Adventures of the Black Lotus Part 1

Adventures of the Black Lotus Pt 1

Art Credit: Quiet Among the Stars by http://doommetal101.deviantart.com/

Adventures of the Black Lotus is a sci-fi compaign that I started about 5 years ago.

I spent alot of time setting up the background, the mysteries and conspiracies. And its a sandbox game with 20 minutes of introduction. 

I really wanted to run a travelleresque game, but I didnt know the Traveller rules very well so I ran it as a straight hero system game. But, I didnt have the right group. Some players were very transient / unreliable. Others, didnt know the system.  But really the way I run an rpg game, I try to make the rules as transparent as possible, while still keeping the mechanics there for people who enjoy it.  And as you might know, HERO GAMES has tons of mechanics. Id say, its almost cultish. On the downside, these very finite mechanics also slow the game down and suck the flavor out of the game. 

Since only one person beside myself knew the mechanics of hero games, I instructed the players to say AGGRESSIVE, Normal, Defensive, and I applied the appropriate modifiers thus unburdening the players. I also stripped out the segment chart, and STUN. 

So where are we now? Well I think for now I will stay with my cut up version of Herogames for combat. One of the new players has made some squeaking sounds about playing it in Traveller. I will Have to think that over.  I have a real suprise coming up for you TFT fans. But I dont want to spoil it. 

So tell us about the Sandbox Universe.

About 500 years ago Earth finally masters Jump technology. They sent out seven waves  of colony ships. It became a great corporate race to find a star. There was a low percent. None ever returned. They were assumed gone. 

Then again 400 years ago, another colonization wave took place. Some thirty jumps out from earth they found a grouping of colonizable systems, and set the flags down to extend humanities grasp.  All was not perfect. The first colony was ravaged by misfortune. it grew for a hundred or so years before they could restock and re-colonize the 19 closest star systems

 There was quiet among the stars. And progress.  Humanities greatest quality  is its resilliance.

Next up?  The map, The races. The mysteries, conspiracies and cat people who are still human.

Traveller type RPG using Starmada ships, and Hero Games RPG

Traveller type RPG using Starmada ships, and Hero Games RPG

>>Are your RPG players interested in a detailed ship-to-ship fight? How often will they want to man their battle stations and roll a few dice?

I was using Mongoose Traveller, and I wasnt crazy about the simple combat system in the book.Then I got mayday from rpgnow (where i bought most of my more recent mj12 games from), and thought about getting Azanti high lightening. I'm not crazy about Hero Game System combat for space ships.

My sandbox universe is wrought with flavor. ship to ship combat adds to the flavor of the game I am looking for. Essentially the group is in a mini-verse of 20 human systems. The alliance dominates with 80% of the worlds. All words occupants have a common origin earth. Combat is used to solve the pirate problem. There are no acknowledged aliens yet. Sometimes alliance systems to go the mattresses over $$$ issues, or political issues. over the last 300 years there have even been some colonial issues. But now all is quiet. The players are doing some mystery solving and exploring both of which require combat.

The Traveller ships I have are abstracted for fighting smaller ships and slightly larger ships. I think the players should feel like their ship is bigger than it is, to promote the "heroic feel".  That's what my style of rpg-ing is about.

A friend of mine out on Long Island uses Starfire to run his military rpg game. Its been years since ive played that and I dont think I want to invest in that or, a similar game SLAG, though slag looks interesting. I gave SS (3d miniatures combat game), I cant remember the full name of the game, but that company now has a license to do Traveller ships. Since I cant get a copy of the rules, I don't want to waste money on something Ill never use. I have too many rule systems laying around at home.

how often will the players roll the bones in space? Well they spent 3 games in a row, due to mis-jump and fought rogue miners a couple of times. They fought some kind of weird space pirates. They thought about taking on an alliance cruiser. They surrendered before displaying weapons (b5 reference).

