Wipers Salient

After what seems like forever I've finally released my card game ... WIPERS SALIENT.

During WWI, Ypres was the centre of intense and sustained battles between German and Allied forces. In the game of Wipers Salient you play the part of the Allies trying to hold back the massive forces of Germany during a series of incessant attacks.

Wipers Salient is a solitaire deck building game using a deck of 52 specialised cards. You have to gather your resources to maintain your Health and Morale, whilst attacking the enemy to avoid being overwhelmed.

Included in the zipped up package:
The rules in PDF format.
The cards in a printable PDF.
All of the individual card images in a high resolution, so that you can print them using a card printing service (but please refer to the readme.txt file before doing so for licensing information).

You can purchase Wipers Salient from WargameVault

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

Dungeon Mapping for players

I've created a video to help players map a dungeon in a way that doesn't lead to arguments and mistakes!

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

Progress report...

My work on my WWI deck builder game is progressing nicely. I'm finally working on the rules for the game. This includes not only words but quite a few diagrams to help explain whats what and how. I'd kind of forgotten that the rules would require this. After spend weeks doing all the cards I finished the last card and was pretty darned glad to have got it done and dusted....

Only then I realised I needed some art for a couple of stat-tracks. Then I noticed that I'd done the text wrong on nine of the cards. Then I started the rules and more graphics work is needed.

I can only say, I'm so very glad I'm starting to get a handle on Inkscape. This software makes the kind of work I'm doing here fairly easy, and being SVG based it scales to any size should I need to. So if I want to convert it to use hobbit sized cards or even giant cards, I'm set :)

The problem is, I'm getting pretty worn down, working on this game. I'm so close to the end and the lure of the next game is niggling and trying to drag me away from completing this project. I will overcome!

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

Card design for a deck builder

I'm working on a deck builder card game, and have just completed the play testing phase. I've been dickering around with the design of the card for much of the day, and I'm finally narrowing down the final format. As it's a deck-builder game the cards do not have to be used in-the-hand so I haven't had to worry too much about sticking information in the corners of the cards.

It's tricky because I want the art to show through, but still make the cards easy to see and read. A classic design problem. I'm aware that the edges should really be white to avoid the wear issue, but I am otherwise quite happy with where I've got to.

 

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

How To Write a Gamebook

I just realised that I haven't posted here about my video series on how you can write a gamebook!

I've a few of these books under my belt now, so I thought I'd create a short series on how to write them. So if you're bucket-list includes writing a book, why not watch this series and share a new game book with the world. This is the first in the series, but I have just posted the fourth, and there will be more coming.

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

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.

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

Scarlet Heroes, a first session

Last night was a night of nights as they say. It was my first time playing a game of Scarlet Heroes and the first time in the longest time, of playing a game with one player (me) and a GM.

I'd glanced at the free Qquickstart, so knew it was an OSR inspired game but not a lot else. At the start of the session  I had to throw a character together, and during this discovered that the rules actually have a section for handing one-on-one games, this was getting more interesting by the minute.

Having rolled the six stats and picked my traits I moved onto starting equipment. I managed to get spear, buckler and chainmail...but in typical OSR fashion there was no mention of clothes, so the session became subtitled...

The Quest for Underwear, and Maybe a Shirt

In the village of Rumbly Belly lived a Wanderer who was an Escaped Slave and ex Miltary Scout, who although well armed had nothing on under his chainmail. He really wanted something on underneath, if only to stop the chainmail plucking his hair and chaffing his bits. Fortunately for him a creepy tower was nearby and rumour had it that it used to be inhabited by a wizard of huge power and massive underpant-hamper. So guess where the wanderer went!!

Through the creepy woods, to the tower, circle around, assault the door. Empty room except for handy glowing mushroom light source.Stairs up, stairs down...which way? Bedrooms, and hampers, probably upstairs. Up we go!

The first level contained a living room, somewhat run down. An attempt to fashion a loin-cloth from the leather cover on the chair failed rather miserably. So the first door was opened. Opened just a crack for a bit of peek inside. Uh oh! It was a  mouldy library but there was a crystal statue guardian which raised its arms and attacked. I tried to close the door but it was ripped open, meaning it was spear-time!

