Scoutships Without Number

I thought I should stat out the Dolphin under Stars Without Number, and here she is. I’ve used the SWN stats to work out some SW ones as well, because I’m not sure which rules I’d use for space combat, should it occur.

SCOUTSHIP

Power: 10/5 free. Mass: 15/4 free.

Cost: 2,820,000. Hit Points: 20. Crew: 1/10. Speed: 5. Armour: 0. AC: 5.

Weaponry: None.

Defences: None.

Fittings: Spike Drive-3; Atmospheric Configuration, Fuel Scoops (both integral to courier hull); Cargo Lighter, Cargo Space (3 tons), Cold Sleep Pods, Fuel Bunker, Ship’s Locker.

The scoutship is a modified Naval Courier (Skyward Steel p. 46), intended for long-range exploration and courier duties. It is unarmed, relying on its speed and high spike drive rating to evade combat.

Savage Worlds: Acc/TS 70/800, Toughness 16 (4), Crew 1+9, Cost $28M. Notes: Climb-3. (I’m assuming that SW performance is basically like a space shuttle.)

AI

The Dolphin is controlled by a braked AI, working off its debt as a Scout Service ship. This is built using the AI rules in chapter 12 of SWN Core Edition.

I start with the standard Tolerance score of 20, and decide to reserve 5 for armatures, which is enough for any of them. I spend 13 points to buy Int 14, Wis 14 and Cha 12. A further point buys the Basic skills package, and one extra package – Pilot. This leaves me with 6 points; I’ve noticed in using the SWN point buy character system that it is often difficult to use up the last point, and use the last free point to buy an increased saving throw progression of +1 per 3 levels.

As the Dolphin normally wears a starship, I pick a Squawkbox armature to begin with, which costs no Tolerance. I’d like to merge the two Vehicle skills to give it Vehicle/Space-1, but since you can’t do that with skills from the same package, I use the Vehicle/Any skill for Vehicle/Grav, the Culture/World skill for Culture/Homeworld, and allocate the Combat/Any skill as Combat/Unarmed (still usable whatever weapons have been taken away from you).

Str 3, Dex 7, Con 3, Int 14, Wis 14, Cha 12. Level 1 AI. HP 4, AC 6, AB +0, Saves 15.

Skills: Combat/Gunnery, Combat/Unarmed, Computer, Culture/Homeworld, Culture/Spacer, Navigation, Tech/Astronautics, Tech/Postech, Tech/Pretech, Vehicle/Grav, Vehicle/Space.

Weapons/Armour: None. Armature costs Cr 500.

Savage Worlds: Ag d4, Sm d8, Sp d8, St d4, Vi d4. Pace 6, Parry 4, Toughness 4, Charisma 0. Fighting d6, Knowledge/Astrogation d6, Piloting d6, Repair d6, Shooting d6.

REPAIR SWARM

The Dolphin‘s repair swarm is composed of bots based on Squawkbox armatures, each with an expert system granting them +0 on anything relating to repairing the ship. They’re good enough to do routine maintenance, but if anything is seriously damaged, Arion or the Dolphin need to get involved.

AC: 6. HD: 1 (4 HP). AB: +0. Cost: Cr 1,000. No. Appearing: 1d6. Saving Throw: 15. Move: 30′. Morale: 12. Skill Bonus: +0.

Savage Worlds: In SW, I’ll just use the standard statistics for a swarm.

Arion Without Number

When I get to running Arion again, I’m thinking of using a mixture of Savage Worlds, Stars Without Number and Larger Than Life for the rules, so I need some sort of conversion rulings. LTL is easy; Rep is half Spirit die type plus one. SWN is a little more complex, but I’ll assign the SWN modifier as how many die types a trait is above or below d6. Edges and Hindrances in SW are basically how you play the role in SWN, so I only need to consider attributes, skills, powers and Charisma.

Under SWN, all of the crew have woven body armour, semi-auto pistol, and knife.

ARION

Attributes: Agility d8, Smarts d6, Spirit d6, Strength d6, Vigor d6. Skills: Fighting d4, Knowledge (Astrogation) d4, Notice d8+2, Piloting d10+2, Repair d6, Shooting d6. Charisma -2.

