Hero Kids - review

Hero Kids, is an RPG designed to be played with kids and features PCs that are themselves kids. This is a review of the 2012 PDF version.

I was rather intrigued by the idea of a game designed specifically for kids, so downloaded this to check it out. The PDF is 39 pages long, and comes in screen and print-friendly versions. The cover features cartoon-like artwork, a style that carries throughout the game. In general it uses a two column landscape layout with artwork and diagrams scattered across most pages.

The premise of the game is that in a fantasy land all the adults in a village have disapeared and so the kids of the village will have to deal with any issues that come up, whether that's a fire in stables, or an evil wizard raising the dead. The missing adults is not a mystery to be solved (unless you want to do that), they could be out raiding, having a party or bringing in the harvest, the point is, the kids have to deal with the trouble.

So the book starts with an brief introduction to roleplaying, and I got the impression that this part was written for teachers, or group leaders rather than the regular roleplayer.

Then we get an introduction to the vale where the village resides and it nicely contains a lot of ominous sounding names, such as "Darkenwold Woods".

Combat rules are suitably simple and match the objective of getting youngsters into the hobby, with four combat related abilities each being assigned a number of dice. You roll your attack dice, defender rolls armour dice. The player with the highest individual die wins. Rather than having the classic Hit Point scale a character  gets bruised, hurt and finally knocked out. meaning that combat will not go on for too long. Incidentally, it means that every single roll matters!

None of the other mechanisms of the game are more complex that those described above, in fact they are generally very simple and this makes it an ideal first game. No complex rules explanations, no beginners-fear of getting things wrong, just straight forward rules.

After the brief character generation rules which are basically allocating dice to the four stats, there's an interesting page about playing the game with other peoples kids and a reminder to be careful of the subjects you cover. Then comes some hints and tips for the referee on how to handle playing with kids, common sense stuff to be sure, but worth the read, as you might be playing with complete newbies to roleplaying and many of us forget what that was like.

Then come five pages of pre-gen sheets. Each with its own drawn character, stats and abilities listed, along with a standee, ready to fold. I love this format. Print the page and hand it to the kids, get them to cut out the character sheet and the standee, making it a project as well as a game.

The last seven pages of the PDF is for monsters. Each type gets a character sheet of its own and a page of standees.

That's it. Simple. Everything about this game is simple, and beautiful. The cartoon look of the characters is excellent and non-threatening, the hints and advice for the adults clear and well thought out. I don't know about reserving this game for kids, that's clearly where it's aimed, but I'd play this at the drop of a hat. Like the awesome game "3:16 Carnage Amongst the Stars", it's not about the dice rolls, but about telling the story the dice lead you to.

A quick scan of DriveThruRPG will let you see that this game has a bunch of scenarios to support it and colouring books too!  I was blown away at what a great idea colouring books were. Imagine playing the game then getting to relive the great moments with the kids as they colour-in the scenes they've just been playing in, an awesome idea.

A must buy for parents, I'm so glad I bought it.

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

Alien Module 3 Vargr - review

This is a review of the PDF of the third alien module for the ancient sci fi RPG, Traveller.

The PDF is 52 pages long, and is a scan of an original well  worn 1984 printing. The cover is rather worn and showing its age. The text inside is perfectly readable and can be searched, although the scan isn't always as straight as you might wish.

The purpose of this module is to introduce a new sentient and playable race into the classic Traveller game, and from the outset I can tell you it does this very well.

The book starts by telling you what the Vargr are, a sentient bipedal race descending from Terran wolf stock, this leads to some major differences in appearance and character from humans. Namely that they look a good deal like upright dogs/wolves, and everything about their society is built around the pack mentality.

After the general introduction the module details their physiology, psychology, history, society, government, and military is covered in some depth. This is necessary as one of the stated aims of the module is to demonstrate just how "alien" these aliens are, They think differently, the behave differently, they are not to be thought of as humans with fur.

After this essay is a section on the Vargr language. As with the first two alien modules this section not only explains how it's structured and sounds, but gives you the tools to generate Vargr names and words, in fact the entire lexicon if you're mad enough to roll that many dice!

The next section gives you a grounding in Vargr character generation, explaining how the process is similar to, yet different to normal human rules. Those familiar with the core game's rules for character generation will find this easy to work through.

Next comes a section called "Gvurrdon's Story" . This section starts by giving a a short dictionary of Vargr words and then presents an ancient Vargr legend written entirely in the Vargr language. If you have players excited enough to do the translation, you should be scared, they are obviously nutters!

A full page diagram gives you a map of the Gvurrdon sector (not sub sector) for the players.

Then come additional character generation rules for the the Vargr equivalent of High Guard. Then come some rules for the Vargr Corsairs, a sort of Scout/Navy/Pirate mixed service.

The next section of essays informs us about the Vargr homeworld and gives the referee additional notes about the race when being used as Patrons and NPCs.

Then comes a short adventure based around the ancient Vargr text presented earlier, including a translation for the referee to use. The sector map is presented again with more detail for the referee along with the planetary stats. It's really more of an adventure seed than an full adventure.

In the classic Traveller style of book layout, there is very little art within the pages. In fact the only internal art is a medical diagram of a generic Vargr and a line art drawing of a Vargr 100-ton Scout. That's it. Really the only inspiration to be drawn from artwork is the cover of this work.

I stated at the start of this review that I liked this book. I do. The essays are a fascinating read, and if the author has managed to describe a government structure, in a way to keep me interested late at night then he must have done it pretty well! After reading this book, you get a good idea of how the Vargr are to be played as a race, and how they might fit in amongst a party of humans.

If you're playing classic Traveller, I would say this is a must-have for the referee. Not needed of course, as the core rules give you a complete game, but by adding the Vargr into the mix, you'll make your game worlds so much richer. At a price of just a couple of pounds, this PDFs was a bargain, and well worth it
 

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

Free Trader, goes digital!

A board game I developed a few years ago called "Free Trader" which has you on a solitaire mission flying around the galaxy dodging pirates and aliens as you try to pay for your space ship is now available in digital form on Android and iOS.

Baby Marsupial Creations LLC has given the game an all-new look but kept the core mechanics, so that if you're familiar with the board game version you'll be up an running with this digital version in next to no time.

Here are some screen shots for your visual pleasure:

The game is available on Android and iOS.

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

Classic Traveller, Decisions and Choices

Back to the Traveller campaign after a break for a...break. While the game was suspended I added in a couple of between session elements.

An xboat has just come in from the front lines of the fight with the Aslan, and brought this audio from an interview with one of the heroes of Operation Dynamo on Sobifat.

Listen to the audio (only 35 seconds)

Previous news has suggested that the heroic Imperial Army was going to take back Sobifat from the Aslan, but it seems it did not got too well.

The second bit of between session action:

A message arrives from David Lubik, your Recruiting Squire...

"Sir, I've got a group of … of... people, sort of. That're looking to sign up. They're Vargr sir. Actual live Vargr. Can you believe that?

"There are eight of them. I've been talking to them and they seem to be talking straight. I've been speaking to their leader, Goorrvu and he said they were raiding up and down this subsector until their ship got damaged. Corsairs! Now they need to get some work that pays well, so they can get their ship fixed.

"He says they're a team though, they'll only serve together as a unit, and only for a year. He says they have vacc-suits and weapons. And are ready to start straight away.

"Sounds like a good deal to me. But...to be honest, I don't know how to read Vargr faces. This Goorrvu seems a bit shifty.

"Do I sign them up?"

Of course the players couldn't resist having a party of alien pirates on board so they signed them up.

Onto the session itself. Last time the session ended with the home team PCs turning down the job offer from Piertrie Hoolane a lady who had her money stolen by a husband gone bad.  However they had suggested she visit the other ship where the away-team PCs might be interested in some private work.

