a thruster-section with fuel and nuclear engines, and a lander that could parachute-land on Duna and then return back to orbit with a Kerbal on board. Getting the former and the latter into a stable orbit for assembly around Kerbin was easy, getting the heavy engine-section up there was a bit harder: It took me six attempts to get the thing up there, and that only worked because I re-routed the fuel from the thruster-section to go into the starting-stages. So the whole thing ended in orbit drained of fuel. Two Kerbals came up with the habitat/command-module and one came up in the lander. The crew was on board, all I needed to do now was to actually fuel the whole thing up...

I present: The KSC Troy. Kerbonaut spacewalking for scale.

Gamification of Christmas Gifts

This Christmas my family got together as we used to, each bringing one general-purpose gift that everyone could at least technically enjoy. To handle distribution of those as well as the basket full of cookies and chocolate that my grandmother brought along, I made a simple dice-game that gave the whole thing randomness, competition, and something akin to an economy. Let me elaborate:

There is a real gift for each family member in a santa-bag. At the end, everyone should have one of these. As they are wrapped up, you only know the contents of your own gift, but you can guess by size and shape (and temperature, more on that later) whether you want them or not. The grandma-stuff is bonus material and does not need to be distributed evenly, thus allowing for an actual winner of Christmas Eve.

The first phase works in the following way: Each player/family member takes turns rolling a pair of dice. A pair of either 1s, 2s, or 3s allow the player to take one bonus gift from the grandma-box. Any six and the player picks a regular gift from the bag. A pair of 4s, 5s, or 6s means the player must exchange their own regular gift with one that another player has already taken. The first phase ends whenever all regular gifts have been distributed (and are now secured for their respective owner). Over the course of the first phase, a mystery frozen-box my father had brought as a gift was the most coveted item, changing hands several times with my cousin and his wife trading it back and forth between them when they'd have to trade in order to keep it in their household. My uncle got it in the end and as it turned out that it was full of delicious frozen wild-boar steak, the calamity from those who had lost this prize was great.

The second phase kicks into gear with the war for the remaining grandma-gifts. A pair of 1s, 2s or 3s still means you can take one from the box but a pair of 4s, 5s, and 6s now means you can steal one of the grandma-gifts from someone else. On a six, one would unwrap their own regular gift. The phase ends once all grandma-gifts are out and all regular gifts are unwrapped. During this phase, as the market for sweets and cookies was definitely saturated, the fight was on over a bag of noodles, of all things. It ended up with my older cousin but I was able to strike a deal with her afterwards, exchanging it for something else. Cooked and ate them yesterday, tasting the sweet taste of victory over both my other cousin and my uncle.

So, the whole gift-ceremony took well over an hour and everyone was having a blast. I recommend gamification of your gift-giving ceremony, if your folks are up to it. A belated merry Christmas to those of you to whom it applies from MadZabGaming!

Another Artemis Play Session

So, the bi-weekly bunch of Artemis-players met up again the other week to play the game once again. And we decided to get the difficulty to max. Well we did have a Dreadnought. And basically expected to die. What followed was some of the most epic and intense role-playing/video-gaming experiences I have ever had...

So difficulty ten. Space to "interesting" (as "very interesting" tends to litter enough black holes and mine-fields as to seriously obstruct the AI invasion). We in the mightiest of the ships that players can have, the intimidating Dreadnought-class. We had enough people for all stations. And I was the captain. I didn't really expect us to get far. Difficulty 8 had killed us quickly enough before. It was just a matter of doing things with our backs against the wall.

We came into the battle guns/nuclear torpedoes blazing, quickly wiping out the first few of the vast waves of enemy ships. Docking with one of the stations, we re-supplied. Looking at the incredible number of enemy fleets on the long-range scanner, I decided that we couldn't defend all of the stations and would concentrate on one of them, in order to keep things going for as long as possible. Having stocked up on ammunition and fuel, we engaged the nearest waves of enemy ships.

The first one went well, as we used ECMs to take out shields and then followed up with nukes, pelting the flottilla with heavy fire-power until it was over. The second wave got us without heavy weaponry though and the station was too close to the battle to be docked with. Well, the Dreadnaught does have its main beam weapon, a powerful ray-cannon taking out smaller ships with ease. At this point we had a wholly different problem: We were running out of energy. To conserve fuel, I ordered the shield shut down and all sytems lowered as far as possible and then drag the ship back to the station. That was when the Bird of Prey Skaraan Enforcer uncloaked and opened fire.

Pen & Paper: Some actual play part 2

The party is still split, with one of them stuck in the city in the middle of riots protesting the recend draft for the civil war that is about to ravage the Empire again. Our main host of characters couldn't care less though, as they are stuck with their leader badly wounded in an improvised shelter in the mountains and a group of elite head-hunters with them, suspecting that it is indeed them they're looking for...

The session starts off with a rainstorm pelting down on the mountain-shelter the group has built for themselves (one of them is a carpenter so they're good at things like that). The group-internal animosities have somewhat cooled down and the team of mercs is out hunting so the players decide it's time to talk through what to do about the whole situation. There is a lot of arguing back and forth whom to put the blame on that kids death on once the mercs come back. Should they sacrifice the badly wounded group leader? Should they blame the actual killer, their scout who is currently gone with most of the groups money to get help? Will he even return and come back for them or will he simply spend the money and make himself a nice life for a few months?

Pen & Paper: Some Actual Play part 1

So, the bi-weekly gaming-group I have designed that world for and which is now my group of testing guinea pigs with regards to the injury chart I made has played again the other week and I thought I'd share what happened during the session (and before it, to bring you up to speed).


So, the group happens to be in deep shit. They had, tasked by the lord their apprentice-knight-leader, left the safe ground of the Empire, crossing the river into the territories of the barbarian tribes of the North, to aid a local king in a matter that needed intervention by foreigners. Now, Northern Barbarians do sound more terrible than they actually are, being mostly peasant-warriors minding their own business and/or carrying around wooden idols to worship their strange pantheon of gods but neighboring their lands are the swamps and moors inhabited by the Naga Queendoms, of which the entire party was rightfully afraid (except for the animal-trainer-chick from the Kalifate - she'd immediately hatched a plan to get a hold of a Naga egg to start breeding them or something...). After some back and forth the party managed to more or less accidentally escalate the situation between the Nagas, who had captured the local kings son and wanted to trade him for land, and the local king and his men, who had rushed out after the party had returned only with the childs hand (as they had only brought part of the silver intended to pay off the Nagas, the Nagas had only brought part of the prince - Nagas have no concept of respecting health and/or life of humans). The whole thing went terribly wrong with the king and his men and the party of adventurers fighting off one of the Naga Queens and her warrior escort. As the group was well prepared because their alchemist, having let herself into the house of the local barbarian scientist-guy, had developed a skin-effective poison that would hurt Nagas but not humans - bottles were thrown, chemical warfare was invented and the Nagas driven off eventually.