This becomes: Str 10, Dex 14, Con 10, Int 10, Wis 10, Cha 3. Level 1 Expert. HP 4, AC 5, AB +0. Saves: P16, M15, E12, T11, L14. Skills: Combat/Projectile, Combat/Primitive, Perception-1, Tech/Astronautics, Tech/Postech, Vehicle/Space-2.

CORIANDER

Attributes: Agility d6, Smarts d6, Spirit d8, Strength d6, Vigor d6. Skills: Fighting d4, Intimidation d6, Notice d6, Persuasion d10+2, Psionics d6, Shooting d4, Streetwise d6+2. Charisma +2. Powers: Boost/Lower Trait, Healing, Mind Reading.

I’ll convert that as: Str 10, Dex 10, Con 10, Int 10, Wis 14, Cha 18. Level 1 Psychic. HP 3, AC 5, AB +0. Saves: P13, M12, E15, T16, L14. Skills: Culture/Criminal, Perception, Persuade-2. Disciplines: Biopsionics-1 (primary), Telepathy-1. (Properly, Coriander should have Biopsionics level 2 to gain access to Psychic Succor, but this is a broad-brush conversion here.)

DMITRI

Attributes: Agility d6, Smarts d8, Spirit d6, Strength d6, Vigor d6. Skills: Fighting d6, Investigation d8+2, Notice d8, Persuasion d6, Shooting d6, Streetwise d8+2. Charisma 0.

For SWN, I’d rate Dmitri as: Str 10, Dex 14, Con 10, Int 10, Wis 10, Cha 3. Level 1 Expert. HP 4, AC 5, AB +0. Saves: P16, M15, E12, T11, L14. Skills: Combat/Projectile, Combat/Primitive, Culture/Criminal-1, Perception-1, Persuade.

Archetypes in Action – 1

A brief digression from Deep Black into Archetypes, one of my favourite features of Savage Worlds Deluxe Edition. I’m having a lot of fun playing with these, and here’s the first set – the crew of the Dolphin as SW archetypes. I like these so much I’ll probably swap them for the current incarnations.

• Arion: Pilot archetype, using the extra skill point to buy Knowledge (Astrogation) d4, with Hindrances of Heroic, Loyal: Friends, and Outsider (scouts are scruffy and insubordinate).
• Coriander: There isn’t a Psion archetype, so I used the “Face”, swapping the Strong Will Edge for Arcane Background (Psionics) and Taunt for Psionics. Her powers are Boost/Lower Trait, Healing, and Mind Reading, and her Hindrances are Clueless (she grew up on a Lost World), Loyal: Friends and Wanted (psions are classed as criminals on some planets).
• Dmitri: The Investigator archetype, with Hindrances of Curious, Loyal: Friends, and Wanted (by rival espionage agencies).

It’s an extremely fast and easy way of building characters. The only thing to watch out for is that the bonuses from Edges aren’t applied to the archetypes’ skills in the book.

Of the 16 archetypes listed in the book, 9 are applicable to any setting as they stand, three really only work in a fantasy setting, and four are aimed at a modern or SF setting. However, by swapping around a couple of skills and edges, even those can be used elsewhere.

Obsidian Portal

I started to add a number of extra features to the blog for campaign tracking – setting info, characters, items, that sort of thing – and it occurred to me that I was simply duplicating the functionality of Obsidian Portal.

So, instead, I set up a free account there and created campaigns for Irongrave and Heart of the Scorpion.

This blog is therefore likely to shift away from session writeups and setting information, and towards reviews and campaign-agnostic materials.

Faction Turn 1: January 3200

The three active factions and their goals this month are:

• Corinthian Scout Service – Expand Influence; establish a base of influence on Halfway.
• Celestial Empire – Planetary Seizure of whatever the world is at hex 0002. One of the beauties of SWN as a sandbox is that I don’t need to work out the planetary details first, as you’ll see.
• Halfway Combine – Peaceable Kingdom; avoid becoming entangled in war or politics for the next four turns..

Working from page 114 of Stars Without Number, the CSS has 3 FacCreds, the Empire has 7 and the Combine 5. No-one has any maintenance costs this turn. As per p. 114, I dice for the order of activity; it’s the one I’ve used above.