(As an aside here, they hired 4 engineers to get the old Bertrum35 ship's jump drive up and working)


She was invited into the ship and given drinks. Some careful wrangling, managed to get the offer up to 100,000Cr from the 40,000Cr she started at (10,000Cr less than she offered before). However she did suggest that they would need a team of 10. The deal was agreed with a handshake and she left.

Then the shenanigans started. Now they knew where the money was, who the target was, the PCs kind of agreed to go in, get the money, and anything else they could steal, and keep it all for themselves.

Next up was a little research into the target, a bit of computer skill came in handy. They discovered that her soon-to-be-divorced husband, Garty Jules, was a bit of a big wig.  He lived in a special dome for the really rich, and his house was a mansion in the middle of an estate, amongst other rich estates under this shared dome. It also turned out that he had a lot of financial fingers in various pies, including membership of multiple company boards. Indeed, he was on the board of the company he used for personal security (Kazbar Security).

And speaking of security, a look though the society papers revealed a picture of his security guards. They seemed to be packing some big hardware under their jackets, more than would normally be allowed under local law levels.

The PCs planning was wild and free form. Varying from trying to scare him with tales that the cops were coming for him, and that the PCs could sneak him off planet, right through to knocking on his door and shooting him between the eyes. However they settled for something more sly and devious. They have visions of vast horde of money laying around the mansion with expensive and saleable pieces of art that they could snaffle. Thus they want to get into his mansion for a look around.

Once again the captured/stolen Aslan robots inspired their approach. They thought to pose as business men selling this tech'.  If Garty can be convinced to invite them to a meeting they'll have the "in" they need.

The first step was to put together a sales video which they did with style. They then contacted one of the technology companies that Garty was a board member of and sent them the video. They also took the opportunity to send a copy of it to their arms supplier who's also looking to make a sale for them.

They took over a small factory unit and moved the robot in. They decided to brand themselves as "Killowns", the criminal family they became involved with a while back, thinking it could give them some cache. They talked the Vargr into helping them in their little private mission and they readily agreed, and thus provided a little "security".

A mid level sales representative and his bodyguard from the tech company turned up at their warehouse to take a first look at the robot. They let him in.

Change of scene!

We cut back to the home team who got a call from a potential customer. They went through the interview process once again. It turned out the customer wanted to hire the company to carry out a combat mission on the nearby planet of Rapreroos. The mission was to dress up as locals of Rapreroos and using local weapons attack a base on the planet. Everyone in the base was to be killed and the base raised.  They started asking questions about the base in question and it turned out to be an Imperial training base. The autocthones of Rapreroos were being recruited by the Imperium and trained in the base. There were thought to be around 2000 recruits and a training cadre of 200 or so Imperial marines.

There was a little talking around the project. Money was discussed, and 1 million  credits offered up front with another 5 million to follow. In the end one of the PCs, the Marquis in fact, could not bring himself to hire on the company to attack his beloved Imperium directly. The job was turned down.

Back to the factory!

The PCs were not impressed with being sent just a mid level sales guy. They put up a good front and told him that such a low level contact was not even allowed to the see the robot in action. He would only be allowed to see the robot stationary. The representative was very put out, but he tried to make the best of it.

While he took a look around the robot one of the other PCs started playing cards with the bodyguard. As they played he filled the chap in on the history and capabilities of the robot, giving him much more information than the actual company representative was getting!

As the representative was being shown to the door, some streetwise skillz were applied to ensure that he left knowing he'd been personally snubbed because he was too-low in rank and that he really needed to get his bosses involved.

Thus ended the beginning of the great caper. More to come next week!

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

Political game design

I've seen some press recently where the media appear to be turning against whistle blowers. This seems rather dubious to me, a bad sign that the "system" is taking control of the media on this issue. Anyway that spurred me on to make a video about using game design to make a political point. It's a bit of a low-key rant to be honest, but there is a game in there :)

Watch and enjoy.

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

A holiday of gaming...

I've just returned from a short holiday, but my holiday gaming started before I even left. I had a few hours just waiting around the house before we started our journey. I decided not to let any of it go to waste!

First up was a dice game based on golf and called "Golo". It uses a handful of special D12s. My round of golf was exceptionally average, quite a feat considering I had two holes in 1!

Next up was a very very quick game of Zombie in my pocket. Moving into the first room, I was smacked down by a horde of Zombies. The second room was the target with the totem, nothing bad appeared but when I spent time to search for the totem, I was smacked by another horde of Zeds! Considering I was already very ill, it wasn't worth running away, and so the Zeds got to breakfast on my brains.

The next game was a real oldie. It was Game Workshop's "Chainsaw Warrior". I took I.R. goggles, wire cutters and a blaster. I went into that big 'ole apartment complex and started in on the trouble I found. I lucked out going through the first room deck. I managed to find an awful lot of empty rooms in which I only found 3 wandering zombies. I have never voluntarily taken wire cutters before, but during this game they were used four times to get me out of traps! I also found a secret passageway that let me bypass ten rooms! Sure I got bitten by a zombie, and irradiated twice but that's pretty normal in this game. Then just a few cards into the second deck I was finally worn down and the zombie venom took me out.

Then it was into the car for a four and a half hour long journey.

Somewhat tired I reached our destination. I admired the view for a couple of minutes and then broke out "Friday" for a quick session of helping Robinson survive the island. Right from the start it went really well. I made best use of all of the cards, and tried to limit the amount of life I spent destroying "zero" cards. By the time I got to the Red pass though the deck, there were only two cards left! Then onto the pirates. The first one was only a minor issue, but I asked my wife to pick the second one, she is after all a lucky charm for me...an unlucky charm as it turned out. I got the 57 point card to defeat. Sheesh!  I started drawing cards, using every ability from every card to destroy ageing cards, doubling others, drawing more, then it came down to spending life to draw more cards. I had to use the abilities on those too! In the end I got a win, my first ever win of Friday, with only two life points left!!!

As night time drifted round I realised I'd forgotten to bring a book to read in bed. What's a gamer supposed to do? I pulled the Lore starter deck out of LoTR:The Card Game and had a read through the cards. I'd not looked at this one or played with it, so it was a bit of surprise to see how many healing cards are in the deck.

The first full day of holiday featured an afternoon snooze, followed by some graphics work on a card game I've been working on.

An early evening two player bout of Death Angel. It was the first time for my son, and he had no idea just how difficult this game was. I could tell he was ignorant of the true misery of this game, as he sat down with a beaming excited face, rather than grim concentration and angst. We managed to journey to the first room before everything went to crap. A killer event card moved all the genestealers onto a single marine. We struggled to whittle them down but we lost a marine with every attack and it was a quick demise to the stack of 10 genestealers crawling along the column.

With another loss to this vicious game I raised the oft stated question. If these are the toughest marines in the best armour the emperor can supply why the hell can't they hit anything with their blasters, and why the hell can bugs open their armour like a poorly made tin can?

Really, it is a good game, but it makes no sense with this theme, or rather the theme gives a lie to these being awesome soldiers. A better theme that would fit these mechanisms nicely, would be to replace the space marines with Strom Troopers from Star Wars and replace the genestealers with Ewoks!

Once again, bed time found me without a book, so I turned to a copy of the "Hero Kids" RPG that I had printed from the PDF for digestion while on holiday. Big bold print suited my aging eyes. I'll review that in a subsequent post.

So onto day two. I tried to solo LoTR:The Card Game using the core set's Lore deck. Wow. Tough. I ground out a defeat as the locations piled up their threat and prevented me from making any forward progress Nine threat was more than I could handle. I was all for giving up, and cheated to see if there were any cards coming up that would make a difference. Well, there was a Gandalf card a few turns away, but at a cost of 5 I would have been stuffed long before he became affordable. So I did give up. What did I learn from this game? Despite having a couple of good heroes there is a lot of chaff in this deck. Denethor seems pretty rubbish. I'm wondering what good being able to have a peek at the bad guys deck is supposed to do for you. So you know what the next card will be. Big deal, doesn't seem to change anything.