The combat raged backwards and forwards, book shelves were upended, books were thrown but soon I was backing up the stairs just trying to fend off the crystal beast, when a lucky thrust finally put paid to him. After listening at the door and stairs to see if anything else was moving, my hero retired to the musty couch for a rest.

A quick scout around the library revealed no underpants, so I moved to the other door and discovered a bedroom. As we all know underpants accumulate under beds so I flipped the bed to find... no pants. But there was a trap door. Could this be where the pants were kept?  When I eventually prised it open all I found was a locked metal box. I dragged this outside into the sun and broke it open. Unfortunately dying because of the poison needle trap...

... Hey! No,  I didn't die, die. Just died. Which is not as lethal as you might expect under the Scarlet Heroes rules. I'm fuzzy on the rules here, but I rolled a die and survived. Apparently this "die" gets bigger each time you die (from d4 to d6 to d8 etc) and that's bad but I'm not sure why.

I was in a quandry. The box contained 40gp and 400sp but I had no bag/sack. I toted the box over to the wood line and hid it quickly under woodland rubbish. Then back to the tower. Up the stairs again. On the next level was a strange room with maps and drawings on the walls and ceiling. I tore down a map or two to discover they were star maps of some sort, but they didn't hide anything behind.

The stairs led further upwards and a listen check revealed "something sensed rather than heard". Mysterious!  Could it be the warm hum of a hamper full of dirty underpants, the possibility was a lure! Cautiously moving upwards I had sudden visions of far away worlds (Vargr inhabited?) caused by the mysterious drawings on the ceiling, before reaching the top floor.

Here I found a floor covered in drawings of demonology and the "hum" was stronger, and...and what the heck was that huge big eye-thing over there? If my character had any underpants, this is the point at which he would have need to change them. In the absence of a change of clothing, I backed slowly down the stairs all the way to the ground floor.

The stairs down led to an ancient roughly made dungeon. Cautiously moving along the tunnels I found a few odd things. A cave full of bones...a series of empty cells, and a torture chamber! Here I acquired an old rusty knife which was slid into my belt. A knife is always handy.

The next room was used in ancient times for one of, cooking, making witches brews, or rendering down bodies I can't be sure. Whatever it was, the Ghoul that leapt out of a cauldron at me was angry that I was there. The fight was brutal. Cauldrons were knocked over, ladles were used as vicious nasty weapons, there may even have been a little spear action. When finally the Ghoul was down I peaked into its hidey hole and found a sack full of coin. When I grabbed the sack, it set off a trap of some sort and the roof began to cave in. If only I'd thought to don one of the smaller cauldrons as a helmet! I was twice smashed by rocks while running for the surface.

Back at the trees, I upended the sack of coins and cut leg holes in the bottom. Thus fashioning a rather snazzy, if itchy, set of underwear. Joy! Bliss! Warmth!...Itchy.

The final act was to pile the coin into the metal box and head back to town for some clothes shopping.

A really enjoyable game, and the rules seemed to work rather well. I may have to keep an eye on this game and maybe add it to my wish list. The one-on-one session went really well and the rules, especially the not-dying part, made an OSR game survivable for a single PC.
 

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

Supplement 2 Animal Encounters, a review

This 52 page booklet was part of the original Traveller, and published in 1979. This review however is focusing on the currently available PDF version. The PDF is based on a scan of a printed copy and as these things go , it's a good scan, clear and easy to read. there is only one piece of art, a small black and white of a Lovecraftian-looking octopodian.

Book three of Traveller (Worlds and Adventures) gave you a mechanism for building a random animal encounter table for any terrain on any world. If your players were going into marshy terrain on a small world, you could knock up an encounter table for that particular world. The purpose of this supplement is to save you bother of making up that table of animal encounters.

After a brief introduction the booklet quickly moves into a series of tables that form the meat of this book. It systematically presents a separate table for each terrain type on a Small World with a Thin Atmosphere, then a Small World with a Standard Atmosphere and then, Small World with Dense Atmosphere. This slips into rinse and repeat for Medium sized worlds and Large Worlds.