First, the CSS attempts to establish its base of influence. It can do this if it has any other asset insystem, and the Dolphin is a Covert Shipping asset, so they’re good to go once it arrives. (At the PC level, this means Arion arrives at Halfway, and drops off Dmitri, who starts setting up a network.) They will spend all 3 of their FacCreds to do this, giving it 3 hit points if successful. As per p. 115, all factions now roll 1d10 + Cunning; the CSS gets 8+4=12, the Empire gets 1+5=6, and the Combine gets 4+5=9. As the CSS got the highest score, no other faction can attack the fledgling base. Success! The CSS gains no experience for this, but now has a toehold from which it can expand.

Next, the Empire tries to seize 0002, whose name has not yet become important. Since I haven’t worked it out yet, I use the default faction for a planetary government: Backwater Planet. I note from p. 115 that the Empire can only attack the faction with assets already on-world, so I change the action – they have to move assets there first, so they will use their Extended Theatre capability to move Space Marines two hexes to the world, although those cannot attack until the next turn.

Lastly, the Combine sits tight and tries not to be squashed. The odds of not having to fight anyone for four turns are pretty good, since the CSS is worse at fighting and the Empire needs to build some Deep Strike Landers before it can reach Halfway.

As Arion arrives at Halfway Station, the news is full of the sudden appearance of Imperial Marines in the skies of a neighbouring world.

“Looks like the boss was right,” says Dmitri. “We’ve got a problem.”

Halfway

“Once you’re in orbit, you’re halfway to anywhere.” – Robert A. Heinlein.

As Halfway Station will be the “base town” for Heart of the Scorpion, I should detail it first, I think. I have a clear idea of what I want it to do in the campaign, so I will create it by selecting from the various possibilities, rather than dicing for them. When creating worlds deliberately, I find it best to work backwards from the tags; although the book recommends two, I chose three – one implied by the physical characteristics of the world, and two I think will be appropriate and interesting. Since the end point was clear in my mind, Halfway took less than 10 minutes to create. Stars Without Number really shines in reducing GM preparation time.

So, I pick everything down to and including Tags, and the rulebook tells me what the rest are. I select an English culture and a representative democratic government, as those will be most familiar to myself and any likely future players, thus easiest to game.

HALFWAY STATION

Atmosphere: Airless. I had already decided it was an orbital station.

Temperature: Frozen. Same argument; it’s cold in space.

Biosphere: No native biosphere. No air, no water, really cold temperatures; not conducive to life as we know it.

Population: “Hundreds of thousands” of inhabitants is both the largest population the rules allow to be supported by sealed agricultural systems and hydroponics, and the smallest that can build starships. So a no-brainer for this one.

Tech Level: 4. As a major trading port, it must be able to build starships, which requires TL 4; but it should be outmatched by the Celestial Empire, which is TL 5.

Tags: Bubble Cities, Exchange Consulate, Trade Hub.

Enemies (10): Native dreading contamination, saboteur, hostile official, corrupt Exchange official, indebted native, Exchange debt collector, cheating merchant, thieving dockworker, commercial spy, corrupt customs official.

Friends (10): Local rebel, maintenance chief, surveyor, consul in need of help, banker, Exchange diplomat, rich tourist, free trader, merchant prince, spaceport urchin.

Complications (11): Bubble rupture, failing air processor, native revolt, surveillance cameras, corrupted consulate, consulate cut off from funds, powerful debtor reneges, outworld faction schemes to seize control (that would be the Celestial Empire), sabotage, blockade, pirate spies.

Things (10): Pretech habitat technology, industrial product, security system codes, Exchange vault codes, concealed wealth, forgotten vault, warehouse contents voucher, insider trading information, pharmaceuticals, tax stamps.

Places (11): Power core, bubble surface, hydroponics, habitat warren, Consulate chamber, disputants’ meeting site, Exchange vault, raucous bazaar, elegant restaurant, busy spaceport, foggy warehouse-lined street.

Conveniently, I can generate encounters randomly from the Friends and Enemies listed above using a d20, complications using a d12 (12 = no complication – hey, it has to happen sometimes), things using a d10, and places using a d12 (with 12 indicating the party’s ship).