And so onto the evening where the encroaching east coast dark summoned forth Shudde M'ell to attack the Miskatonic. Joe Diamond and Jacqueline Fine leapt into action and ran around collecting Elder Signs striving to fight off the unending stream of monsters. I've never played a game of Elder Sign where so many monsters came out of the bag!. In the end old Shudde came out of hiding and we laid into him with everything we had. We got our share of licks in but the card-count-down won the battle for the bad guy (cheating)!

Now, I think our game play was exemplary under the conditions, but that the conditions led to us losing. What were these conditions? My wife was watching a kitchen sink drama from the sixties in glorious black and white! I hate these films. Full of whining idiots bemoaning the the social stigma of the day. To me, it's all boring pointless waffle. How anyone can call that entertainment I don't know. Still, she's never understood the appeal of giant fighty robots either.

So onto the next day. My first game was another run at LoTR:The card Game, but with my first custom deck. I'm still playing the first scenario, and opted to mix Lore and Tactics in a 45 card deck. I took Gimli and Legolas from Tactics and Beravor from Lore.

It was a surprisingly easy win. There was one time where the locations started to build up and I feared  getting trapped in a too high threat situation, but a timely play of Gandalf jumped me passed that issue. I had loaded Gimli with the Citadel Plate and Dwarven Axe, thinking to use him to pound the bad guys. In the end though, I ended up pitch most of the enemies as Legolas, in order to use his defeat-enemy-progress-quest ability. He did get pounded, but every time I was able to use the Daughter of the Nimrodel to heal him back up.  After one play, I feel it's a good deck and I'm itching to use it against the second scenario. I think next time, if given the choice I'll give the armor  and axe to legolas to aid in progressing the game, regardless of the threat in the staging area.

It was time to do a little RPG work. In this case continuing to flesh out a couple of sub sectors for the ongoing Classic Traveller I'm running. It's a slow process for me. Not the numbers but trying to come up with a few lines to describe each system. A rationale if you will for the stats that were generated. Managed to finish off one sub sector and start on the next. This second one looks to be more interesting as it has lots of yellow and red travel zones.

I might also say that my holiday is not all game related. I also started reading a book by the amazing Harold Coyle, of "Team Yankee" fame. This one is called "Trial by Fire" and is a military fiction book, I've wanted to read for quite some time. U.S. Forces vs Mexican in a limited fashion. Of course some of the scenarios from this book "might" make it into my Traveller campaign. :)

I'm also a wee bit of an author, so late into the night I continued work on my Science Fiction gamebook. About a week ago I finished the last editing pass. The next step which I started on this night, was to run the raw text through my gamebook validator. This is a program I wrote to check for basic errors in the structure of the game book and boy oh boy, two hundred and fifty problems! I managed to work my way through them and started formatting the text for publication.

The next day of the holiday really was more work than play. More formatting of the game book until it was done. Then I started on another editing pass through this formatted text. Often viewing your writing in a different format allows you to see things you overlooked before. It was true here too. I only managed to edit the first 50 entries (of 402). More tomorrow. But then it was back to working on my space game. I managed to draw four asteroids and a battlestar as terrain and focus points for scenarios.

Game wise, the only game I got to actually play was a two player game of LoTR:The Card Game, where I played with my custom deck and my son worked with the default Spirit deck. Again we went through the first scenario and it was a breeze. The Spirit deck held up it's end of the bargain and so did mine, however we really lucked out by reaching the third card and the Ungoliant Spawn was already in play and hacking Gimli to pieces. I lost Gimli, but we got there in the end with our second LoTR victory of the holiday.

The next day led us back to Elder Sign. First I solo'ed a game against Cthulhu and kicked his butt (wait for it). Then I coached my son through his first solo. At one point I mentioned that he was missing an opportunity to put dice on the next task and he calmly pointed out that "he wasn't going to cheat like I had". I grabbed the rules and to my horror discovered he was right, you CAN ONLY work on one task at a time. There went my joy at defeating Cthulhu. I was a big cheating b*stard!

In other news I finished up the art work for my card game, proof read the next fifty entries in my sci fi game book and wrote up the details of four more planets for my Classic Traveller game. All in all a good day of gaming related endeavour apart from the Cthulhu-incident which will not ever be mentioned again (but at least now I know how to use those spells!).

No more games, as the next day was tidying up the place and driving home.

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

Classic Traveller, Two ships and no where to go

Some between session news...

Last night's session was a bit of an in-betweener. One player down and between mercenary tickets, so the PCs were milling around a bit deciding what to do. However they had a bunch of little scenes which I shall illiterate in no particular order.
They started in orbit of Stallone the planet where their ticket had been based. Having taken the Bertrum35 ship they saw no reason to leave behind the armed pinnace (snigger) that they shot down over the moss processing plant. So a recovery was set in motion and it was lifted up into orbit and mounted on the back of the Bertrum35 ship ready for transport to a port for repairs.

Everyone else was gathered up and they headed towards the sub sector capital (in the same system) Tircesoe. they even offered the Governor and his wife a free ride along with them. He'd decided that he had already lost his job and that the people on Stallone would never submit to his governorship after the war.

During the crossing one of their injured mercs  (Dita Abraham) called them down to sick bay and told them he wanted out of the unit. The pain and the hurt and the danger of dying was too much. They didn't want to lose Dita, so offered a promise of light duties during the next ticket and a bonus of 10000Cr. Hearing this from the next bed over, the injured Wirke decided that leaving the company was a good idea. Wirke was offered the same deal.

Private Zefim popped up to the bridge and demanded that they be given leave. The 35KCr in his pocket was burning a hole. He was told to tell the crew that they would all get a week off as soon as possible and that a rotation of leave would be in place after that. That put him at ease.

Once they arrived, the first thing to do was avoid the stampede as the troops left the ship, then decide what to do with Bertrum. The last session had left me a little confused as to his final fate. In the end the PCs were quite magnanimous and set him down on Tircesoe with enough money for a bus. Alive, even kicking perhaps, but not a happy man.

They visited their friendly local arms dealer and dealt with the resupply issue. They also tapped him for getting someone to fix up the damaged pinnace (hee hee). He was able to sort that out but the bill would be in the region of 1MCr. Two thirds of the profit from the last ticket in one fell swoop!

The PCs were fully aware that getting the captured Bertrum35 ship, now named the "Nimjin", into a dock for repair during war time would be exceptionally expensive and difficult, so set their hearts on cashing in the favour and letter of introduction to the sub sector leader.

They set off for his palace, got passed the guards and in to see a receptionist. They proffered the letter which she opened and examined. Then she took their contact details and said she'd be in touch.  They walked out of the palace wondering what to do next.

They decided they might make some money if they could sell the technology in the Aslan robots. Get someone to do the R&D and then take a cut of any profits. They called the arms dealer again and offered a demonstration of something to his advantage. He was more than happy to indulge some of his best clients! He soon arrived on board and was taken down to the hold. He didn't get it at first. Mind controlled robots were something beyond his comprehension. Then they gave him a try of the control helmet. He soon got carried away and had the robot dancing and  jumping around the place. He was delighted. He confirmed that he could handle this for the PCs, he knew people at the various weapons companies.

The next incident was a call from the unit's recruiting office. There was a man there offering a special job. He was invited to the ship and led in to meet the Marquis himself. The visitor  was doing a little verbal dancing until he was assured that he could speak freely without fear. The job he offered was bug-hunt. He represented a company called "Big Pharma" and he wanted some animals for research purposes. The animals could be found on an interdicted planet at the southern end of the sub sector. He was offering 10000Cr for a dead creature and 35000Cr for a live one, and wanted as many as 10 if they could be got. The PCs sent him on his way telling him to add a few zeros to the offer before they'd be interested.