Each table caters for a random roll from 2-12, each line gives you bare statistics for an animal, except when you roll a 10, which describes an event. Each animal entry describes its type, weight, hits to unconsciousness, hits to kill, armour, the beasts weapons and its likelihood of attacking or running, and finally it's speed.
Without book three, these tables would be of little use as this supplement does not explain all of the terms it uses. For instance, if an animal on the table is a "Intermittent", what does that mean?  If it attacks "as teeth", what does that phrase mean? 

Fundamentally each row is a stat-block without any description or narrative detail. This is typical of the Classic Traveller system, it leaves a lot of open space for the Referee to fill in the details, which either suits you, or doesn't. I have mixed feelings about this scenario within this context. If I'm being supplied encounter tables for quick reference, they should be quick reference with everything I need on them, but at the same time, this same table might apply to thousands of worlds and the same creatures should not be appearing on world after world.

What about those events that happen when you roll a 10? Overall I like this idea, it adds good spice to what is effectively a wandering monster chart. For instance, one event says that a PC is attached by a "Chameleon Filter" (you'll need to look that up). Another says, grass fire seen on the horizon, another that your vehicle breaks an axle. However, you'll have to try and avoid a broken axle three times on the trot or it might get a bit samey.

After iterating through the world/atmosphere options already mentioned the book goes on give you a few more specific tables.  Eight tables for various Maritime locations, two for arctic conditions, and two for vacuum worlds.

Overall, I think it's fairly useful in situations where you haven't had time to create specific encounter charts of your own. You would have to avoid using these charts too often if your players visit a lot of worlds, as they would soon become stale. With a million worlds it would be criminal of the referee for every world to have a 12Kg Flyer that Attacks on 3+.

You have nothing to lose by adding this to your Classic Traveller collection, but it is by no means required as you can get more variety by using the rules in Book 3.

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

Classic Traveller - Murder, blood, and bodies

Everyone's favourite mercenary company are acting as guards on the King Richard, a massive space-liner. Last session two grisley murders took place and the rough burly mercs had to do the investigating.

With the young man who discovered his lover dead being led away, the players  had to decide what to do about the body. With the previous body still floating outside the airlock, spacing it was not an option. In the end they decided to suck the air out of the stateroom and leave it sealed up. There was a lot of discussion about how they could do a search without alarming the passengers.

The ship's First Lieutenant told them an anecdote about mass panic on starships and how he'd been on a ship that had fallen into that trap. There had been unreasonable panic, fires, rampage, death, and by the end of jump the ship was almost a write-off, a thing that he would not risk again for any reason.

A panicked call came over the com' reporting a bout of violence on the pool-deck. They dispatched their nearest team to the pool with orders to be as non lethal as possible, before running down there themselves. When they popped onto the pool deck they found themselves amongst a pack of running passengers. They were wailing about the monster that was attacking people.

At the pool itself, they didn't find a monster, they did find one of their Vargr mercs pinning down one of the liners hostesses, and he even had his teeth buried in her leg. In the pool a man was weakly trying to swim as his blood leaked into the water.

The PCs quickly dragged the bleeding man from the water and pulled the merc off the hostess. It seems the report of a monster was a reference to the Vargr. They called for the doctor and set about working out what had happened. It seemed that the hostess had suddenly attacked the man in the pool with a ...spoon. Stabbing him repeatedly and trying to open him up.

The doctor wasn't answering but a nurse could be reached, and rushed to the scene. The nurse worked on the injured man but wouldn't go near the hostess until the Vargr that was licking his bloodied lips backed away. Once the "monster" was out of the way the nurse found the hostess almost catatonic with wide open pupils. Pharmacological! The head steward was called to clean up the bloody pool. He couldn't believe the mess, and straight after he'd finished cleaning the first victims room too!

Where the heck was the doctor?

They knocked on the doctor's door but got no answer, they called down the Lt to use his pass key (which they then took from him for their own use). Inside they found the doctor drunk and out to the world. The Lt was not pleased. The PCs noted that there were a lot of chemical bottles around the place and sheets of paper with chemical formula scrawled across them, many were struck out. The PC with medical training took a glance over these and realised they were hallucinogenic concoxtions. A search of the room discovered a notebook under the bunk. In this they discovered a list of names and dates. The Lt realised it was a list of crew members, ten of them.

