I've launched a Kickstarter! Mecha Strike Force Omega

I've launched a kickstarter to raise funds to purchase art for a card game I've designed. I could go on about how great it all is, but what's the point! Check out the Kickstarter page, watch the video and see if you'd like to help getting this project off the ground.

It's got Mecha in it!

The Kickstarter Link

Hogarth's Heroes - a Traveller scenario

Hogarth's Heroes is a Traveller one-shot scenario for 1-5 players. Designed to be played in a single session. The PCs find themselves as part of a mercenary company.

The job looks simple, foward observation and the direction or Ortillery (orbital artillery). Then things start to go wrong. A mysterious light in the sky, comms failing, an enemy convoy, hunting dogs, and swarming militia. The party must escape and evade.


Available from : DriveThruRPG

I'm an author, I write adventure game books.

Space Hero Memoir 40K : Actual Play

 Here's an actual play of the game I presented in my last post. A mashup of Memoir '44, Space Crusade and Heroscape.

I'm an author, I write adventure game books.

Space Hero Memoir 40K

 I was looking at my collection the other night when it occurred to me there was a natural mash up just waiting to happen, so I went ahead and did it.

Here's the game set up for the first play-through...

As you can tell, all you need to play this game is Space Crusade, Heroscape Master Set: Rise of the Valkyrie (maybe two sets if you want four walls like me), and Memoir '44.

The idea was for the Emperor's best to find the Artefact Glyph and take it off board. Alas the forces of Chaos were to intervene.

After the first turn, the yellow squad were already in trouble, with chaos marines kicking their butt.

Sadly for the "good" guys things went from bad to worse very quickly, although they did take out the Dreadnought very easily.

It went very well considering I spent all of ten minutes working out stats.

The following stats are :

Move spaces, Melee Attack Dice, Range, Ranged Attack Dice, Defence Dice, Area Effect

Standard Marine 3,3,5,3,3
Close Combat Marine 3,5,2,2,3
Hvy Weap Marine 2,3,5,4,3,Yes
Ork 3,2,6,3,2
Gretchin 2,1,5,1,1
Android 3,3,6,3,3
Dreadnought 2,3,5,5,5,Yes
Genestealer 3,5,0,0,3

Moving onto higher terrain does not cost move points but you can only climb one level for each hex moved. When shooting at a lower target range is +1.

Players each get four cards in hand and can play one per turn and draw a replacement at the end of their turn.

All moves are completed before combat.

The Memoir cards in use are restricted to the following: Attack, Recon, Assault, Probe, General Advance, Recon in force, Pincer move, Counter attack, Direct from HQ, Firefight, Ambush

Area effect weapons hit the target hex, and one adjacent hex. Both hexs must be in line of sight (although you don't have to hit two if you don't want to. You make separate rolls for each hex. You can not target an empty hex you have to target an enemy.

Next time I might add in the Devastators from Space Hulk... or maybe the Ninja from duck! duck! Go!...maybe not that last one. 

I'm an author, I write adventure game books.

Decopedia Volume 2 released

I'm proud to announce the release of the second volume in the Decopedia series. This book has been written for use with the role playing game Traveller. It's designed to give the referee "drop ins" for their game. Each entry is separate and self contained so you can take it and squeeze it into your own game. Inside you will find, 10 planets, 10 alien animals, 10 people of interest, and 10 story seeds.

The planet descriptions highlight cultural, political and religious elements that make the system interesting to visit, this isn't just a string of statistics. The animals are all designed to inspire or be a part of an interesting encounter. the people of interest are individuals who have made a mark on Imperial society for good or bad, and each story seed is a core idea for generating an entire scenario.

This product was designed for use with Mongoose Traveller, but is compatible with all versions.

Currently available from DriveThruRPG 

I'm an author, I write adventure game books.

TRON - a session report

Last night I ran a TRON game using the Fate rules. The game was set in the "Tron Uprising" time-frame which is between the two films. If you've watched Uprising then I can tell you it's more specifically between Tron imprisoning Cyrus and meeting Beck.

I'd written some "boxed text" to read at the opening of the session but had to quickly rejig it because one player (Ruby) was late .

You're all gathered at Tron's headquarters in the wastes. he stands at the window looking out at a data storm raging across the landscape. With his hands resting on the glass and his back to you he starts to speak.

"I'm glad you could all get here this cycle. All that is except Ruby, late as usual. I've some questions for you."

Tron's head drops in what looks like despair.

"Why. Why do I surround myself with encrypted idiots? Why do I trust programs so blatantly incompetent? Why do I trust the rebellion to such audit ridden functionaries as you lot?"

"Ruby (Matt)! How could she let Seeker to get derezzed?"

"Dedar (Justin)! Why weren't you there with his cycle baton, what were you doing?"

"Motive (Stewart)! You! You! You blew the bridge before the team were across, what were you thinking?

"Tan (Robert)! And as to you, what should I do with you? A program seen talking to Lieutenant Paige, Tesla's second in command when you should have been coordinating these...these useless dropped bits!"

"I'm going to give you one more mission to prove yourselves. Succeed, or don't come back."

Without turning he tosses a data chip to the floor at your feet.

"Take that. Get out!"

Yeah, Tron is kind of a dick. The data chip held a map of the city with a series of points with red dots in a circle around the city. A single red dot with a hovering question-mark was placed dead center of the city.

They jumped on their bikes and headed to the location of the nearest red dot. What they found was a building site, where foundations were being laid. A little tom-foolery was indulged as the group distracted the ever-present guards so one of the team could slip inside the cordon for a closer look. This confirmed that the foundations were for something big as the foundations went deep but weren't that wide, so big and tall.

The three team members split up to survey the next nearest three red dots before meeting outside a bar near the center dot. This went off without incident and they confirmed that the same building operations were taking place at each site.

After a swift drink they headed over to the location of the big red dot. This was based on  a public park, but the park had been cordoned off. A powered anti-program ribbon circled the place at waist height, and was quite capable of derezzing anyone who touched it. Many guards where also present along with a number of tanks and a large command truck. The main feature however was a tall thin pyramid being constructed in the park. Parts for the pyramid were being off loaded from the elevated train track that ran through the park.

Having taken a look around they headed back to secret-tron-base-hq-hideout to meet up with Ruby-late-as-usual, and discuss what they wanted to do.

After protracted discussions which involved everything from blowing up the train tracks, flying a chopper into the train, getting "the people" to attack the train and getting the local mobster to raid the train they settled for simplicity. They also did some research and contacted their friends and associates in an attempt to find out more info. What they found was vague. All the energy storage in and around the city had been bought up and the only name associated with it was Farad, a name that was either whispered or made people close their mouths tight.

After purchasing a chopper and equipping everyone with chutes, flash bangs and limpet bombs, they flew over to the central site. The chopper was set to fly off into the wastes on its own after they jumped.  Their jumps didn't all go according to plan instead of landing on target they were scattered all over the building site.

One landed on the top of the pyramid and then made a second leap for the control truck but dropped short. He was spotted, and guards started converging on him. He raced to the cab of the truck.

One landed on the train station and quickly and quietly slid to the ground while planting bombs on the stations supports. He took out one of the nearby guards and stole his disk thus becoming camouflaged before slipping in amongst the guards converging on the truck.

Another dropped between two tanks, was spotted by a tank commander who tried to warn the nearby guards before our hero derezzed the fellow. He then jumped onto and into the tank and KO'ed the two crew. He had no idea how to drive the thing but gave it a gallant attempt, starting by rolling backwards over the other tank behind him.