A call came in from one of the sergeants that were on leave reporting that he was at the cop shop where three troopers were being restrained for being drunk and disorderly. Worse yet the Imperial press gang was on the way to bag them!

The PCs loaded up a bag with credit chits and rushed down to the cop shop. They managed to get the desk sergeant into a side room and offered him 5000Cr to "lose" the paperwork. He accepted the kind offer. They asked if he knew anyone who fancied joining a mercenary unit. He told them he'd let his friends know about the offer and that they should wait outside while he got to work on freeing their men. In just a few minutes the men were sent out the front but the desk sergeant was with too, he'd changed out of  his uniform and wanted to join up!

Another call from the recruiting office reported that there was a woman there looking for some men for a special job. She was shown aboard and introduced to the Marquis. She told a long and involved tale of a marriage to a man who only wanted her inheritance. A divorce had left her almost penniless, but she wanted her money back from the "bastard" who'd taken it. She was offing 50000Cr to get back the 4MCr that had been taken. They tried to negotiate a higher amount, but she wasn't having it, and was soon being led down to the exit. Just before leaving it was suggested that she might try the PCs other ship, where she might find some of the unit's off-duty men willing to spend their leave in helping her with her little problem. This was a pitch from the player to see if the away-team PCs might be interested in taking the job.

There ended the session, will the away team go for the job? Will a bigger job come along, for the unit entire? Tune in next week...

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

Supplement 3 The Spinward Marches, a review

This is a review of the PDF version of the Spinward Marches supplement for Classic Traveller.

This is the first of the classic PDFs for Traveller that I've reviewed where it's not just a straight scan of the work. It's an improvement in presentation all the pages are crisp and clear.

So what is The Spinward Marches? It's a pregenerated sector of space, broken down into subsectors. That's about it. Let's be more specific. The introduction repeates what I just said then gives you a guide to reading a planetary UPP and then it's straight into the first subsector.

You get a title for the subsector, then between one to three short paragraphs about the sector, which may include a whole sentence about one of the planets. Then you get the planet stats, name , size, atmosphere etc for the planets in the sub sector. Next is a map of the  sub sector presented in the standard Traveller hex map format.

A note about these maps. Each sub sector map indicates the adjacent sub sectors but there is no sector map, so if you want an idea of how these fit together you'll need to write the names on cards and start arranging them puzzle fashion. Each map itself is very clear but suffers from a lack of helpful detail added in later products, namely bases and gas giants are not indicated. Xboat routes are indicated.

After all the sub sector details, the book gives you a rehash of the rules relating to interpretation of the stats. The final section is a index to the planet names throughout the sector.

Wow. I've mixed up opinions on this one. Lets start with my negative thoughts.

If this was produced today, I would dump on it. Who needs pregenereated sub sectors, when I can go to a web site and click a button and create as many as I want, especially when the map doesn't show all of the now expected details. As to the details for each planet, or rather the lack of them. Two sentences does not a sub sector make. To make this book useful it really needs to have some details for each and every planet. When you could fill books with details and background material on a single planet, two sentences for an entire sub sector is pretty useless.

This amount of open territory does give the referee room to move and create their own details...but if your doing that why would you need this book ,as opposed to clicking a button and generating your own sub sectors.

But.

But this subsector has been used as a location to set many of the classic Traveller adventures and other supplements. Although you can easily transpose those adventures into another sub sector or even your own version of the Spinward Marches, it just seems better to have the real thing, the real Spinward to act as your context. It's just a feeling, just a confidence trick if you like, to make you feel like you're doing it correctly.

So in summary, a nice to have, but totally unnecessary.

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

Classic Traveller, 50 fun things to do in Zero-g

We left off last session with the PCs having just caught a glimpse of Bertrum35 soldiers along a corridor, and one was PC trapped in an air lock.

As an aside from the action, the players secondary characters (home-team) noticed that the Bertrum35 ship had started broadcasting a "this ship is under attack by pirates" message.

Back in the corridor shots were exchanged with two Bertrum35 employees. But no hits were scored. The lights in the corridor started flashing rapidly and the Bertrums disappeared from sight. The PCs, Jenkins and the Bear, knew that wasnt a good sign and waited for the the bad news. With the lights still pulsing, the gravity started rapidly cycling from 0 to 1.2 causing some endurance damage to the Bear.

The poor lonely PC, Jocko, trapped in the airlock put away his axe, and took out his ACR and used its grenades to attack the inner door to the airlock. With a blast of smoke and shrapnel he wasted the door and freed himself. Once out he lead his team along the corridor heading for'ard in the same general direction as the other party. But at a corner he found a Bertrum standing in a doorway. This meant the Bertrum was standing in a room where gravity wasn't popping but Jocko had all of the discomfort of fluctuating gravity. This Bertrum was also wearing combat armour, the PCs toughest opponent yet. Jocko let lose with his ACR, but the gravity must have played havoc with his aim and the bullets flight as it was pretty much a wasted shot. The Bertrum had all of the advantages. With a steadied weapon he placed a shot from his rifle straight into Jocko (13 points of wound). Jocko staggered a little and in a manly manner waved his men forward to rush the Bertrum. The guy didn't stand a chance and was riddled with bullets.

Jenkins and the Bear darted past the corridor where they'd seen the Bertrums, heading for the bridge leaving their troopers to cover their backs and deal with the Bertrums,. A firefight was soon taking place behind them. They carried on along the corridor and started descending a ramp.

Jocko found a lift and decided to use it, perhaps thinking of reaching engineering or meeting the other PCs on the lower deck. Unfortunately the ship had other ideas, the lift locked between decks. He knew exactly what to do and started reprogramming the lift controls with his axe. Perhaps it was foolhardy, perhaps it was daft, but whatever it was, it worked! He soon got the lift under control and ascended back to his starting position.

Back on the ramp an anti-piracy device fired. I blister full of an oily substance exploded coating our intrepid heroes in a visor obscuring black yuky-fek. they set too using their capes to clear the visors.

Pretty soon they were joined by their troopers who had finished off the two Bertrums, and Jocko with his squad too.

The ramp lead down into a wide open space used for exercise, indicated by the weights and other equipment strapped to the walls. They noticed the air pressure rising again. Only one door leading forwards was available, and it was a secure edifice.  Everyone backed away as Jocko loaded up another HEAP grenade into his ACR.

When he fired there was the expected explosion, but also a secondary rolling explosion as the air in the room blossomed into flame. I, reasoning that the over pressured air would be oxygen rich. (Ship designers would obviously put more oxygen in when pressurising in case someone was suffering from asphyxia. Well that's what I thought anyway). This explosion blasted over out armoured heroes and took out one of their people in the process. The door was not destroyed but rather holed. Looking through the hole they couldn't seem much, just open space. They set to with their axes and eventually laid the door open.

Then the players started getting a little tentative, not wanting to be first in. I guess all their years of D&D must have left them expecting the big bad. Yet as they entered the elongated control room they heard a voice.

"You took your time getting here."

They didn't find the big bad, instead they found a sad-looking resigned old man sitting at one of the control stations. He turned out to be Bertrum, not a Bertrum, but THE Bertrum. He tossed Jenkins the keys to the ship and the conversation moved on.

It turned out that Bertrum35 has started out as a small mercenary unit with only 35 people in it, hence the name. They had grown over time and then fallen on bad times. A couple of bad mercenary tickets had led them into bad times. The PCs noted how the soldiers in the unit had been poorly armed, perhaps a sign that the unit had fallen on bad times.

They discussed back and forth on their private channel the possibility of ether killing or employing  the old man. His understanding of the mercenary business, they argued could be of use. Perhaps he could help in training up new troopers. But, came the counter argument, he might spend his time training up troops loyal to himself and that might lead to a rebellion within the ranks. When they tried to offer him a job, the man seemed more interested in just going home. Where was home? It was the planet Zapmanus, which the PCs pointed out was uncomfortably close to the Aslan invasion forces. 
In the end it was decided to simply dump him at the sub sector capital of Tircescoe.