Its not quite cowboys in space. I picture something like Elite (90's type computer game), something like Cthulu, a bit of spying and intrigue. Lots of trading and missions because its built on traveller making money building up for retirement. Since its built on Traveller without the weird races (cat people, dog people), the players have found, or been awarded a jump2 engine. The rest of the verse is still tinkering along at jump 1.

I'm sort of a game hacker. A bit of this. A bit of that. I hope that answers your question.

Mongoose Traveller With Starmada Starships.

Mongoose Traveller RPG. This is second most recent version of Traveller RPG. It's considered Version four.  Version Five is the 100 dollar book put out by Mr Miller on kickstarter. I regretfully reclined.  I have a been a Traveller fan for years.

Starmada is put out by MJ12GAMES.com   Thats Majestic12Games. Good name. The author is a good guy and very accessible. I applaud his hardwork over the last 17 years. I hope he keeps going.

I am not crazy about traveller ship combat, and I dont want to go back to Mayday ship combat so I have decided to do some hacking and trimming. Therefore I am employing Starmada Admiralty edition as a means.

The Traveller problem: Traveller does not use shields. Starmada does. Armor plating wont cut it for me, although it sounds very tempting. So shields represent a tougher hull.

So here are some Hacks to get Traveller to work with Starmada or is that the otherway around?

Hulls represent 20ktons of ship. this could be a problem for 1000kton traveller ships, but I dont anticipate playing with ships that big.

To make things a bit more heroic I am thinking of ditching the ODD rule for enemies. Realize that I want to have the players survive some firefights. Input?

Also on the ship design I wasnt sure if i should make it (AB) (AB)
or rate of fire 2. I think a dual laser should be ROF, since they both need to target one weapon.
correct me if im wrong (AB) (AB) means i can target 2 different enemies?

Another problem is skill levels, so I am going to use 2 OCV levels per +1 starmada modifer
For dueling pilots ill do a Skill lvl minus Skill level, and apply the +/- difference as a starmada modifier.

This OCV stuff comes from hero games. Im doing Hero games science fiction with traveleresque skills/ground combat, using starmada combat.

Heres a Basic Traveller Trader 100 ton,
Two hardpoints.
(88) Trader-class Alliance FreeTrader
Hull: 5 4 3 2 1
Engines: 6 5 4 3 2
Shields: 2 2 2 1 1
Weapons:
1:X 2:X 3:Y 4:Y 5: 6:
X: Hardpoint Dual Laser: 4/8/12, 2/3+/1/1; [AB]
Y: HARDPOINT Missle Launcher: 5/10/15, 1/4+/1/2; [ABCDEF]; Ammo: 6
Special: Cargo; Fire Control; Hyperdrive; Countermeasures


Heres a FAR FRIGATE 200 Ton; Three Hardpoints;
(163) Frigate-class Alliance FAR
Hull: 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Engines: 6 6 5 5 4 3 3 2 2 1
Shields: 3 3 3 3 2 2 2 1 1 1
Weapons:
1:X 2:Y 3:Z 4: 5: 6:

X: HARDPOINT Tracking Laser: 4/8/12, 2/4+/1/1 [AB]
Y: HARDPOINT Pulse Cannons: 3/6/9, 2/3+/1/1; Anti-Fighter; [ABCD];
Z: HARDPOINT Missle Rack: 5/10/15, 1/4+/1/2; [ABCDEF] ; Ammo: 6
Special: Cargo (6); Fire Control; Hyperdrive; Countermeasures

Enemy Pirate Escort.
(38) Escorts-class Pirate Free
Hull: 2 1
Engines: 4 2
Shields: 1 1
Weapons:
1:XY 2:XY 3:XY 4:X 5:X 6:X

X: Fixed Combat Beam: 3/6/9, 1/3+/1/1; [AB][CD]
Y: HARDPOINT Missle Launcher: 5/10/15, 1/4+/1/2, [ABCD]; Ammo: 4
Special: Point Defense; Countermeasures