The Corinthian Scout Service

I have lots of ideas for factions, and also a view to using them in other games; but I’ll start small, to make sure I understand things. The Antares Sector will start with three factions; the Celestial Empire, which is a stock Regional Hegemon; the Halfway Combine, a stock Mercantile Combine; and the Corinthian Scout Service, which I shall now create. All of them start with 0 experience points.

Every faction has a homeworld, six statistics, one or more tags, and a goal. The homeworld is easy; that’s Corinth. Likewise the faction objectives, those have been developed in play so far.

I see the CSS as a minor faction with aspirations of growth; the advice on p. 126 of Stars Without Number tells me that the faction should have 4 in its primary attribute (probably Cunning – it’s a survey and espionage outfit), 3 in its secondary (Wealth, because it can afford to hand out constructive possession of scoutships) and 1 in its tertiary (only Force is left), which gives it 15 hit points. The CSS also has one asset in its primary attribute, and another in some other attribute; browsing through the lists on pp. 118-123, I select Covert Shipping/Cunning 3 (which includes Arion and the Dolphin), and Surveyors/Wealth 2 (which seems to reflect their official purpose as a Traveller-style scout service).

Browsing through the tags section, I see a few that look appropriate, and although most factions should have only one tag, I note that especially versatile organisations can have two. Scouts are nothing if not versatile, so I pick Secretive and Technical Expertise as the best fit to my intentions for the faction.

That whole process took about 15 minutes, and gives me a faction looking like this:

CORINTHIAN SCOUT SERVICE

Officially an organ of the Corinthian government dedicated to interstellar exploration and communications, forming a “cultural bridge” between the worlds of the Attica Cluster, the CSS also operates various intelligence assets. These are normally small groups of deniable operators based on a CSS scoutship; in order to make it harder for opponents to work out what it is actually doing, in a kind of interstellar “shell game”, the CSS offers exemplary former members constructive possession of a scoutship, to do with as they wish so long as they keep it in good order and periodically report their findings. Yes, some former CSS crews are spies; but which ones? Usually, not even they know for certain.

Attributes: Force 1, Cunning 4, Wealth 3.

Hit Points: 15.

Assets: Covert Shipping/Cunning 3, Surveyors/Wealth 2.

Tags: Secretive, Technical Expertise.

Goals: Long-term – preserve the safety and independence of the Attica Cluster in general, and Corinth in particular (Peaceable Kingdom). Short-term – establish a Base of Operations on Halfway Station (Expand Influence).

Trading

As you may remember, I intend to drop CT-style trading entirely, as it’s too much like the day job.

For face-to-face play, I eventually came to the conclusion that like space combat, trading wasn’t much fun for most of the group, as they had no direct involvement in it. My final ruling was that trading happened in the background, and the profits it generated exactly balanced the ship’s upkeep – life-changing amounts of money could only be acquired through adventuring.

However, trading serves another function, in that the goods the PCs buy direct them to their next stop. You look for the place where your cargo will get the best resale DMs, and head that way.

In Stars Without Number, the activities of the factions should replace that; but if not, I will need to find some way of turning Stars Without Number world descriptions into Classic Traveller ones, to determine trade classifications.Shouldn’t be too hard; if it turns out to be necessary, I’ll give it some thought and post my findings.

Building the Antares Sector

My first Classic Traveller campaign was set around the red giant star Antares, 180 parsecs from Earth; that’s far enough away that nobody really knows what’s in the vicinity – even in the 1970s, I was concerned that advances in astronomy might overtake my creation. Not that the players would have minded, or even noticed, probably. Likewise, the campaign was set around 3,000 AD, during the decline of the Terran Empire (I was a big fan of Poul Anderson’s Flandry stories); that was with the idea that the game date would be the current date plus 1,000 years, for similar reasons.