Now the PCs had time to look at their newly acquired ship. When they shipped over their engineer for an inspection, the results did not make them particularly happy.

All but two turret were out of commission, the jump drive was built for Jump-2 but was currently only able to manage Jump-1. The hull of the ship turned out to be old, really old. Suffering stress and fatigue in places. This ship was no priceless gem, but never the less, a hugely valuable acquisition. A ship capable of entering combat, and transporting troops.

It was decided to make this the command ship of their fleet (two ships). Repairs would need to be done and they considered cashing in the one favor with the sub sector leadership that they still have to spend. I pointed out that commandeering a space dock this close to the Aslan front during a time of war was a big "ask".

So ends their first mercenary ticket. They've suffered one death and three serious injuries to the members of the unit, plus 1 PC has had a major wound. Now all that's left for me to do is, whip out the calculator. Damaged kit. Weapons expenditure. Sundry expenses, spares, repairs etc. Then integrate their new recruits into the unit. Will they have made a cash-profit on the first ticket?

Edit: finished working out the money for this ticket:

1.4 Million profit on the Stallone ticket.
Payment 3000000Cr
Expenses 172450Cr
Profit 2827550Cr
Owners Share 1413775Cr
Individual Share 35344Cr
Ships crew share 35344Cr
PFC's share 35344Cr
Cpl's share 106033Cr
Srg's share 141377Cr

With that amount of money in their pockets, they'd better give the men some time off!

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Alien Module 2: K'Kree

This review is for the PDF of a classic Traveller alien module as bought from DriveThruRPG. The PDF is a scan of an original printed copy, so the edges of printed pages appear along the edges of the PDF, however the text throughout is clear and easy to read. The book has colour covers and a black and white interior in the standard Traveller format.

The objective of this module is to give you the ability to include the K'Kree race in your Traveller game, be that as NPCs or as player characters.

The K'Kree are aliens. In some respects they appear like centaurs of earth legends but in reality they are nothing like men with the body of a horse, they are very different.

The book itself explains that the K'Kree are very different from people in looks, society, and thought processes.They are descended from herbivore herd beasts and that simple fact means they do not think like people. In fact they think in terms of the herd, the family or the race. This fact is amply provided for in the rules by making the choice of playing a K'Kree a serious change from the normal RPG trope of playing a single character! The K'Kree are so different that instead of playing a single creature, if you're playing K'Kree, you're actually playing a group of them, up to fifty strong.

They like open spaces, therefore space ships, buildings, vacc suits, and vehicles play havoc with their minds. Their ships are huge open spaces, wrapped in steel. They don't have houses. They have a strict caste system that they are happy with! There are no individuals rebelling against the caste system, individual thoughts like that don't occur to them. Imagine playing that mind set. The herd is all, you serve the herd, you ARE the herd.

Don't get all power hungry thinking playing fifty K'Kree gives you Fifty laser wielding soldiers. It doesn't, you'll have a patriarch, servants, wives, maybe a body guard, clerks, cooks etc making the majority of those fifty, and the loss of one is a loss of yourself. Very different to normal play.

Oh, and they are strictly vegetarian, rampantly so. Within their empire they have either killed the meat eating races, or forced them into vegetarianism.

So what's in this 44 page PDF?

• Diagrams showing comparison between man and K'Kree.
• Introduction
• Psychology
• History
• Society
• Military service
• Language generator,
• Character Generation
• Star ships
• Weapons
• Encounters
• Patrons
• Integration guide for using the extended Traveller books such as Mercenary with K'Kree
• Worlds

And then it's on to the adventures. A couple of well put together adventures finish off this book. I won't go into detail, but they highlight aspects of K'Kree character, one where you play K'Kree and another where you play humans interacting with them. The scenarios put forward are very interesting and I'd love to play both of them.

In summary: Very good book, buy it.

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

Axis & Allies: Battle of the Bulge, solitaire

A cinematograph in which I speak forth on the subject of solitaire play with the above mentioned game.

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Classic Traveller, Carrot or Stick

The last session had the PCs returning to town from "the dig". In fact they had just been overflown by a large vehicle heading towards town.

Tonight's session started therefore with the rain. Considering the planet only had a wisp of atmosphere, this was something that should not be happening. The dust-wipers on the vehicles were turned on but only moved an inch or two before gumming up. Seconds later all of the vehicles in the convoy ground to a halt with engines and motors complaining. The PCs concluded that the "rain" wasn't what it looked like. A vehicle door was opened, a corporal stepped out to investigate. There was a descending mist that was very sticky. The corporal ended up glued to the door of the vehicle but otherwise unhurt.

Using their uniform capes as protection from the rain, the rest of the troop exited the vehicles and headed into town on foot. They found that the sticky substance caused the soil to clump up on their boots but the capes kept the worst of the glue off.

In town they discovered the fight they heard last session was ongoing. A couple of Bertrum troopers were keeping the heads of the guards (guarding the Bertrum prisoners) down, while another group were doing-something to the PCs robot. They also noticed the town hall had been flattened by the landing of a large Bertrum shuttle on top of it. At the foot of the shuttle's loading ramp a couple more Bertrums stood guard.

The PCs wasted no time. Weapons flashed and erased the Bertrums shooting at the guards. The Bertrums were surprised and never really got the chance to return fire. More guns blazed and those at the foot of the ramp were wasted. The robot was activated and in a clumsy pirouette layed out the four Bertrums who were trying to interfere with it.

The PCs raced onto the Bertrum shuttle to make sure it was clear and wouldn't be leaving anytime soon. They found it empty. It was only now that they went back to the convoy to unstick the poor corporal!

Gathering up the wounded Bertrums they herded them into the saloon-cum-guard house and called down their doctor from their ship. They then proceeded to work their devious mind games upon the prisoners in a bid to get them to change sides. A huge Joining-Up bonus was offered plus a few other benefits.

I had thought about this situation before the game started and had thought to have 1D of the Bertrums be ready to join them, they are all mercs' after all and money-is-loyalty. Yet as the players talked I thought that the 10K joining-up bonus was worth another 1D. The convincing arguments of promotion, equipment (the Bertrums were using very old equipment), and a bar-in-every-room was worth an additional +3. So they made a SOC roll to convince them, succeeded, and scored 12 on the 2D+3, garnering themselves another 12 experienced recruits.

The recruitment drive out of the way, their minds turned to the Bertrum destroyer-class vessel overhead. Could it be taken?

They gathered up all of the troops they could, including the converts and some of the Stallone police-thugs loaded them all into the Bertrum shuttle and headed for the ship. The docked with it without any issue, soon overcame the three digit entry code and moved into the ship. They found themselves in a central corridor and split up going in opposite directions. In a very short time alarms sounded indicating they had been detected.

As they moved about the ship a couple of interesting incidents took place. The air pressure increased, the gravity turned off and an air lock opened itself to vacuum. Against the explosive decompression the PCs survived, fortunately still wearing their vacc-suits and having the strength to hold in place until the locks sealed themselves again.

They moved further into the ship, and found a man with a bandaged leg and a rifle confronting them. A swift fire was exchanged leaving the man seriously wounded. He was quickly dispatched as the PCs passed him to explore further. 

As I said, the party was split. One PC found himself separated from his squad when a hatch closed behind him. He tried to open it, even resorting to a boarding axe and attacking the seal. This must have been very tricky in zero-g!

Here the session ended with the lone PC trapped, and his squad being observed by a just emerged Bertrum. The other PCs are also being observed from a side corridor by another two Bertrums.  Next session will open with an exchange of fire!

The following graphic is a screen shot from Roll20, which we're using for the map work.