The last one's drop went off without a hitch, straight inside the pyramid right next to a terminal where he got to work. He quickly discovered that the towers being built around the city were part of a massive project to steal the power from every program in the city (which would derezz them all) and store it in the pyramid. He also found that the main control unit for this machine was in the truck. This was the last information he got before being locked out and the alarm raised. He clambered to the top of the pyramid and jumped for the truck, landing on its roof.

The truck was started by one hero and kangaroo-ed dues to inexperience at driving. Our hero on the roof was nearly thrown off, but burned his ID disc into the roof as an anchor. The back doors flew open and a program looked out confused about what was happening. The captured tank rolled after the truck running over guards that got in its way.

The disguised PC jumped for the open back of the truck, missed, but her outstretched hand was caught by the program in the back who pulled her inside. She however wasn't that grateful and smashed him to the floor and held her two discs to his throat.

A tank was drawing a bead on the truck and it fired.

The die result here would have exploded the truck most likely killing all on board, but Fate points and planning came to the rescue. The truck jinked and the explosives on the train station were detonated distracting the tanker thus reducing the damage to minor.

The truck and stolen tank rolled towards the power ribbon that surround the square, but our heroic driver tossed one of his explosives at the ribbon generator, dropping the killer ribbon before racing through and onto the road.

They sped for the wastelands and discovered that the prisoner in the back of the truck was none other than the evil scientist Farad, and that this truck was the one and only such truck in existence.

They took Farad's ID disk leaving him to slowly lose his mind and used the tank to blow the truck before heading back to Tron's secret base.

There ended the game. The entire city was saved!

Once again the session went nothing like I imagined it would. The attack on the truck and pyramid was supposed to be the first of a series of attacks to bring down the great plan. The players spent longer than I had thought they would, planning. I'd expected a simple quick "Charge!" , and then onto the next part. Having said that it was an unexpected twist, they pulled it off awesomely creating a very cinematic ending.

So what did I do wrong? I shouldn't be too hard on myself as I think dropping Farad into the scene worked really well, and the players still went from investigating through to the big finish, so that was cool. But. There is always a but.

When the players jumped from the chopper I wanted time to think about where each landed and what the effects of the bad rolls they made would do to their landing site. So I went through each player's landing one by one, and my brain rushed back to the 90s and I carried on the scene with this initiative order thing in my head. Instead of letting the players just tell the story, I constrained them to taking turns. Yuk! Sorry guys. When I realised what I was doing I broke out of it and we got back into the flow. Hopefully lesson learned.

You can download the scenario from my Black Dog of Doom blog

I'm an author, I write adventure game books.

Mecha Mice released

Yesterday I released another of my little PocketMod RPGs...

On the island of Searbay mousekind has reached levels of technology undreamed of, but the thousand enemies that have always existed and always will are still just beyond the wall. With the invention of the Mecha Suit mousedom has a chance to survive, and the tools to hold back the darkness of dissolution and barbarism.

Join the Corp, become the Paw.

Mecha Mice is a story telling game of heroic mice armed with the latest technology fighting a thousand enemies a thousand times larger than themselves. The game is only 8 pages long and provided in standard PDF form and in "PocketMod" PDF. You can print the PDF version on a single sheet of paper and fold it into a pocket size booklet.

Available for only $1.50 at DriveThruRPG

I've started collating supporting articles at the Mecha Mice blog

I'm an author, I write adventure game books.

Paint the Town Yellow - A Judge Dredd session report

Last night was another Judge Dredd one-shot. Three Judges started out by being called to "robbery in progress". They arrived at the Fresh Yums eatery.

The first Judge on scene stayed back to get the lay of the land and ID'ed the getaway driver in a van outside the place. The second Judge pulled into the car park next to the van but when he pulled his lawgiver on the driver, the driver raised his hands revealing a device in his hands, with a single button which he pressed. The Judge's Lawgiver immediately switched to High Explosive mode. The third Judge arrived but couldn't stop his bike, it had gone haywire! He was well past the eatery before stopping.

Next the driver was put down and the boot of the van opened by Judge Speed, as Judges Stormvolt and Wessel closed in on the door to the eatery, one to either side. In the boot of the van a device was discovered, quickly disabled, and Judge Speed's Lawgiver went back to behaving.

Two armed perps burst out of the eatery. Stormvolt put his lightning line into one perp and took him down as Wessel stuck with his dagger (they had all set aside their Lawgivers as unreliable at this point), knifing the bad guy in the arm. The perp struck back at Wessel but his own weapon was turned on him and a rifle butt to the face put him down.

A quick peak into the restaurant showed three more bad guys barricaded behind tables. A stun grenade was thrown in and settled the business. Inside the owner was discovered dead, with the patrons hiding behind the bar. Questioning revealed that no attempt at robbery had been made. This left the Judges puzzling the motives while waiting for the support vehicles to turn up.

Judge Speed was sidetracked by a bunch of youths who tried to hit him with a catapult launched paint ball. He managed to get them under control as another call came in, reporting an armed attack on a nearby block's armory.

The judges jumped on their bikes only to discover the air lanes above being sent into spinning chaos by wing-suit-gliders illegally flying through them. They tracked the fliers to the ground and arrested them. They were about to set off to the armory when they witnessed another crime. Some punk dragged the driver out of an air car and climbed in. Judges Stormvolt and Speed would deal with this crime while Wessel headed off towards the armory (Damn him, seeing straight through my distraction plan!!!!).

The air car started taking off, a judge put a round through one of the fans and it crashed to the ground - crushing the legs of the victim. The perp made a break for it. Of course the perp was taken down, and a heroic effort lifted the car clear of the wounded citizen.

Judge Wessel meanwhile was heading to the armory but decided to visit the scene of a traffic problem which had been mentioned in the morning briefing. Here he found tek-div working to fix the problem. The cause of the trouble was a transmitter just like the one they discovered at the Fresh Yums.

When Wessel arrived at block where the armory incident was happening he found the blast doors open and a couple of block militia dead on the ground. He sneaked through the blast doors passing under an active robotic defence gun. Further into the badly lit interior he found bad guys using noisy cutting equipment to work on the high security armory doors that protect the nukes.

The other judges arrived, Speed heading for the side door while Stormvolt worked on the computer system where he managed to shut down the defence guns and lock down all of the other doors.

With all three judges inside they coordinated to shoot out three devices that the perps had brought with them (purpose unknown but guessed), quickly following that up with a storm of rubber richochet that put all of the perps down. They moved in and started questioning the perps and learned that they were sent here by "Big Jim", who lived in the basement of a nearby block. Judge Speed was compelled to get over there quickly while the other cleaned up the scene.

In the basement Speed found only a single apartment door. He blew the door and burst in to find himself in a spiral painted cylindrical corridor with another door at the far end. Blast doors slammed behind him and the corridor started rotating, then spherical drones popped in and started rolling around flailing at him with buzz saws. He dodged them, opened the door, found three crawl spaces, and dived into the middle one.

Wessel and Speed arrived. Wessel decided to take out the blast doors and with his bike laser while Speed sought another way in by taking a lift to a lower basement.

Wessel burnt through the doors and took out the drones with a trick shot before rushing to join Speed in the tunnel. Further down Stormvolt found an access panel in the ceiling of the sub basement.