So, for a retro-inspired campaign, it felt appropriate to return to Antares. Shuffle the timeline a little, and rename the Empire as the Mandate, and you’re there. I generated a sector using the Stars Without Number rules, then moved some tags and stats around to make more sense – an Outpost tag is better suited to a world with that population level, for instance, rather than one with billions of inhabitants. Here is the map (a work in progress) as stands after the first pass:

Two things leapt out at me from this exercise; first, that because world statistics are independent of each other, it’s faster to create a sector in SWN than a subsector in CT; and second, as I expected, the Tags system combined with the adventure seeds takes me straight from dice rolls to scenarios, without my usual brain-racking to extract an adventure from the world stats. Overall, a significant reduction in prep time over CT – I like this.

In a massive retcon, I also recycled worlds I found interesting from previous seasons of the Arioniad, and fleshed them out using the SWN tags system. Planets from season 1 have become the Attica Cluster, and the Imagoes remain in play, although they are now off-map to the "south". If you like, you can imagine this as an artifact of changing the map scale, since SWN doesn’t specify one.

Fortuitously, the map gave me several clusters of worlds connected by spike-3 routes centred on an isolated system; I declared the isolated system to be Halfway Station (smirk), and inferred a merchant combine controlling the spike-3 routes. This is a nod to CT, where jump-1 subsidised merchants provided regular service within clusters of worlds, and jump-3 ones service between them. It even looks a bit like a scorpion.

The Terran Mandate calls to mind the Chinese concept of the mandate of heaven, so I gave the regional hegemon world a Chinese culture. The Combine and the Attica Cluster I gave British cultures, since most SWN PCs speak English, and there must be a reason why that language is so common. Harking back to ancient Greece again, the Cluster isn’t unified politically, but does have a single culture. Astronomically speaking Gimirr is part of the Cluster, but culturally it is separate.

SWN recommends 3-4 factions to begin with, so I select a Regional Hegemon (for the Celestial Empire) and a Merchant Combine (for Halfway) from the stock factions in the rulebook, and will shortly create a third one for the Corinthian Scout Service – Arion’s patron. The Combine is probably no friend of the Empire, since the Empire’s spike-6 capability has the potential to undermine the Combine’s monopoly on trade, and turn their homeworld of Halfway Station into an irrelevant backwater.

Logically, there should also be at least one set of rebels somewhere in the Empire, and Arion should try to contact them; but I’ll leave that for now.

No Estimated Time of Return

Corinth, 4 months later…

A grizzled Scout veteran sits behind a desk in an office. There is a knock at the door.

"Come," he calls. Arion enters and stands to attention – or, at least, what passes for that in the Corinthian Scout Service.

"You sent for me, sir?"

"Yes. Sit." The veteran flicks the graphics on his desktop to one side and gives Arion his full attention.

"I want to discuss your next assignment with you," Arion’s superior begins.

"Next assignment? I’ve mustered out, sir."

"I’m activating your reserve status and assigning you to Intelligence. Don’t give me that look; you still get to fly around the Galaxy sticking your nose where it doesn’t belong."

"Except now you tell me where that is."

"Exactly."

"And where is it, sir?"

The veteran gestures to scale a starmap projection off his desk and onto the wall.

"Here," he says. "The Celestial Empire. They’re been making expansionist noises recently, and we don’t know enough about them. Between the Gimirri and what you’ve told us about the Imagoes… Well, let’s just say I want to know how much more bad news is coming our way." He sighs.

"It’s hard to see how we can avoid banding the Cluster together into an empire, if only for mutual defence. It’ll take blood spilt before we can make that work, and then both our planets could wind up controlled by these guys."

"Better that than bug food, sir."

"I suppose. Anyway, that’s not your problem. Your problem is to find out what’s going on over there, and get the news back to us."

"May I keep the Dolphin and my current crew, sir?"

"In a sense – you’ll travel as a free trader, and a Corinthian scout doesn’t fit that picture. We’re transferring the AI core and the name to a different hull. Coriander will handle the trading, you’ll handle the ship, you’ll both gather intelligence. I imagine you’ve worked out by now that Dmitri is one of ours; his mission will be to set up a network and safe houses, and feed your reports back to us, so you’ll drop him off on Halfway and leave him to dig in. You’ll commence by infiltrating the Combine, which will give you a good reason to wander around. Any questions?"

"No sir."

"Very good. I’ll have the details sent to your comm. Dismissed."