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Getting the Ogre out

 Tonight I finally got round to playing the pocket edition of Ogre. Here's the set up.

Look at that innocent looking little fellow at the bottom of the map. Almost cute! He's not though. he crawled up the map edging a little to the right and started blowing away my guys like they were popcorn. The infantry on the left got left behind the first line of infantry were run down. The tanks behind them put up a bit of a fight, some even being disabled but they ultimately couldn't do much.

I managed to slow but never stopped the beast. I concentrated on taking out treads rather than weapons, hoping to get a win by stopping it before it could get in range of the CP, but I just couldn't inflict enough hits. This may be all down to my bad initial placement. As you can see from the picture above, I set up too far up the board. I didn't appreciate how little terrain actually effects the game and tried to put my troops in "safety". What I should have done was set the troops as far down the board as possible and moved forwards to engage the beast as soon as I could. Time is everything when you're shooting treads!

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Classic Traveller, The Real Mercs!

We left the last session with missiles in flight and that's were we picked up the session. Bertrum35 had been given an ultimatum to abandon the planet or the base the PCs had discovered, would be obliterated by the missiles they had already launched. Bertrum35 replied with a simple terse message.

"Bertrum35 will withdraw from the identified base on Stallone"

A little table discussion resulted in a decision that the reply was insufficient as it didn't mention a complete withdrawal from the planet Stallone. The missiles plowed into the base. A huge explosion, vehicles tumbling through the air, dust, flame. A hole in the ground. A line had been crossed, the Marqi's troops had moved away from the usual game of manoeuvring that mercenaries play.

A call from the planetary governor, currently hiding on their ship, advised them that an explosion at the planets largest moss refinery needed to be investigated. If the refinery was put out of action then the industrial profits would be seriously set back. The players set out for the refinery. They split up into three parties, but also made a call to their tax collecting parties on the far side of the refinery to rendevous at the site. This meant they were able to converge from four directions at once. ( It also meant I couldn't blow up half refinery while they looked the other way.)

They found one building a smouldering wreck but coudn't see any cause. They started moving into the complex and soon came into contact with three parties of Bertrum35 troops that were planting explosives. An attempt to cow one group by a display of plasma beams didn't have the hoped for effect as the other PCs were leading their troops on a blood crazed frenzy of death!

Each of the three PC groups maneuvered into the complex using the buildings and terrain for cover and started plinking away at the bad guys. The bad guys for their part returned fire but the rifles they were using were proving ineffective at penetrating the PCs armour. They soon started falling back and converging towards one part of the complex. Sadly for them the PCs kept taking them out one by one.

With a group of police to back him up one PC blasted away at the Bertrums with a grenades but pulled back from that tactic when it set a building on fire.

A ship was seen coming in from the north. It was soon identified as an armed transport. It landed  outside the complex and the Bertrums made a run for the loading ramp. Some made it into the ship only to be mowed down by a PCs FGMP15 which blasted in through the loading ramp causing secondary explosions within. A second shot a few seconds later, again through the open ramp, put the issue to bed. The troops inside started running back out from the smoking ship, it obviously wasn't going anywhere.

With their fellows dropping all around them and their escape craft burning, the enemy mercs gave up the fight and put their arms in the air. They and their wounded were rounded up and put into vehicles for transport back to town. People were requested from the town to ride out to the refinery to put out the fires while the heroes rode back to town with their "guests" who they started treating exceptionally well, even to the point of "storing" them in the town saloon. There was a hope that these men could be turned, that is to abandon Bertrum35 and join them.

A panicked call from the PCs men stationed at the dig soon sent the PCs out that way. They arrived to discover one of their mercs, Sergeant Nina Poldi seriously injured. Oh, and a volcano-like uprushing of dirt and dust from the dig hole.

The story emerged that when the chief archeologist had opened one of the boxes provided by the PCs  the ant-like stone statue of an alien had come to life, walked through the wall bursting the dome, killing many inside and smashing through Nina who stood in its way. It seemed that the ant-like alien had come to life and gone down the hole and woken up its buddies before starting some kind of emergency evacuation/clean-up procedure.

The PCs decided there was nothing they could do here and headed back towards town as darkness fell. As they neared the place, a ship zoomed low and fast over their heads towards town, and seconds later the mercs they had left guarding the Bertrum35 prisoners were heard on the radio. Someone or something was attacking them!

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3:16 Carnage Amongst the Stars, session report

Last night was my first game in quite a while of 3:16 Carnage Amongst the Stars, and my first time GMing it with remote players. Three brave players dared the adventure with me, and all of them newbies to the system.

We started the session in a Google Hangout. This gave us the audio visual link, and then I opened up Roll20 where I had what they call a "campaign" set up to play. I normally just roleplay in the Hangout, without board and without minis, but 3:16 has an abstract map that is core to the play and without visuals I thought newbies would be struggling.

So I set up a Campaign in Roll20 with the range map on screen and counters for each of the players characters.

I'd also set up a series of "HandOuts", these are documents that I could flash on-screen for the players. I had one for a rules run-through, one for each rank detailing weapon choices and one for the domination results table (as I can never remember how that works).

We met up in the Hangout, I posted a link to the Roll20 campaign into the chat box and everyone joined me over there. Thus we had Roll20 in one window and the Hangout in another. It is possible to open Roll20 within the Hangout, but when I've tried this I found the Roll20 window is far too small and cramped.

We had a couple of problems the first of which was that one player was suffering a lot of interference. Fortunately one of the other players knew what was happening and advised that we should all turn off the audio/visual setting within Roll20. Once they were turned off the sound settled down nicely.

Then I tried to show the players the handouts I'd made and run into another problem. This time it was what I'd not-done within the settings of the handouts. Again another of the players stepped in and put me straight, telling me where I'd gone wrong. What I'd not done was set the "In Players Journals" to all players. This had to be done for all the handouts. It's a neat feature allowing handouts to be shown to some or all players. Sadly I didn't know that at the time and so no one could see it for a few minutes.

I'd previously posted a link to an audio introduction (the link) for the game into the Hangout and I checked that everyone had listened, thus I was able to avoid reading a long boxed-text.

The adventure was Mission 1 from my published campaign Death Bringers. In this mission the players are set to battle aliens within the rings of planet, so no gravity, no up, no down and lots of fun.

I like this mission because it's an unusual. There are living sentient ice-rocks within the rings, that can throw themselves at the good guys.

Hilarity ensued. The Sergeant only had an Non Fighting Ability of 4, the highest of the bunch, so anything they tried not related to fighting was like watching the three stooges at work. Feet were frozen to an asteroid, ropes caught around codpieces, and being stuck head first in a giant snowball with legs kicking in the vacuum.

The story eventually moved on. From battling moving space rocks, they bussed over to a moonlet and battled sentient ice-trees that threw ice-trunks into their ranks. Then it was time to find the L.T. who had disappeared. Turned out he had been captured and dragged down a tunnel. They found him in the centre of the moon a prisoner of a blobby beast. Three vivid incidents here have stuck in my mind.

A trooper punching his fist onto the end of an ice-spike.
A corporal ripping a massive living vein from a cavern wall.
A sergeant being bloodily blinded by an impact with his face plate.

From here they returned to the 3:16th capital ship and discovered that the 3:17th had crowded on board as their ship had been taken over. The heroes rearmed and headed over to 3:17ths ship to clear it out. Things didn't go well. For the first time ever in a game I've played, the aliens got an ambush, which they followed up with further hits. The PCs were about to die when a Strength was used that ended the scene and saved all their lives. There ended the game.

Sadly I brought the session down a bit at the end. On Sunday nights I have a strict two hour window for playing and I had to rush the players through what should have been the climactic ending thus ruining the pace. I'd been so wrapped up in the game that I'd lost track of the time. If I'd been concentrating I would have cut that last encounter and built up the previous one into the climax. If we'd had one more player and one less encounter, it would have been timed perfectly. Hopefully that's a lessen learned.