Half way along the tunnel they found the tunnel widened out in to a 10 by 10 room, Speed realised it was a trap with both trigger and doors that would lock them in the room. He disabled the traps and they moved through the next tunnel until they found a  sheet covering the exit.

Stormvolt swung himself up to the hatch and got it open.

Lifting the curtain Speed found a man working at a bench with electrical tools When he challenged him the perp lifted his hand revealing a device with a big red button. The perp started his monolog and threatened to press the button. Speed lived up to his name and quickly put a bullet through the perp's wrist severing it. The hand dropped to the ground and tipped through the hatchway falling past Judge Stormvolt.

Thus was "Big Jim" and the Kill-Dart gang taken down.

As the referee I was really impressed with the players reactions and thought processes. Once again they surprised me at at every turn. I expected the perps at the eatery to give them some real trouble but their high tech gadgets quickly blew through them. At the armory I'd had this idea that there would be a big battle that would grind them down but once again they out-thought my scenario. Judge Wessel seeing through my list of distraction-crimes designed to make the Judges miss the armoury incident all together was an awesome moment for me. I knew I was out-foxed.

All the players gear usage was clever and original, they all made their characters shine exercising their aspects and skill base to make a great story.

Now for the bad bits, and they were all on me. I have a strict time window for play, three hours, that's it, no more. My timing was poor. I'd tried to include too much in the game and ended up having to rush through the final scenes rather than make them the big deal they should have been.

I could have skipped the distraction crimes, I should have. I did check the clock and thought I could squeeze it all in, but I goofed. I was too in-love with the idea of distracting the PCs and that cut a good five to ten minutes that I really could have used at the end. How can I fix that in future? I guess I need to make all the drop-ins appear later in the game so that they can be discarded based on time. Most importantly I shouldn't have used them mid-game just because I liked the idea of it. My selfishness here, ruined the big-finish these clever players deserved.

You can download the scenario we played here.

I'm an author, I write adventure game books.

Judge Dredd, session report (It Aint Christmas)

On Friday night I ran my second one-shot Judge Dredd session using FATE as the rules system. The scenario was called "It Aint Christmas" and featured an investigation into a murder and a series of related human mutilations.

It always amazes me how players deviate from what I expect them to do. I plan a scenario, a particular scene, and I even work out how they might resolve the issue, and then when play starts, off they go in a different direction!

I started the game by throwing the players into some action. A militia tank driver had gone nuts and started killing people. His tank was in a secure position just in front of a bunker with ferrocrete and fire barriers to either side of it. When the PCs arrived the tank had already blown up another tank and mown down a swath of people on the street. It had also started firing its main gun into the blocks opposite.

When I had thought-up this scene I fully expected the judges to make use of the cannons or lasers on their bikes, but no! They had a much cooler approach. :) One brave judge deliberately rode his bike across in front of the tank drawing its attention while another sneaked up and lobbed a riot-foam grenade at the tank. This immobilized the turret and allowed the judges to move in.

One Judge raced to the main gun and slipped a grenade down its barrel just as another blew the doors off the back. The barrel blew apart as it fired and a Judge dragged out the perp. Nothing whatever like I had imagined. :D

The heroes were then called to a body in a park on the 30th floor of a block. I had this investigative part of the session planned, laying out the investigation step by logical step...but they didn't go the way I expected, of course. They split the party and managed to leap a couple of steps to start questioning one of the guilty parties almost immediately, clever sneaky players!

This lead them down to the sub basements of the block and to the bad guys, a large group of Troggies that had tunneled into the basement. The basement was poorly lit, troggies nipping in between and over the stacks of crates that stretched off into the dimness and the players soon found themselves surrounded. However they were amongst the stacks of war supplies kept by every block. So out came the hardware. RPGs and machines guns. Bullets were sent shooting through the dark while explosives were piled into the tunnel the troggies were using to enter the block. As the Judges blew the explosives and ran for the exit.

There were so many cool moments created by the PCs, the craziness of the yodeling being played over the P.A. in the dim basement was great. The moment of switching to I.R. vision was very Aliens-like. Setting off the fire suppressing gas to suffocate the troggies was an expression of genius.

The final scene had the three Judges standing outside the block discussing what the perp should be charged with. When the explosion they'd set off in the basement had the whole block collapsing behind them. They watched the collapse, adding charges based on what the collapsing building destroyed as it fell. Comic genius.

Players like these make my day.

I'm an author, I write adventure game books.

It Aint Christmas - a scenario for Judge Dredd

This is a scenario for any Judge Dredd RPG. I played it with FATE and had a very successful session

(its a one-shot). It was played through with 3 Judges but the difficulty can easily be ramped up or down. It features two main combats, one at either end of the session, and a fairly simple investigation.

It's called "It Aint Christmas" because the new craze introduced is "Block Sledding" where citizens use wheeled sleds to race down the outside of blocks.

Basic stats are included for FATE (but the scenario is generic).

Download the scenario

I'm an author, I write adventure game books.

Hospital Corners - a scenario for Judge Dredd

 "Hospital Corners" is a system-generic scenario for use in playing a role playing session in the universe of Judge Dredd. It's designed with a single session in mind, but with a few incidents along the way that can be dropped in to extend the session if you want.

I wrote this scenario for a game of FATE but it has no stats or figures, so it can be used in whatever system you're using to run Judge Dredd.

It's a minor investigation type scenario with a planned battle towards the end. The drop-ins already mentioned can be used to spice up the mid game of things start to lag.

Download the PDF

I'm an author, I write adventure game books.

Judge Dredd - Mongoose

I've just finished reading the Mongoose "Judge Dredd" RPG book. What they've put in this book is good but I'm left a little disappointed and here's why.

This is a setting-book, you require Mongoose Traveller to actually play the game. I find this so very disappointing. What I really wanted was one book with setting and rules.

There are no rules to play, in here. There are Char' Gen' rules but these refer to the Traveller rules so you end up with two books to look through, which is tedious and a pain the butt. With this book alone you can not fire a gun nor ride a Lawmaster. :( You can gain skills when creating a character that are not explained in this book. :(


There are other omissions too which I found rather galling. Traveller has a wonderful set of subsector rules for mapping space, I'd hoped there would be the equivalent rules in here for mapping a sector of Mega City 1. Nope. In fact there is a section saying you don't need to do this, that you should keep you game versatile and use story rather than maps. Dammit, I wanted to map a sector, build a series of blocks. That was actually what I expected from a Traveller based system. So yes, disappointing.


The book has some great pieces of comic book art. But no maps, not one. It even goes into detail of one sector telling you all about a number of city blocks and characters therein, but again, no maps. I find that puzzling.


I've used the above to waffle on about how disappointed I was, but that is offset by how good this book is as a resource. If you have read one or two Dredd stories and want to run a game set in that world this book is an excellent purchase. You don't need to have read every Dredd story ever, as all the major themes in the background are covered in this book. There is a lot of detail here that will make you salivate. If you want to run a Dredd game using any rules-set I would suggest this book is a must buy.

I'm an author, I write adventure game books.

I killed the Alien!

Today was truely my day of days! I played "Legendary Encounters: An Alien Deck Building" game

and I won. Every other play of it up to this point had ended in bloody disaster, twice with the Nostromo blowing up killing everyone. But not today!

I was playing solitaire with four characters. Having tried previously with just two I can now say that four is better. Both times when I've played with four I've had much more control over the game.

I played slightly differently to previously, and let's face it that's how you beat these games. Is this a constantly winning strategy, who knows, but anecdotally it worked during this play.