The PCs called a meeting of the named crew in the pool and met them there with a small contingent of the merc company. The nurse give them the once over as the PCs started an interrogation. They found that the doctor without authorisation or permission had given all of them shots, claiming that they needed to have them for the trip to Oretroos, to protect them against Oretroos' bugs. A few of the crew also had blank spots in their memories that appeared to match up with the murders.

After a brief discussion about what to do with these people, they asked for volunteers to go into cold storage and suggested that it would be better for everyone, as "who-knew what the chemicals might do"?!  Some volunteered but the idea was not popular, the danger and risk of cold storage put a lot of people off, but in the end the rest were forced into it under duress. This way of putting people on ice proved popular with the PCs. The young man who had seen the body of his lover, was also placed into storage.

When a man came up to the PCs reporting his child missing the PCs feared the worst. They tried to get some information out of the man but he proved more than a little uptight. The man was afraid for his child, and the rumours of "monsters" that had been going round had put him just over the edge. He took off running down the corridor screaming. Trying to keep the lid on things one PC played-up the situation gayly dancing in the man's wake and made it all appear to be an impromptu act of some sort. Alas when the man started barging into staterooms screaming and searching for his son it could not be allowed to continue. He was tackled to the ground and placed under arrest.

They dragged him back to his room and finding an item of the boys clothing asked one of the Vargr if his nose would help in tracking the child. The Vargr was unsure if he was being insulted but in the end agreed to help. After visiting the theater deck where the child was last seen the heroic and skillful Vargr led them to a locked storeroom inside which they found the mutilated body of the missing child. Some mental calculation seemed to suggest that this boy may have been the victim of the one of those already in storage, so all that was left was to get rid of the body. They called the head steward to clean the place up and slipped the boy's remains into what was becoming the "death room", the stateroom of the second victim.

Things went pretty smoothly after that, it was only a short while until they emerged from jump. They found themselves in the middle of nowhere, but this was not because of a mis-jump. A fuel tender was waiting there and a transfer of fuel to the liner commenced. While this was taking place the body that was waiting quietly outside the shuttle airlock (the first victim) was retrieved and thrown into the "death room".

A second jump took place. Tensions were high. The passengers were unnerved by the "missing" people, both passengers and crew. By the roomers of the "monsters", the fight in the pool of course added to it. And these very rich people did not like being so upset, they had paid for the excursion of a life time, not a fear filled ride into hell.

Only one incident of note took place during the second jump. The PCs were called to a fight in the theater. Two men had come to blows. The families had been rivals/enemies for some time. One family had a teenage daughter, the other a teenage son, there had been a relationship that the parent could not countenance.  During the show the men had become aware that the other was also on board and a nudged elbow had turned into a fight.

The PCs arrived and broke the fight up, but decided to make a little money on the side. They encouraged the men to schedule a bout of fisticuffs the next morning. Of course a "book" was started and drinks served, in the forward theater, all without the officers of the ship being aware. The audience of unshaved gentlemen turned up, and the bout played out. When one man hit the canvas (alright, metal floor) the PCs had added another 1100Cr to their pocketbooks.

The arrival at Oretroos went off without a hitch. A shuttle was launched and a survey carried out. they were scouting for a few things. Locations where the passengers could be shuttled down for a swim on the beach, mountain climbing, jungle treks etc. Most importantly they were checking out the autocthones and the location of the Imperial research base. The aim being to avoid the Imperials, and allow passengers to visit the others. Radio signals were picked up from the Imperials and the base's position located.

There ended the session.

However, as I like to tease the next session to the players I made this audio recording of another radio intercept picked up a day or two later...

Radio Intercept

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

Dungeon World session

On Sunday night I took part in my first game  of DW. It was a learning game for players and referee so there was a bit of meta gaming and back and forth with the rules, but not unduly so. It was a short two hour session which included character generation, which ate into our playing time.

It was a fun game that featured our characters waking up caged in a cave and being promptly attacked by some disgusting lizard men. The heroic ranger managed to free us from our suspended prison and we quickly grabbed our weapons before the slimeies got too close. The ranger made good use of his weapons and friendly wolf pet while my cleric got caught up in a bit of a wrestling match. This little bout ended with one lizard tied up and the PCs running up a tunnel to escape.