I really enjoyed getting back into 3:16 and if the opportunity comes up again I'll be playing again and hopefully some of these players will come back, they were brilliant!
 

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

Classic Traveller, COIN

I opened this session with a discussion of COIN operations, and how our brave mercenaries might pacify the rebelling population. They decided on a multi-tier approach.

Firstly they put together some leaflets for distribution. These presented some facts to the reader under the headline "Don't be a Pawn!". This had a graphic showing our heroes dressed as white chess pieces and their opposing Bertrum35 mercs' as black pieces. I thought this was a very cool idea! The leaflet went on to describe the real situation, in that everyone had been happy under Indes rule, and it was only the influence of the Outre mega corp and their mercs that people started dying.They also layed out that even if Outre took over, the first thing they'd do is fire all the farmers anyway, so why side with them.

They also commenced a weapon buy-back program, where 50% of the street cost would be paid for any weapons handed in. Next they set up a bar in the largest town to sell beer at near cost and therefore make themselves look like good guys (to a bleary eyed bunch of drunks anyway). They also started running a propaganda program on the planetary vid' network.

At every opportunity they also told the populous that they were offering a 1000CR reward for information that lead to the capture of any ASS (Agitating Sabotuer Spys).

After a week of continuing to collect taxes and weapons, one of their tax collectors returned with a whisper of a lead. The man willing to spill the beans was Wirke Zven, a farmer, but he wanted someone to visit him incognito. This gave the PCs a pause for thought. Was it a trap? Our heroes sent a couple of their men sneaking up along the valley walls to act as overwatch and then drove on to the farm in a requisitioned tractor wearing common vaccsuits. They seemed very nervous about being out of their armour and not packing fusion guns. I smiled.

They were let into the farm house to find a very worried and twitchy farmer. He wanted the money up front. He felt that he needed to get off planet very quickly. They offered him 100CR straight up and the rest if his information turned out to be real. His information was that a secret base had been established just beyond his farmland, and that he'd seen quite a number of people coming and going.

He rode back towards town with the PCs as he'd been promised a ride off planet, but a few miles outside of town he started to panic as people would see him in the vehicle with them. The shuttle was called down from The Discord to pick him up. It also did a casual fly past of the supposed base's location. It was confirmed as a base.

Back on The Discord it was time to interrogate the captured Bertrum35 merc' again. They told him about their discovery of the base and that they were going to nuke it from orbit (it's the only way to be sure). He broke down. Then followed a little miscommunication where the PCs were hearing his words but not understanding his meaning. (Just like Thufir Hawat talking to the Fremen before his capture by the Harkonnen, it was beautiful).

Slowly it emerged that the PCs had been playing the Mercenary game all wrong. When they fought Bertrum35 at the dig, the lasers had gone over their heads on purpose. Bertrum35 had deliberately missed, and then been slaughtered by our (anti)heroes as they retreated. Mercenaries don't generally kill mercenaries! Sure autochthones get killed, but not mercenaries! The prisoner again pleaded with the PCs to contact the Bertrum35 offices, and to tell them what they knew, if the officials realised they'd been out maneuvered, they'd back off. Running a mercenary unit was about making money, not killing people!

A communication with Bertrum35 offices was opened up, and somewhat awkwardly as they didn't know "the form", they started the process.

I was rightly accused of refereeing the whole carrot-and-stick thing wrongly, namely using a 2x4 rather than a stick and having no carrot, when the prisoner revealed the following. Betrum35 were on planet with at least one company, probably two (against the PCs single platoon), that there was another company available, that they had been dropped dirtside from a Bertrum35 Destroyer class vessel that carried at least 5 small bombers and a few fighters. This left the players feeling very outclassed, out gunned and out-manned.

This was actually my intention. In the last couple of sessions they'd been feeling and playing with the power that having a platoon sized unit armed with the best weapons available was like. Although they may not have seen the game effect, I had. If every time you roll the dice, you kill the enemy, or shoot a bomber out of the sky(!), the in-game challenge has to come from somewhere else.

Back to the story. Feeling out classed the PCs felt the need to force the hand of Bertrum35. As the communication was taking 20 minutes each way, they decided to use that to their advantage, and in a very clever way, I might say.

They launched missiles towards the base, and sent a message to Bertrum35 telling them the missiles were in-bound. The timing of it was such that if Bertrum35 responded by saying they surrendered, the missiles would be self destructed. Any other response would mean the base was wiped out. That was where we ended the session. What will Bertrum35 do? Tune in next week for the exciting answer.

So for the moment at least, the game has become one of bluff and maneuver rather than guns and death.

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

Classic Traveller, Downt Thole

Last night's game started with a bit of bad news for the PCs. A message was received on "The Discord" (their ship). It was a system wide broadcast by the administration advising everyone that all ex military residents in the system were being called-up due to the Aslan threat. About half of the players Mercenaries were on the call-up list. They decided to keep this to themselves and not pass the message onto their people on the ground.

Then came some negotiation back on the planet. A contract was even written for a loan of the alien artifacts that the PCs had collected on their extra-galactic jaunt, to the local archeologist. The players were very explicit that they wanted a huge reward if the items were to get damaged.  They also took a tourist trip down the excavation. They were able to present the archeologist with a lot of information from their own experiences which he found fascinating. The central shaft was only excavated down to the first horizontal tunnel which itself turned out of be partially collapsed. Some similarities and some differences were notes between this installation and that investigated by the PCs.

They ordered the items down to the planet and their shuttle did the transport duties. As it was flying in it caught sight of some movement on the outskirts of the dig site. When it went back spaceside it made a fly by on the movement but couldn't see anything.

The PCs were suspicious so gathered up some of their mercs and some of the semi-trained police and headed out to investigate. A laser beam shot over their heads from a group of rocks ahead. They returned fire with their devastating FGMPs. In response five lasers were fired quite deliberately over the PC's heads. Once again they opened a killing response.

Armed and armoured men broke from cover, and started an organised relay of fire and retreat. Our heroes drove straight in on their target and started wasting the bad guys one after the other until there was only one left who threw up his arms. During the charge, the cops ran away and another of the merc company was injured.

The prisoner was run back into camp and a call put through to the town to send out a clean up crew for the dig-come-battlefield.

What the players didn't know at this point was that the bad guys had just called for their extraction and they didn't want to get into a serious fight. But the PCs were killing them without allowing them to pull out.

When the cops arrived they were sent out to pick up the bodies and weapons. At this point the bad guy's pick-up arrived, found the area full of cops and their men dead on the ground, so instead of picking up, they dropped off a few bombs, laying waste to the cops and their vehicles, before racing for the horizon.

A quick call up to "The Discord" to the home team PCs was made but a failed sensors roll meant they couldn't see the ship or its destination. The call was followed up by the away team requesting a pick for the prisoner. they wanted to get him onto The Discord for questioning.

The scene shifted to the home team on the ship with their prisoner.  Talking through the bars of the brig they found the prisoner rather unbowed. He explained he was part of the mercenary company Bertrum35 and that there was a 10K bounty for his safe return to a Bertrum35 agent.  The PCs told him they weren't interested in his bounty. He was somewhat disbelieving, he thought as merc's themselves they would respect the bounty system. They were very clear that no one knew he was here and they would kill him if he didn't give them all of the information they wanted. The poor chap ended up crying in his cell.

Back on the planet the away team got a call to return to the main town. The governor had set up a meeting to which he had called all of the local leaders, he wanted to discuss the situation and try to calm everything down. He stipulated that everyone including the PCs should be unarmed.  That didn't go down well with the players. So the town square was filled with vehicles and the invited farmers and local leaders filed into the meeting hall but the mercenaries stayed outside making sure nobody got up to any shenanigans.