In my previous plays I paid a lot of attention to trying to give each character matching symbols to unlock the extra abilities. During this game I didn't do this. Instead I tried to simply duplicate cards in a characters hand to do the same thing, and this worked at least three times.

The second difference was not filling my hand with new cards just because I had money to spend. Instead I wasted some money rather than grab 1-attack cards. This actually led to the row of available cards filling with what I considered "junk". This happened twice, but did lead me to get a couple of duplicate-card purchases which helped later.

The final tactic, was minor but made a huge difference. As I drew a new hand of cards I always sorted the "coordinate" cards and placed these face up. This made sure they were always front and center. These were critical to the win. I constantly used other avatar's cards to purchase or attack, there was no thought of reserving a "coordinate" card. If I could use it I did, except on one occasion where I had to leave one attack card to deal with a face-hugger. By always using these cards I increased each individuals purchasing power enabling me to get the better cards sooner.

It so happened that I never deliberately scanned a room, only doing this when I had spare attack value that I couldn't use to actually attack. I always scanned the most expensive room that the cards allowed.

So I have completed the first film. Next time I play it'll be the "Aliens" movie, and I'm looking forward to getting a close look at the cards for that film.


... and I've just heard that a Predator version is coming, I'd better hurry up and get through the next three films!

I'm an author, I write adventure game books.

Mechs COPS - Session 3

The third session was planned to be the final session. With the heroes having saved the city from a nuclear detonation last time, I was left pondering how to up the pressure. In the end I started teasing the final session by making a series of posts throughout the week, as follows....

 -----

++ ALERT ++
Satellite intel indicate Kargan assault forces may be forming at multiple naval ports.

-----

++ ACTION ALERT ++
Satellite intel confirms heat blooms in the all ships and submarines along the Kargan coast.
++ ACTION ++
All military forces engage DEFCON 3 readiness protocols.
++ ACTION ++
All civil authorities prepare coastline evacuation plans.

-----

++ MISSILE LAUNCH WARNING ++
SET STATUS DEFCON-1
ACTIVATE MISSILE DEFENSE SYSTEMS.
MILITARY UNITS TO COASTAL DEFENCE STATIONS.
CIVILIAN LEADERSHIP TO BUNKERS.
MARTIAL LAW DECLARED.
CIVILIAN TRAFFIC FORBIDDEN WITHIN 100 MILES OF COAST.
CIVIL DEFENSE UNITS ACTIVATED.

-----

 ++ CONTACT REPORT ++

MISSILE DEFENC[]S 96% EFFECTIVE.
MOYKO BA[]E. NO CONTACT.
HONOR[]TO BASE. NO CONTA[]T.
JINO NAVAL []ASE. CARRIER SU[]K. SABOTAGE. INFIL[]RATORS.

-----

++ CONTACT REPORT ++
KARGAN INF[]NTRY ON THE GROUND: KIANNA AI[]BASE.
KIANNA CITY MILITIA  CLOSE ON BASE.

-----

"Thanks, John. I'm standing one mile from Jino naval base. As you can see I'm wearing a rad suit, and the scene behind me makes it obvious why. The thousands of destroyed homes that previously occupied this rubble strewn landscape were owned by navy personnel and civilian naval workers.

"I'm told that the Kargan nuclear missile that struck at Jino was one of ten aimed at the docks. This reporter supposes the Kargans targeted Jino because of the military vessels docked there. But as you can see, the collateral damage is extensive.

"How many people perished here? Certainly thousands. Most I hope, are safe in the shelters and will survive this unmitigated and  unnecessary attack.I...I...I for one, will be joining the militia right after I terminate this broadcast. I'm close to tears right now...They dare to call it a war of liberation! Liberation!...I swear to you all, I will kill the first Kargan bastard I see.

"Back to the studio. Miko Yasuki, channel three seven five."

-----

++ CONTACT REPORT ++
AIR RAID APP[]OACHING JINO COAST.
ESTIMATE 600 AIRCRAFT.
ALL AIR []NITS INTERCEPT, TARGET TRANSPORTS FIRST.

-----

The aid held out the radio-phone for Major General Hoata White, but the General hesitated. His mind was a whirl of despair-level decisions and he was almost afraid to talk to phone.

It didn't matter who was on the other end of the line, he knew what they wanted. They wanted help, something he couldn't give them. As he paused he felt a shaking fear rising from the pit of his stomach. He remembered when this had started, shit, only sixteen hours ago! Back then, he'd had three complete divisions under his command, plus a mecha air wing, and a battalion of front line combat mecha.

Now what did he have? Nothing. He was left pushing around the crumbs of his forces. No strike unit, no reserves. What could he offer the man on the other end of line. Hope? Was that it, was he reduced to giving his men hope?

The General blinked, twice. Hope. There was, Hope.

He snapped the phone from his aid's hand, covered the pick up with a gnarled hand and whispered to the aid. "Get me the District 6 police bunker. Now!"

He cleared his throat and spoke calmly into the radio-phone.

Police Lt Hope

"Report soldier. How can I help?"

-----

So the session proper started. With the military devastated, the militia gone, they turned to the COPS. Lt Hope answered his army-uncle's call and loaded his mekton unit up onto the road-train. Each PC's mekton was issued a heavy duty shield which snapped onto their backs.

All the PCs knew was that they were wanted out at Jino navy base. The road train rushed them out of the city and onto the interstate. The train rolled to a standstill on an elevated road that crossed an extensive marsh. A couple of hundred meters of the road was missing leaving a marshy gap.

After puzzling about a way to get across, they convinced the train driver to uncouple the tractor unit and reattach at the other end and push the first few cars over the edge to form a ladder down to the marsh. When he was in position Tanaka climbed down the cars to the marsh where he started sinking. Yamamoto jumped his mekton down from the road and immediately sunk to his chest. Tanaka slipped the shield off his mekton's back and used it to spread his weight. He was then able to help pull Yamamoto free. When Tylor descended down the "ladder" they found themselves stuck.

It didn't take long for Tanaka to start knocking up some mekton-marsh-skis from the now wrecked road-train. With the skis fitted they were able to cross the gap in the road and reach the first road-support pillar on the other side of the break. The first two to attempt the climb up to the road failed, sliding back to earth, but the third PC made the climb and punched a a hole through the road so they could climb up. The other two made it through and they turned to say farewell to the rest of the COPS unit who were just starting to make their way down the opposite end of the break.

In the outskirts of the city, or rather the wreck of a now-radio-active city, they found  a mech hand twitching and sticking out from underneath the huge piece of masonry. Between them they managed to free the mech, which turned out to be the sole survivor of a military unit. Getting crushed beneath the rock must have saved his life. His mech was a wreck but Tanaka managed to do some field repairs that got him running.

Round about now they realised they didn't know the purpose of the mission! A quick radio call back to Lt Hope revealed what they needed to do. Vital launch codes were unsecured and still on the sunken aircraft carrier in Jino. The PCs needed to recover the suitcase full of codes.

They could see a flying mech in the distance running figure eights over where the navy port was supposed to be and making occasional strafing runs. They didn't fancy taking it on, so looked for a subterranean route to the navy base. The metro system proved to be closed and locked down behind blast doors, as it was used by the populous as a bomb shelter.

Scouting around revealed storm drains running below the surface, so they dung their way in and started shuffling along the drain system.  After some time they reached the end of the drains, and dug their way upwards , ending up sheltering in a crater.

