Previously, on Collateral Damage…
The crew had gone through the first few episodes of Heart of the Fury, leaving them with a friend in high places and a mysterious video clip. At length their trade runs brought them to the place where the clip was recorded, and investigating it took them well off piste, resulting in them unleashing an Artificial Intelligence wired into the largest superdreadnaught ever built (it says so, right here in the brochure). Unfortunately, when when all you have is a superdreadnought, everything looks like a target, and in the ensuing havoc and carnage, the Collateral Damage slipped away, in case unkind people – people who didn’t understand the full story – blamed them for it.
Having picked up a cargo of weapons – not the ones they were sent for, but let’s not get picky – and diverted a few select items for their own use, they moved on to Toyis, a trade hub controlled by intelligent winged housecats called the Precious, who live in arcologies abandoned by their long-dead masters. Here they encountered the ruthless trade factor Mittens Pleasant Landing, and made a deal with him: They would loot the levels below the 30th floor, where the Precious fear to tread, and swap that for some valuable but unspecified items in Mittens’ warehouse. Shortly thereafter, the crew learned why the Precious (justifiably) fear to tread in those levels, and the multi-tentacled horrors that scare the Precious discovered just how much pain an Urseminite with a plasma gun can bring.
As the credits roll, the crew have found a centuries-old tourist map with directions to various places of interest in the arcology, and are planning their next move. But wait; is that a slimy tentacle oozing into shot? Do you know, I rather think it is…
GM NOTES
The crew of the Collateral Damage has dropped over time from eight players to two, and that combined with the fast-playing nature of Savage Worlds and our Old School approach to things means the extremely experienced ‘away team’ chews through plot at a frightful rate. It’s clear no-one is really that enthused about following the story arc, so a return to the previous (and easier to prepare) picaresque approach is in order.
We also agreed to replace the six wild card PCs whose players no longer attend with the couple of NPCs it would actually take to fly the ship; they have an engineer and a gunner, and as to all intents and purposes they’re tooling around in a Traveller free trader, they need a pilot and a medic. Perhaps I’ll roll up a couple of Mongoose Traveller characters and convert them.
For the next session, rather than map out an entire arcology, I shall adopt the Beasts & Barbarians card and token approach when we next meet, creating a space dungeon on the fly. Come to think of it, perhaps the Two Hour Wargames city and risk-and-reward decks would be easier.
In other news, we did have time for a D&D session as well; the plan was to try out D&D 5th Edition, but we agreed that while a fine game, it offers no real advantage over White Box OD&D for our purposes, so we danced with who brung us.
I am pleased to report that the dragon turtle threatening our adopted home city of Shadipuur is no more, having been tricked into capsizing a cargo ship full of lamp oil and first distillate brandy, then bombed by invisible flying magic users dropping fireballs on it while being shot at by as many ballistae as we could find. Damn, those things are tough. One aspect of the situation still requires attention – namely, the improbably large amount of gold the dwarves were promised for their help. Which we don’t actually have.
Halfway Station 