A deep bass sound alerted our heroes to a return of the bomber. They opened fire with their plasma weapons and scored a hit as it did a low roof-top pass over the square. As the bomber did a wide loop and turn back, the curious civies started coming out of the meeting hall.  The bomber made its second pass and dumped a load of leaflets but was hit a second time. This second hit did some damage and sent it spiraling off into the distance to explode.  The leaflets drifted to the ground and turned out to be an exhaultation to the people to throw off the shackles of their masters (Indes) and fight for freedom.

One of the farmers got in the face of a PC and started railing against their interference in a civil matter. A sniper of unknown providence took a shot at the PC, missed and hit this unfortunate citizen. The crowd panicked and scattered. One of them grabbed a rifle from his vehicle and was shot down, other people appeared to be going for weapons too, and the PCs declared "weapons free" on all armed people. Shots were exchanged as the mass of people scattered or ran to their vehicles and took off. The mercenaries and their police cohorts were amazingly restrained and only a few bodies were left on the ground when it was all over.

The governor was in despair at his failed plan, and realising that he would never be safe on the ground agreed to move his office to "The Discord", where he joined his wife.

The session really ended at this point, with some discussion prompted by myself, with an aim of forming a plan of action. The PC's mercenaries were hired to put down an insurrection and ensure that the taxes were collected, and had found themselves embroiled in an action that includes conflict with another mercenary unit and an unseen well funded adversary.

Discussion with the Indes representative included going to war with Outre, who are believed to be funding Bertrum35, but this was shot-down as it were, because a mega-corp war was financially unviable. A hit on the leaders of Bertum35 or even Outre was suggested and no firm decision made.

So we ended with no clear plan of action, so over the next week, I'm going to try and come up with a few suggestions to put to the players when we return.

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How to play Hour of Glory (non solitaire)

Here's another video taking a look at Hour of Glory showing a more general overlook at play.

 

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

Classic Traveller, Who fired? - session report

Last night's session of Traveller picked up exactly where we left off last time. The PCs were in company with a squad or two of their own company, and a contingent of the local police on a tax collecting mission to a local farmstead.

One cop had been shot and the PCs had atomised the shooter and his cliff-top perch.

They started the session by using some computer skills to override the homestead airlock and crank open the outer door. One PC thinking this was taking too much time, and besides, house clearing operations were too costly, opened up with his plasma gun and blew the top corner off the building, thereby opening the interior to the near vacuum. Air, and household equipment blasted out of the opening.

At this point another shooter appeared on the opposite cliff, standing in the open and opening a rapid fire into the cops and PCs. This proved too much for most of the cops who had already seen one of their own killed, they broke. Diving into half the vehicles these cops took off. The PC's troops opening up a hot fire, riddled the shooter who tumbled from the cliff.

The PCs then cycled the airlock and entered the homestead. They found a dead woman inside, just behind the door. Her vacc suit helmet had not been locked safely on when the air had been let out. The players assumed at this point that the shooters had been man and son, with the dead woman being the wife. This was then confirmed when they found family photos. They found the money chits they'd been sent to collect, but also found an empty chit bearing the "Outre" mark. They took this with them and left the scene.

The column of vehicles was reformed and the chicken-cops who had run earlier were recalled and joined up. It wasn't long however before radio interference alerted the convoy that something was up.
The cops were really jumpy and decided to travel behind  the PCs and their mercs about a quarter of a mile back.

The now-expected ambush took place. A line of spider holes across their front erupted with shooters. the vehicle was riddled with bullets almost instantly but the mercs (and PC's) were fine in their combat armour. The heroes launched an immediate frontal attack on the line of shooters splitting themselves into two squads. They rushed the line directly ahead and then split, working their way along the line in opposite directions from hole to hole.

The "red" squad took a casualty to one of the mercs but carried on. The "blue" squad had a slightly more interesting time. Before they reached the end of their line of holes more shooters and a vehicle appeared on the cliff line above them. The merc squad was directed to take the rest of the spider holes while the PC dealt with the men above. The rest of the convoy with the cops in it, was not doing too well. One of their vehicles was destroyed and more cops could be seen on the ground.

The spider holes were cleared and one of the cliff top bad guys taken out along with the vehicle up there. The rest of them pulled back out of sight. The PCs decided to rejoin the beleaguered cops. They soon fell in with them and some nice shooting took out the rest of the shooters from their cliff top positions. The combat ended.

All but two of the cops were down, mostly dead. One of the PC's mercs was dead and one injured. There was one vehicle working, the injured were put on there and the living provided a walking escort back to town.

Back in town they met with the planetary governor and there was a bit of a to-do. He was not impressed at the death and destruction and the PCs were unimpressed with being led into an ambush. It soon calmed down when the PCs produced the "Outre" cred chip as evidence that someone was paying to stir up trouble. The governor collapsed in his chair. He revealed that Outre was a rival mega corp to Indes, the company that hired our heroes and own the planet.

The gov' went on to reveal that his family had been threatened, that the offices of the government had been threatened, that the taxes still needed to be collected and that an archeological dig on the far side of the planet also need to be protected as it was a major source of revenue to Indes.

With so much work and only one platoon to work with the PCs set up a training cadre. One fireteam was to be dedicated to giving the local cops military grade training, and with that training they could bolster the mercenary troops adding to their numbers.

A second fireteam was to be dedicated to protection of the Governor and the offices, bolstered by the downloading of one of their Aslan combat droids. One full squad would be placed on tax collecting duties as that was where the real money from this ticket would be coming (they are on a 10% promise). Finally, the remaining fireteam and the PC's are on duty protecting the dig.

At the dig site, a buried monolith has been found (think 2010) and a tunnel excavated. The PC's kicked the two cops already on duty, in the butt as they weren't doing anything other than playing cards and sleeping. They organised a patrol routine and then had a moment to take a tour with the head researcher. When looking over the finds, they discovered that these included a damaged ancient box very similar to the ones they discovered when they were warped through a wormhole to the dead planet a few months back...

As the referee I'm finding it quite interesting to handle this type of play. It's not just the PCs that I have to handle but an entire platoon at their command.

Consider this, if it were D&D the characters would effectively be 2nd or 3rd level in regard to hit points, but wielding weapons of a +10 nature with +3 shields. They can meat out the death and destruction but are still rather fragile. In lasts night's game the PCs where individually manouvering with a fireteam each, almost like a single creature. When the enemy got a hit I treated it as a team-hit and rolled a die to determine who got hit with the PC taking their chances with the others. It worked quite well the game was able to move quickly without handling each NPC seperately.

I have to say I'm a little disapointed in the Classic Traveller Mercenary book as it's rules for handling large numbers is rather lacking and I've had to apply my house rules.

House Rules-

A groups of characters only roll once to attack, not individually. If the PC is with the group they roll with their own modifiers to see if the group hits.

A hit on a group, means one individual has been hit. If a PC is in the group, roll a die with everyone having an equal chance of being hit. If the PC is hit, they handle it as normal. If an NPC is hit, roll 1d6, 1-3 dead, 4-6 injured.

I've also started giving the individual fire teams in their company XP, 1 per combat. A team with more XP is going to be "steadier" than one without. This XP total is used on the following chart:

0-3 XP , will stand their ground on 9+
4-6 XP , will stand their ground on 8+
7-9 XP , will stand their ground on 7+
10-12 XP , will stand their ground on 6+
13-15 XP , will stand their ground on 5+
16-18 XP , will stand their ground on 4+
19+ XP , will stand their ground on 3+

In a situation with a mixed group of XP totals I'll use the average. If new recruits are added to an existing unit they might well lower the rating, that is permanently reduce the units XP until it earns more.

And here is the map for the ambush:

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How to play Hour of Glory solitaire

Hour of Glory is a great WWII sneak-em-up game that pits the heroes against the Germans and the clock. Normally a  game for 2-4, here's how to play on your own.

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