It was time to do something with that enemy flying mech. Tanaka decided to try one of his strike missiles. In what can only be called phenomenal luck, he not only hit it, but got a head strike that took it out in a single hit. The enemy mech spiraled into the ground.

From the crater they could see the aircraft carrier, laying on it side on the far side of the bay. Enemy mechs were moving in the distance to either side so they opted for the submerged option. Sprinting for the water they sealed up and dived beneath the surface. They waded across the floor of the bay, even at one point feeling a vessel move above them, until they reached the carrier. Here they were a bit nonplussed and unsure how to proceed.

In the end they moved (still underwater) to the rear of the ship and found one of the screws. It was a matter of minutes to disconnect the screw from the shaft. It whooshed to the muddy bottom leaving the hollow shaft open to the water. In they went, crawling to the end of the shaft and melting their way out with liberal use of plasma guns.

In the engine room they wondered where the codes would be and decided they would be in CIC. A little investigation soon found a map stuck to the wall. Unfortunately the insides of the aircraft carrier was not designed for mechs so they had to start kicking and tearing their way through the ship, spelunking their way to a soggy CIC.

When they found it, they realised it was the armoured heart of the ship and they couldn't tear a way in. As they moved around to the doorway vibrations and noise indicated the enemy were here too.

In a rush the tore through the final wall to find themselves in a shaft. The enemy had cut their way into the ship from its upturned side, effectively driving a shaft down to the CIC. A large energy drill was working on cutting it way through the wall of CIC (which was the scene's floor as the ship was on its side) and was being operated by a big enemy mech.

I should remind you, at this point, that this is still all underwater (in the ship).

They laid into the mech. Yamamoto went in with mecha-claws acting s as a kind of distraction while the others started plinking it with plasma rifles. The improved Military Grade armour proved very effective against their police weapons. The plasma beams seemed to just be pock marking its surface. Fortunately for them the barrage of shots kept the enemy mech staggered and thrashing about unable to retaliate.

A Strike missile was fired and burnt through the leg armour and Tanaka took advatage of this. While the mech was still fighting and reeling with the others, he slipped in behind it and with some quick moves disconnected the leg and proceeded to beat the mech with the dismembered limb!

In the end though, the three PCs and their NPC army buddy wore the Kargan mech down and left it in pieces.

Yamamoto set the drill back into position, it had been knocked during the fight, and burnt his way  through the wall of CIC. A man sized hole was made.

At this point one of the PCs was supposed to de-mech in this watery radio-active hell hole and go get the brief case with the codes. Dying a heroes death while saving the nation. Of course, PCs will be PCs so it didn't go down that way.

The drill, which had a massive internal power source, was slipped from its braces, pushed through the hole into CIC and detonated with a Strike missile. Everything in the room was vapourised, including the codes. - Darned PCs, ruining my bittersweet endings!

Knowing there were more Kargans topside, they elected to leave the ship the way they came it, only this time ensuring the nuclear engines would overheat and explode, thereby ridding the world of more Kargans.

So ended the mini campaign.

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Mecha COPS - Session 2

We ended our last session with our heroes half way up the stairs of the Herego building about to start trading shots with heavily armed and armoured bud guys across the atrium.

I opened the session with a bit of a cut scene. Simultaneously the PCs heard screams from the floor above and noise below. Above them and across the atrium a man in a business suit was fighting for his life as a pistol armed bad guy was trying to push him over the glass banister.

The noise from below turned out to be another bad guy, but this one seated in a strange looking mekton. Unlike most mektons which are enclosed this one was open fronted. It was also armed with a strange very large gun that was discharged towards the heroes. It appeared to be a sonic weapon as it made all of the PCs feel sick but otherwise did not hurt them. In these same few seconds their lieutenant spoke over the radio informing them that he was unsure if they had declared a nuclear emergency or not so he was dispatching a road-train with their mektons (the full size mecha, and not the puny road-striker-mecha they had been in so far.).

This was the end of the cut scene, but it allowed me to present the players with a dilemma. People above in trouble and a threat below. I then threw them each a personal flash back to reinforce the split decision thing.

Tanaka was a child walking through a park his dog on its lead, his older cousin holding his hand. Then two large bully-boys slapped the lead from his hand. The dog ran for the lake and the ducks. It jumped into the water but couldn't get out because of the concrete ledge around the water. He ran to the water's edge just as the bullies started slapping his cousin around. He ran back to the bullies and attacked them, and was slapped to the ground for his trouble. The bullies turned on Tanaka and he shouted for his cousin to save the dog...

Yamamoto was in his early mekton training on a road patrol when a burning building caught his eye and he ran that way. At the building he found a woman leaning out of a window screaming for help. She was out of reach of the mekton so our hero piled up some civilian cars and climbed onto them. He could see the room behind the woman was about to collapse, but the woman was shouting to Yamamoto to rescue her daughter, another floor up and another window over. He couldn't reach the girl and the woman's room was about to collapse. He shouted for the girl to jump into his mekton's arms. She jumped...short...

Tylor's flashback took her back a year or two before she joined the mekton squad.She was a sniper on overwatch at a hostage scene. She was watching through a scope as a bad guy threw a civilian against the buildings window and started to swing a knife into his throat...just as her radio alerted her to the fact that the negotiation had gone bad and the villians were going to set off a bomb. In the next window over she could see a bad guy about to press a detonating button. She switched target to the guy with the detonator and fired...

Then the session proper started.

Tylor and Yamamoto took the fight upwards, climbing the stairs and shooting down both the heavily armed men. Tanaka still in his bear-form striker-mekton decided to take on the bad guy down below. He leaped from the stairs plummeting fours floors to pound the mekton below through the wooden floor.

As Tylor and Yamamoto climbed the stairs they discovered the company employees under the guns of a five bad guys. As they took them out Tanaka mauled the mekton driver and used his bear's energy gun to decapitate the last bad guy on the ground floor.

When it was over, ten bad guys and one civilian were dead. Our heroes followed the surviving and handcuffed bad guy to the hospital and put the virtual thumb screws on him. They soon discovered that when they left the Herego building they'd left a nuclear bomb behind! They finally called the boss and declared the nuclear emergency.

They raced back to the Herego building as the population headed for the shelters. At the scene of the previous battle, only the police tape and rubble was left to show that anything had happened. They raced down into the basement.

18

They smashed through the doors.

17

They smashed through the inner doors.

16

Tanaka de-meched and edged into the first room.

15

Then he saw the corpses in the side rooms.

14

...and edged into the control room.

13

After a sharp breath Tanaka burst through the door, bullets blasted all around.

12

Yamamoto and Tylor took out the two bad guys.

11

Tanaka took a look at the bomb with its ticking-down counter.

10

Red wire...or blue

9

Blue.

8

The countdown stopped.

Our heroes returned to ground level but there were no cheering crowds, only Lieutenant Hope on the radio telling them there was a "real" emergency to deal with. One of the planets mega-fauna had broken through the defensive protection and was in the park. They quickly jumped into the police mektons which were sitting on the road train and set off towards the park.

When they reached the park there was a large hole in the wall, but no sight of the mega fauna. They moved carefully into the park and discovered movement under the water of the river. A plasma cannon soon got this winkle out of his shell. A massive snake-like creature erupted from the water and towered over them. They opened fire. The creature flailed smashing one of our heroes across the park into a number of cars. Another thrash opened up a massive hole in the ground as the massive beast collapsed the roof of an underground metro system. The heroes poured in the fire burning up the beast little step by little step until they finally brought it down.