Once outside the ranger did his rangering and found us a path out of the marsh. Sadly the pesky lizards had other ideas and three of them chased after us. Now was time for the cleric to do the spell thing, and a quick "fear" set the lead lizard back. More melee followed until the remaining Lizzie's broke and ran.

It was a good learning session where we were discovering how to trigger moves and playing them to advantage. There was even a little use of the "bonds" to gather bonuses. I've played Monster of the Week before which has been my only experience of the Apocalypse engine, and that set me up well for this game. As a player its easy to get into this game and start having fun, but only if you realise the mechanism is an aid to the story telling, and that a failed roll is as much fun as a success.

I'm looking forward to the next session. There are more moves I have to make!

Trader's Vengeance - a game book

I have just made my latest game book, "Trader's Vengeance" available in paperback via Lulu.com.

Backcover blurb:

After three generations of hard graft the starship that your grandfather, your father, and yourself have all grafted for, is in peril. If you don't make the next payment, you'll lose your livelihood, your home, your ship. There isn't anything that's going to stop you getting the money you need.

With aliens, pirates, robots, criminals, the military and even the police against you, the odds aren't in your favour. This is the time when the real inter-planetary trader come into his own. Warm up the engines, bring the guns online, snap up the cargo, it's time to make some cred.

Traders Vengeance is a game-book where you play the hero and choose the path to take. You decide which enemies to fight and which shipments to make.
 
As you'll gather, it's science fiction, and set in a Traveller-like universe.

GO BUY IT!

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

Classic Traveller, Time for a Cruise

The PCs had accepted a new mercenary ticket last session. the ticket involved acting as security on a space going cruise liner, the King Richard.

Between sessions I teased with...
 
Overheard by a mercenary stationed on the bridge of the King Richard, two days into jump, a conversation between the Captain and his First Officer...

"Sir, the engineer was telling me that he had a wobble in one of the Jump-Field generators."

"Damn. Which one?"

"Six."

"Again? Three months in dock and it's still not straight! Tell him I want it monitored hourly and report made to the me at the change of  every watch.

"Aye Captain."

 ... and then...

All of the MMM (shorthand for the PCs merc' company) on board the King Richard have been issued with ship comm' units in the form of a small hand held device. It's a piece of crap and there are dead spots on the ship where they don't work well.

The officers of MMM are all simultaneously beeped by the ship comm, and asked to attend the Captain in his cabin at their earliest pleasure.

 ... and then the next day...


The Captain clears his throat.

"We have a delicate and urgent matter to attend to, and although I understand it's not really in your regular line of business, I'm afraid I'll have to ask for your assistance."

... and now, on to the actual session.

The Captain went on to explain that there had been a murder on board and that he wanted the PCs, as the only security on board, to investigate. The First Lieutenant took over the briefing and gave them some additional details. The chief steward had discovered a murdered woman  in one of the cabins. The woman's husband and child had been intercepted and diverted into the stateroom of a crew member, putting them on-hold as it were.

The captain broke in to advise the PCs that they needed to keep the whole incident under wraps, the danger of panic on board amongst the passengers must be avoided at all costs. (Also the super rich passengers wouldn't like their digestion interrupted).

Down to the stateroom containing the body. The Lt used a pass key to let them in. Only one PC went in for a look around while they waited for the ships doctor. The stateroom was split into two areas and the PC could see blood splattered across the table, chair, and carpet, he didn't risk peeking around the corner though. He didn't find anything untoward or upset in this first area, other than the smell.

When the ships doctor turned up he immediately recognised the smell, had a flash back of sorts and had to leave the room. A PC kept him company and offered him a "sniff of his cinnamon apple pouch" to help settle him down. Once the doctor had regained his balance he led the PCs into the bedroom. There they found the murdered woman opened up in a horrific way. Face slashed, limbs hacked open along their length and stomach open with the entrails pulled out.

There was some discussion of possible murder weapons, and the doctor could only say that the weapon was a large hacking blade... and yes the hatchets carried by the PCs merc's could be responsible for such wounds.

The Lt reminded the PCs that word of this atrocity should not reach the passengers, and indeed that as few crew should find out about it as possible, lest they start talking which could lead to panic. But the PCs needed to investigate and ask questions, how could they do that without suspicion?