And there ended the session. The PCs have saved the city from terrorists, a nuclear device and a massive mega fauna capable of crushing buildings with a flick of its tail.

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P.A.G. Space Battles - published

P.A.G. Space Battles is two player wargame played with cards laid on a tabletop, each card represents one space ship or piece of terrain.

The Pink Empire and the Green Conglomerate have been at war for centuries with no end in sight. You take control of one these factions, play out your space ships onto the tabletop and seek to DESTROY the opposing force with laser cannons and manoeuvre.

Using a comic art style and an easy-to-learn system P.A.G Space Battles will appeal to the younger player, or the older player just looking for a beer and pretzel game. Games can last anywhere from 30 to 60 minutes depending of the selected scenario and the size of the forces involved.

Five scenarios are included, but you're not limited to just those games. Select your fleets, place down some terrain and battle away in the vacuum!

P.A.G. Space Battles is a print and play game. 7 page rules PDF. 1 page counter sheet PDF. 5 page ship-cards PDF (2 pages of ships, 2.5 pages of terrain, 1 page of card backs)

Currently available from

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Mecha COPS - Session 1

Mekton II cover

Last night we played our first session of a mini campaign of Mekton II, a mecha themed game from 1987. I've had this game for about 10 years and it was way overdue for a dusting off.

As a theme I opted to have the player's be Mecha COPS, an "elite" segment of the force who operate in ... mecha. Each character was given a Road Striker (that's a small transformer) for personal use but also had access to a full size mecha (Mekton) when the situation would call for it.

All the characters had recently transferred to the Mecha COPS and their new Captain was not happy about the transfers, so he gave them the crappy jobs. I started the session with each PC getting a little spotlight scene in which to shine.

Bruce Yamamoto had been sent off to do a rolling road patrol downtown, where nothing much happened. He was pulling his mecha-car into a fast food drive thru when a young lad driving driving a buggy screeched into the area, bounced over a path making pedestrians flee to safety, and skidded his car directly into line in-front of Yamamoto. A small sign in the rear of the car lit up saying "you lose",  played la cucaracha and belched a thick black cloud of smoke out the exhaust all over Yamamoto's mecha-car.

Bruce transformed and stepped round the front of the car. The open mouthed driver shoved his car into reverse. Yamamoto grabbed the front of the car and lifted. Through the mech's P.A. he demanded the driver put up his hands and get out his paperwork. The driver tried to comply, keeping his hands up and trying to grab his paper work in his teeth.

Yamamoto's radio blared with an urgent call...

Emiko Tylor's mecha-bike was parked beside the road on which she played the roll of replacement traffic-light at a four way intersection. Blaring horns alerted her to trouble on the uphill road. Turning she saw a school bus careening downhill in her direction with the driver slumped over the wheel. she ran for her mecha bike.

The kids on the bus were screaming (as you might expect) and one was even trying to climb out the back window. Emiko dived onto her mech-bike, transformed and ran back into the road.

Realising her mecha didn't have the weight to stand in front of the bus she let it pass and grabbed onto the rear as it whizzed by. With her mech's heels digging furrows in the tarmac she brought the bus to a halt and the kid that had been climbing out the back window dropped into her mech's arms.

Tylor's radio blared with an urgent call...

Jimmy Tanaka had been detailed to do foot patrol in Popsi park. That suited him as his beast-mecha had a feature that allowed it to follow him under its own steam. At an intersection ahead he saw an altercation between a man and a woman.

As he got closer the altercation got worse, the man grabbed the woman's child and held a knife to its throat, the screaming started. Tanaka used his bespoke mecha-remote to have his mecha ( in bear form ) growl and tower over the man. He flipped out, dropped the knife (and the kid) and ran for it.

Before Tanaka could follow, his radio blared with an urgent call...

[As an aside, I was unhappy with the above scene, it wasn't dynamic enough I should have come up with something with more action - sorry Brian]

The radio call summoned the players to the scene of a police incident, where terrorists had taken

Cutaway view of the Herego building

control of the Herego building. Police had tried to storm the building, and twenty of them had been shot down in a storm of fire, they needed mecha support!

Tylor on the speedy mecha-bike screeched to a halt outside the line of cops and ambulances and liased with the sergeant on the scene. He explained what had happened in a stressed voice and demanded the Mecha COPS do something.

Transformed Tylor crossed the road and went up the steps to the glass doors. In her imagination she could hear the Captain screaming at her about damage to the building, so she carefully reached for the door handles. Just at that moment grenades dropped all around her from the roof top shattering the door anyway. She edged into the lobby and stalled looking at the next set of glass doors.

Having carefully negotiated these she was in the security entrance. Through the security window she could see that the guard had been killed. The next doors were wooden. She peeked through the portholes into the atrium beyond and then proceeded to try and open the doors. Unfortunately the mecha hands punched through the door and knocked it off its hinges. Doh!

Yamamoto arrived at the scene, transformed and spotted movement on the roof of the Herego building. Bullets started spattering  across his front and off the tarmac all around him. He whipped round his beam weapon and blasted a hole in the wall around the roof.

Fearing more damage to the building Tylor de-meched (is that a word?) and stepped into the foyer, but found herself under fire from a doorway. She traded fire using her rifle and brought down her man. He was wearing torso armor and instead of killing him, her shot felled him. It was the work of a few moments to have him in cuffs.

Yamamoto moved away from the police, hoping to draw enemy fire away from the unarmoured normal cops.

Tanaka trotted onto the scene riding on top of his beast mecha but on seeing the scene of carnage transformed into an upright bear with himself inside its armoured hull.

A bad guy appeared  on the roof holding a rocket launcher. Yamamoto took his shot and vapourised the man and setting off his rocket in a secondary explosion.

Tylor started up the central stairwell and was a level up when Tanaka crashed through the remains of the doors into the atrium and started following her up the stairs. His mech leaving a trail of destruction on the wooden floor and stairs. A grenade was rolled down the stairs towards our heroes.

Outside Yamamoto traded fire with another roof top villain, this time removing his target's head. The body fell over the parapet to crash onto the stairs out front. Bruce ran for the building's entrance de-meched (that word again) and sprinted for the stairs.

Tanaka wrapped Tylor in his mech's arms and raced over the grenade where it exploded harmlessly behind, the shrapnel bouncing off his mech's armour. They rounded the next turn in the stairs and found themselves facing three bad guys.

Tylor took a shot, blowing a leg off of one gentlemen. Her next shot knocked another to the ground, then she ducked behind Tanaka. Bullets bounced all around and off the mech as they returned fire. One of the bad guys had a weird large-muzzled weapon which appeared to fire ...fire, in a lance...so it was maybe a fire lance? Whatever it was, it missed and set fire to a few inspirational posters of cats.

Tanaka used a huge paw to swipe at the bad guys but they easily ducked aside. Yamamoto arrived in time to see Tylor blast the arm off of a second criminal. Tanaka pinned down the remaining obstreperous  bad guy until they had them cuffed/bound/incapacitated, and then he moved further up, fortunately only squashing the severed limbs and not the bad guys, and demolishing more stairs as he went.

Yamamoto and Tylor stayed behind a moment when they spotted a "device" hanging out the coat of one of the villains. they examined it but couldn't make it out. Realising Tanaka was the expert they took it to him for identification. When they dropped it into his mech-paw he soon recognised it as a remote detonator for a nuke. A hurried call to the police outside left everyone confused as the sergeant out there asked if they were declaring a nuclear emergency and they wouldn't confirm or deny the emergency status.

Yamamoto had seen people on the top floor of the building when outside, so the players decided to keep heading up. At the next turn in the stairs they spotted two individuals across the atrium opposite them. These men were armed with BIG rifles, and unlike the other bad guys who only had torso armor, these guys also had helmets.

There ended session 1.

As stated above, I was disapointed in myself for Tanaka's opening scene, but otherwise I think it went well. It's been a while since I've played a game with such a detailed combat system and I was surprised at how long it took to actually do the fighting. I thought we would have blown through the scenes I had planned at the Herego building, but fighting is rather drawn out. Mind you, the detail in the system stopped it from becoming boring, as the results helped the narration.

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Classic Traveller Podcast

I've just published the first episode of a new podcast designed for referees and players of the classic version of Traveller. It's got the cool name of "Behind the Claw".  Get your RPG podcast fix!

The podcast's homepage

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Classic Traveller - Lament for Oretroos

Between the last session and this another radio intercept was picked up...

Radio Intercept

The session started with the PCs and thirty of their mercenary company standing on the riverbank as a horde of writhing fish/frog-like things rolled towards them.

Keeping out of reach they split up to see how wide-spread the horde was. As far as they could tell it was all along the river. They rejoined the unit, formed a defensive circle and started pouring out the fire. A rough calculation showed them collectively doing around 1600 points of damage per round.

The horde of creatures just didn't stop, they kept coming, and an hour later ammunition was running low and even the FGMPs were overheating, but still they came. During the combat they PCs noticed that the creatures were attacking each other as well as coming for them and that they were cannibalistic too.

They decided to pull out and head for the nearby (ish) native village and the caves there that they thought would be more defensible. In wedge formation with the FGMPs carving out the path they headed for the village. As they moved away from the water the animals thinned out until soon only the odd one or two had to be eliminated. Behind them the horde was destroying everything, buildings trees and even each other.

They spent the night unmolested in the cave, and dawn, ever the hope of man, showed bright and clear with no sign of pursuit by the horde. They started to head back towards the camp site and called down a shuttle from the King Richard. The shuttle swept high over the camp reporting the devastation and then came by for closer pass. As the crew were reporting what they found at the camp the radio went dead. Fearing the worst the PCs hurried onto the camp and could soon see that the shuttle was burning on the ground.

As they moved towards it they suffered from another of the EMP-like pulses and a third of the team found their power armour powering down. At the same time they came under laser fire from the woods. The team went to ground and started returning fire at unseen targets.

After a few rounds of blind fire, two of the company were down, and the first of the enemy were seen. At first all the PCs could see was silver reflect-like shields and the snouts of laser rifles . When they hit them with the FGMPs which would normally melt through reflec, they found the the plasma beams were near useless! In a heartbeat they commanded the mercs to switch to projectile weapons and a suppressing fire of Snub rounds was sent towards the enemy.

More of the shields appeared as the team split into three. Jocko lead his squad straight-in with Bear and Kepler's squads flanking to either side. The enemy turned out to be a small squad of lightly armoured Aslan. The battle didn't last long, but two men from each team went down to the Aslan lasers, bringing the total casualties to eight. The last two Aslan made a break for it, running with the shields held behind their backs. For our intrepid heroes, shooting enemies in the back has never been a problem, the last of the Aslan were therefore cut down without concern. They looted the bodies discovering a few interesting things. The Aslan were dirty and grubby, obviously having been in the field for some time. They were also carrying iron-claws the Aslan equivalent of swords, but of most interest were the shields they'd been using. they were thin foil like devices that folded easily into a pocket and "popped" out to form the reflec-like shields.

It seemed to the players that the Aslan invasion of the sub sector had obviously reached this world and that it was time to get the heck out.

As Kepler the medic went to work (and only losing two of the casualties) the team spread out to search the area. They located an Aslan mortar and took possession of it. They advanced to the downed shuttle and sent out patrols to secure the area. The only survivor on the shuttle turned out to be none other that the head steward from the King Richard who had got caught on the shuttle went it emergency-launched.

Once the area was declared clear of enemy forces they called the remaining shuttle to come and pick them up. As it entered the atmosphere those on the ground caught sight of something...

On a distant ridge line a huge biped could be seen, when examined it was revealed to be large Aslan robot, much bigger than the one's the team had previous appropriated. It appeared to be carrying a large dual barreled weapon. It became obvious that the thing had seen them and as it raised it's gun, then melted it with their FGMPs. As it crumpled a group of 10+ Aslan were seen to come running over the ridge and down into the trees with another robot. They set up the mortar and fired off the remaining rounds in the general direction of the Aslan forces, hoping to disable the Aslan force with what they hoped were EMP mortar rounds.

As the shuttle swept towards them the Aslan fired at it, the PCs could see the laser beams skimming past but missing the shuttle. They rushed all of their people onto the shuttle and headed space-side at the double quick.

Once on board the King Richard the PCs had some trouble convincing the Captain to jump out of system ASAP as he was still thinking of completing the passengers "holiday". This was however given short shrift and a few "kill him and take the ship" asides were swapped. The next question was were to go.

The ship was scheduled to rendezvous with the refueling ship in the deep dark between systems as it had on the way out, but the PCs seriously wanted to head to one of the nearby planets, one of which had a Navy base. The Captain was dead against this. He didn't have funds to refuel the ship at an unscheduled port and sending for funds could take months. The passengers would be screaming blue murder if they did that. In the end it was settled to make the jump out into the dark.

The refueling ship however had been attacked. It was right where is should have been, but there was no life sign. Investigation showed that the ship had been hit with scathing laser fire. The PCs boarded and ensured there were no enemies aboard and then shunted some of the King Richards engineers across to look at the situation. The main transfer pumps were out of action but after getting one of the generators online they were able to jury rig a new pump. Unfortunately this new system would be like filling a swimming pool with a garden hose, it would take days.

Back on the quiet peaceful King Richard a day or two later there was a minor explosion in the engineering section that rocked this ship and upset the passengers. The engineer reported that the jury rigged pumping system had been the root cause but that he would watch it carefully from now on.

A good while later a fire was reported in a cabin. The crew took care of it but when the PCs wandered down to take a look at the situation, they found bodies amongst the debris. They were the bodies of the Montaski's. The PCs immediately went looking for the Curdelets. The men of these families had been at each other throats on the way out. They found Mrs Curdelet in her stateroom, and she thought her husband was in a bar somewhere.

They pounded down to the nearest bar, found one of their Vargr troopers struggling to drink from a human pint-glass. He indicated that the man they wanted was in the corner booth. In the booth they found a well sozzled Mr Curdelet. After a brief inquisition they didn't get anything out of him and he tried to walk away. Out came the Snub pistol and tranq rounds. The first round went into the Vargr and the second into Mr Curdelet. There was more panic and screams from the nearby passengers who only saw men with guns shooting people down in the bar.

As you can imagine the passengers and crew of the King Richard are becoming jumpy and scared. The trip out was dotted with missing people and talk of Vargr monsters attacking people. Then the visit to the planet had turned into a series of animal attacks, bloodshed, Aslan, and death. And here on the return trip, explosions, attacked ships, and now the guards shooting people in the bars.

The man was locked into his room with the pass-key and the Vargr dropped off with the other Vargr troopers who had a good laugh at his expense.

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Classic Traveller - What? Eh? Say again?