The discussion circled for a while with possible cover stories being discussed, including the truth, biological infections, accidents, infestations, stroke, heart attacks etc. Should they put the body in stasis? This was poo pooed as the cold sleep capsules had glass port holes meaning anyone could see the state of her. They really needed to keep the truth from everyone including the grieving husband and child.

In the end they decided they needed to get rid of the body. With no evidence of a crime, no one could find out about it and start a panic. But how do they get rid of it and explain the lack of a body? Of course! She went "Space Crazy" and then spaced herself! But that was problematic too. There was one passenger air lock and the crazy woman couldn't have exited there without notice, so that left the  the airlocks that only crew could reach which were coded access only... so someone on board must have forgotten to lock up an airlock, simple really.

Now they needed to get the body to an airlock. The washer-woman's wicker basket was out, as the body was too smelly and a bit drippy. It was down to engineering to get a wheeled bin of some sort. While they were there they learned that there was no video surveillance on board (not surprising considering they were cruising to a forbidden zone, and no-one wants evidence of their presence). They also discovered that the door locks didn't record who opened a door, only the times last ten or so openings and closings.

Later an engineer would visit the door-lock and inform them of the opening and closing of the door. From his description, they assumed she had returned to the room then opened the door to admit someone else a few minutes later.  Only a very few minutes after that the door had been opened again, presumably the killer leaving.

Armed with the plastic bin they bundled the body into it, and sealed the top with plastic and tape. They left the Chief Steward cleaning the room (he'd discovered the victim so already knew about here) and headed down to the shuttle bay.

At this point I checked their skill lists to see what they knew about jump-space tech. I found nothing relevant.

They manhandled the body through the shuttle to it's loading ramp. They cycled the lock and opened themselves to jump space. Pulling the body out and giving it a heave they sent it drifting out into ... into... the stasis field that surrounds a ship in jump, and there it still hangs, and will hang until they drop out of jump. [insert referee's evil grin here]

The investigation kind of petered out here, and the PCs retired for the night, after stepping up the security patrols their mercs were making.

They were soon awakened by a call from Orrkselghu the leader of their Vargr contingent, he needed them to come to him. He couldn't say more as the comm's were open. When they reached him he was standing with a distressed young man held firmly in his paw. It turned out there had been another murder, this young man's lover as it turned out. In the stateroom they found a similar situation, a man's body torn open, blood everywhere. There were differences too. First victim was female, this male. The first murder was in a plush state room, this one on a different deck and a cheaper state room (although all rooms on the ship are hideously expensive).

Some passengers saw the armed Vargr escorting the young man to a crew stateroom where he would be held until things could be cleaned up.

First thoughts of the party: Psycho serial killer on the ship while it's in-jump for a week.

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

Classic Traveller, The Scam is on...sort of.

As you may remember our heroes were waiting in the rented factory unit for a call back from the operative who was looking at the robot.

Between sessions I teased the players with a story prompt...

Orrkselghu (aka Zeus) pads over to you, his personal radio squarking the Vargr language. He speaks Vargr into the the radio, which goes silent then turns his attention to the away team.

"Oeldzokghog (aka Jeff), out front, says he heard a crash some distance off and now he can hear shooting. He lusts for a fight."

The PCs (never ones to turn down a fight) locked and loaded...

 Orrkselghu (aka Zeus) barks into his radio. Then turning back to you guys he says.
"Oeldzokghog (aka Jeff) is scouting." Then looking directly at Jocko says. "Will you lead the war party?" As he waits for your reply, you notice his mouth is held open, a Vargr-smile...

PC Jocko headed out with a few of the Vargr mercs. Jeff reported from a roof top that a car had crashed, the occupants debouched and were exchanging fire with men from another vehicle. Climbing to the roof himself Jocko got into a position above the crashed car. From here he could see the nearest shooters were dressed in civilian clothes and toting rifles (illegal on this world) and their opponents were pistol-armed coppers. The vargr troopers were ordered to act as a blocking force at various intersections interposed between the fire fight and the warehouse.