Recap -The PCs are leading a group of mercenaries acting as security on a cruise liner going to an off-limits world.

Between last night's session and the previous one I set up a few teasers before we started, I posted this after the previous session...

"Day 1: The initial survey was followed up with the establishment of a safe swim-zone on a likely looking beach. Before the passengers were allowed on the surface, an area of sea  close to the beach was ringed with a strong net and small explosives dropped inside that ring to kill all life within. Then the surface was skimmed and finally the passengers allowed down to enjoy the waters and beach.

"One shuttle is running a regular ground to surface route and the other is being used to establish a jungle camp someway inland from the safe-beach."

Then the next day I posted...

"Day 2: A Jungle camp is established five miles from the Swim Zone set up on Day 1. A clearing has been made, and tents for refreshments and overnight stays for around 50 people erected. A partially cleared path has been made/mapped between the two camps so the passengers can "make trail". The camp is surrounded by a "bug fence" for keeping out flying insects and small ground creatures.

"A cliff no more than 2 miles from Jungle Camp, has been identified for the establishment of a climbing camp.

"A 'Hide' has been placed close to a native village for those wishing to view the natives. However up to this point, no natives have been seen. The native village is 5 miles further inland from Jungle Camp."

Then the next day a posted a tease for the players other PCs (known as the home-team) who are still back at the sub sector capital, a snippet from the local news source...

"The enforced evacuation of Stallone has now been confirmed by refugee-Indes employees appearing at the various ports of the system. Indes representatives were not available for comment."

Then subsequent to the snippets above I posted the following radio intercept (yes the one I posted in the last session report and should have saved to go here...

Radio Intercept (only 1 minute 34 seconds of MP3 audio)

.. finally the session started.

We established how the troops were distributed between the three camps, beach, jungle, cliff, and the ship. Then things started to happen. The beach camp was ringed by laser posts effectively providing a zappy bug screen to protect the tourists. The PC 'Jocko' noticed a child standing close the zap fence staring out into the jungle. He approached the child asked what was happening and the kid told him he thought there was a critter in the bushes.

William who was running the bar on the beach, was approached by one of the rich passengers and offered a couple of thousand creds to accompany this guy on a little unscheduled hunting. He wanted to get himself a trophy-head of one of the autocthones. William turned him down and suggested he might want to have a word with the Vargr contingent, and sent him on his way.

Jocko started to move the kid away from the fence and the critter, when the flying-snake-with-wings-thing (a.k.a. fire lizard) launched itself at the kid. Jocko used the cape of his uniform to shield the child and smacked the critter to the floor. Then he swung round his ACR and let fly at the thing with a full auto burst. shots went everywhere but not into the creature! It lunged for the kid and got a grasp of his arm. Another PC, William, dived in, and heaving a cutlass (or was it an axe?) killed the wee beastie. Sadly this left the child in very poor health.

The child was rushed to a shuttle and the team's medic Kepler, took off rushing to get him to the ship and the med bay up there. As it ascended the pilot called Keplers attention to a shape in the water below. An very large animal, 80 to 90 meters long was swimming below the surface towards the beach. Was it a danger to the holiday makers? Kepler risked the life of the child by ordering the shuttle to spend time and circle around so that he could a few warning shots across it's bow with his plasma gun. This didn't seem to work, the creature slipped about the columns of boiling water he created and continued to the beach. When he turned back to the child, he was dead. There was nothing else for him to do now, but to head back to the beach and start an evacuation.

At the beach, the PCs started a near-panic by ushering people away from the water line and along the path to the jungle camp by telling them a monster was coming.  The shuttles landed near the beach and the PCs reversed direction and started herding people towards them to get them off planet.

The beast raised up out of the water, a massive thing with hundreds of small tentacles where the head should have been and smashed over the safety fence and flopped its "head" onto the beach. The head split open into five main tentacles and huge bulbs started swelling up on each tentacle.

William opened up from the beach with his FGMP and burned into one of the pods (doing 58 points of damage) which exploded in a cloud of spider-silk-like filaments that started drifting towards the beach. Jocko turned on the beast with an entire magazine of RAM grenades from his ACR. (another 70 odd points!) Explosions rippled along its body.

One of the tentacle pods exploded of it's own accord and thick strands of "silk" shot out in all directions, which the PCs managed to dodge but which hooked six of the passengers and started dragging them back to the root of the tentacle.

Kepler took a shot now as he leapt from the shuttle. His plasma burned into the creature doing an equally stupid amount of damage! William came back for a second shot and this time the creature was killed before it could swallow any of the tourists. However these people were seriously hurt. Not only dragged along the ground and crushed, but when the "silk" was peeled off  it had caused some reactions. The injured were loaded onto a shuttle and sent space-side.

On the ship, the shuttle was met by the ship's captain and he was not happy to find scared passengers pouring back to the ship but also injured guests! He remonstrated with Kepler who was supposed to have kept the people safe from harm, and had allowed them to be harmed. He was not a happy man.

Jocko decided to get a closer look at the monster and started to cut it open. Immediately a horde to writhing wormy creatures poured out of the wound, swimming in the water and writhing around on the sand but didn't cause any harm.

From here things calmed down a little. The beach camp was abandoned and people settled into jungle camp. The laser fence from beach camp was retrieved and set up as a second inner barrier around the camp. The PCs were starting to get a new respect for the unknown fauna.

Many of the passengers took to fishing in the nearby river. What they were fishing out were eel-like with frog faces, and a pair of small arms near the front. They tasted good, and barbeques were very popular. Over the next couple of days the PCs noticed how these fish were getting bigger over time. The first ones brought out of the water had been five or six inches in length but over the next day or two those pulled out were a few inches bigger.

During the night, the patrols noted how the zapper fence along the river was very busy zapping something. In the morning the floor was found littered with the dead fish-frog things. Many of these dead creatures were larger again.

Jocko wanted to get a look at one of the autocthones and so set off to the "hide". When he joined his Vargr compatriots at the hide he was disappointed to note there were no locals about. The Vargr reported that, actually none had been seen they arrived.

The PCs decided to investigate the village. It was set within a shallow bowl in the landscape. Rude beehive huts constructed of mud were scattered around, and there were cave mouths around the edge of the bowl. Inside the huts they found the scattered remnants and accouterments of a neanderthal like life style but no locals. Investigating one of the caves they found the bodies of locals who appeared to have been dead for some while. There was no evidence of foul play.

They returned to camp and jumped into a shuttle for a trip to another village, in search of any of the local tribes. At the next village they found the same story. At the next it was the same again. Various theories were advanced but no definitive answer was arrived at.

As they took off to head back to camp and only ten feet up alarms and claxons sounded and the shuttle's systems simply shut down and it dropped onto its landing struts.  Fearing an attack of some sort, Jocko pulled up his ACR intending to use its infrared to scan the surround jungle, only to find it wasn't working. All the electronic gear was down, only the coms built into their suits was working (hardened electronics). The theory that won out, was that they had been hit by some kind of EMP. It turned out that the jungle camp was in a similar position, it's fences had shut down. Fortunately the other shuttle had been spaceside and hadn't been effected by the ...whatever it was. They ordered the camp evacuated and set to work trying to get the shuttle up and running.

A few hours passed before they managed to get it running. When they arrived back at the camp they had powerful lights erected around the camp and most of their mercs on the ground and prepared for an assault. As darkness fell they saw a horde of eyes reflecting the lamp light, emerge from the water...

And we ended the session there.

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