After assessing the scene, Jocko donned his good-boy hat and decided to help out the cops. He smashed the car with a grenade, blowing it sky high, and taking out four of the eight shooters. Considering that the odds were now even enough for the cops he and the Vargr pulled back to the warehouse.

Around this time the chaps in the warehouse got a call that Alfred Vicek Head of Purchasing, he would be paying a visit (a step up from the low grade company rep who'd previously come to look at the robot). He was on the moon and could pop over. Sadly this didn't work out too well, by the time he'd arrived the police had set up a cordon around the industrial district as they looked for more shooters. Alfred was stopped at a police check point and couldn't get in.

Now the PCs had to devise a plan to get this man through the road block...after some careful consideration they decided that the answer would be more violence! Jocko and Oeldzokghog (aka Jeff) set out again. They climbed to a rooftop near the blockade and Jocko aimed his grenade launcher in order to get maximum range. By causing explosions in the distance they hoped to draw away the cops.

He fired. Short. The grenade hit a building just a short distance away. Explosions, fire, police reaction, some of the cops were drawn away, a partial success. As Jocko and Jeff climbed down started running for the warehouse a cop spotted them. "Halt! Police!" Jocko shouted for Jeff to follow and started to run, but Jeff just growled the Vargr word for "coward" and opened fire on the cop.

Realising the situation had turned bad Jocko took off that good-boy hat, stomped it into the ground, spat on it, and took his lifetime-of-crime hat out, and donned it as he opened fire on the cop. Bullets tore through the prone copper's head and blasted out his back. They ran for the warehouse.

A bit of technical cleverness by PC Jenkins had the computer purring and they soon had a good read on police procedures. They knew if they hunkered down and didn't answer the door the cops wouldn't have the right to enter and search. So they sat quietly and waited for the inevitable search of the area and started plotting on how to get the heck out of this situation.

They remembered a merc-ticket they had turned down, that involved a dodgey looking chap wanting to hire the company to destroy an Imperial base. They had set an ex-cop (and) merc recruit to follow him as he'd been so-very-dodgey.  They now decided to turn this to their advantage.

The plan was for another merc to plant arms and ammunition on this guy and then have the ex-cop call his buddies and mount a raid, this would draw the few cops in the area away from the search. Plan!

Unfortunately the merc they talked into doing the planting returned from the job and reported that he was worried he'd be recognised. He arrived at the dodgey guy's hotel and had to ask in reception what room was his. When he'd got to the room the door was locked, so he'd kicked it in, threw the guns in and run for it... Not exactly the covert operation the PCs had hoped for. Anyway, the raid took place and it drew the cops away from the industrial sector. They loaded men and machines up onto a truck, headed for the air-lock, moved into the shuttle and took off to spend some time hiding on the dark side of a moon somewhere until the heat died away...

Meanwhile, back with the home-team PCs, another prospective customer for the mercenary unit turned up at the air-lock. he turned out to be Wicus Tyna, a representative of Cumberland Tours Inc. The tour company had a liner running "exciting" holidays for rich patrons. By exciting, the company meant often slightly illegal.

Wicus was in a bind. The liner "King Richard" was due to leave the next morning to visit the prohibited system Oretroos, and they had no guards. The liner always carried a contingent of guards because that made the customers feel much safer. So, with precious little time, he suddenly needed 100 guards. He was authorised to spend as much as 1,000,000Cr getting the guards.

There was a short negotiation, and then a stutter when it Wicus discovered they only had about 50 men rather than the required 100. However, they soon put his fears to rest when they showed the heavy equipment and power armour they would be bringing. He decided that would more than make up for a lack of numbers. It was all about making the customers feel safe, and what would be safer than being surrounded by walking tanks!

A recall alert was issued to the mercs on leave and everything made ready. The Home-team PCs wouldn't be going on the mission however as they had to stay behind as the official witness' to the changeover the subsector governorship.

There ended the session. But what of the Oretroos? Let's read the Imperial catalog of planets...

Oretroos - RED ZONE (thin atmos, 70% water)
Under Imperial edict this system is out of bound. Proto-intelligent race developing. Only allowed visitors are the 1000 strong Imperial study team.

Hmmm... and what happened to the King Richard's previous guards? Oh I'm going to have so much fun. :)

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