To Infinity, And Beyond!

[Peter Fitz]

We had the very first session of our new BRP space opera campaign this evening, and overall it went pretty well. Most of the session was taken up with character creation, and with the blind leading the blind it was all a bit chaotic. However, the system is so easy and intuitive that once we actually got down to roleplaying it all went very smoothly. Except for the dice, of course. Those blasted dice.

I'm allowing everyone to make pretty much whatever changes to their characters they like for the first few sessions, until things bed in and people get more of a grip on what skills and equipment and what-not they actually need.

The initial adventure is a space-hulk salvage scenario, which should provide a bit of excitement once it gets properly under way.

[rsanford]

@Peter Fitz are you using Chris’ Quasar rules? If not what are you using?

[Ian Absentia]

6 hours ago, Peter Fitz said:

I'm allowing everyone to make pretty much whatever changes to their characters they like for the first few sessions, until things bed in and people get more of a grip on what skills and equipment and what-not they actually need.

Sage advice for any game.  It's like the pilot episode of any television series -- characters adapt to the needs of the emerging story.  Sometimes whole sets and costume design change (that's the GM's option to pivot).

!i!

[Peter Fitz]

11 hours ago, rsanford said:

@Peter Fitz are you using Chris’ Quasar rules? If not what are you using?

I have a copy of M-Space to use as a guide, but I'm running the campaign in the Terran Empire milieu I started it in two decades ago when I was using the Hero System (5th ed.)

These are the pages I set up for that campaign: https://mojobob.com/roleplay/hero/sci-fi/terranempire/campaign_notes/campaignindex.html and I'll just convert things as need be as I go along.

Edited April 11 by Peter Fitz

[Peter Fitz]

I've started converting some of the equipment from my ancient Star Hero campaign. It's not difficult, but I think for many of the pieces a basic description of what it does as all that's needed; actual mechanical definitions will likely be largely superfluous.

A gravitic flight pack, for example: I guess, if you're involved in a chase, then knowing exactly how fast or how high you can fly, and how maneuverable it is would be necessary. But most of the time, knowing that you can fly about as fast as a car can drive is sufficient. So precise definitions can probably wait until they're actually needed.

Weapons are a different kettle of fish, but rather than converting Star Hero technobabble into BRP technobabble, I'll just replace the SH gear with the nearest equivalent from BRP and call it done.

Edited April 12 by Peter Fitz

[Peter Fitz]

I've given the party in my revived Space Opera campaign a Far Trader, since I like my players to have more or less unfettered access to a ship. It makes my own life as a GM much easier. There's so much that can go wrong with a spaceship.

To that end, I found some deck plans for the Empress Marava class Far Trader (from Traveller) on the internet, and recreated them as a vector file in CorelDraw. I rescaled it so that it can be used with the old 15mm Traveller minis I have, and printed it out on tiled pages.

I don't know how much use we'll get out of them — I may just have to arrange a hijacking or two, or maybe an invasion by some kind of inimical Space Baddies.

In this photo it just shows the lower deck; there's another sheet for the upper deck as well.

I'll probably get them laminated at some stage, when I have a little bit of spare cash.

[Peter Fitz]

Wow! 

This sort of thing appeals to my desire to play with little dollies, though realistically I suspect it would be of fairly limited utility within the game.

Cool though.

[Peter Fitz]

Here's a comparison of some 3d and 2d minis for gaming purposes.

The 32mm mini on the left is from Reaper, while the 32mm paper mini to its right is from OkumArts.

The little paper mini is another one from OkumArts that I've recoloured and resized to roughly 15mm, while the 15mm 3d mini on the right is an old Traveller figure from RAFM.

The 3d minis are better, there's no doubt about it. But the paper minis are perfectly adequate for TTRPG purposes, and they're much, much less trouble to prepare and store.

NOTE: OkumArts paper minis, unlike most that I've seen, have both front and back sides illustrated. That's important for games in which facing might be relevant.

[Peter Fitz]

Once again I find that because our gaming group's collective schedule is so erratic, I end up spending far more of my time fiddling around the edges of my campaign milieu than actually devising exciting adventures to put them through. If I'm very lucky, we might — might, I say — manage to get a second session of our first adventure next week. Maybe.

Current mood: Somewhat disgruntled. Adulthood sucks.

[Peter Fitz]

Episode Two of our new space opera campaign finally took place this evening, after several postponements.

I have a bit of a quandary now: the party collectively managed to get themselves into so much trouble that they really all should be off to spend the remainder of their lives on some godforsaken alien prison asteroid.

However, I kind of feel that it would be a bit of a let-down to just have everyone building new characters every couple of sessions, so now I have to figure out some vaguely acceptable way of getting them, if not out, at least through the trouble they've caused themselves.

I didn't sign on to do this much work, ferk-dangit! 😃

[SDLeary]

Next episode opens with them on a prison transport, approaching orbit of their destination, and then…

SDLeary

PS I’m imagining perhaps some Riddick style action.

Edited May 16 by SDLeary

[g33k]

Yeah, the "prison planet" theme has plenty of precedent in sci-fi.
Even James T. Kirk got imprisoned in one!
Guardians of the Galaxy, Imperial Sardaukar... 

See also "penal colony" in history.

 

5 hours ago, Peter Fitz said:

... I didn't sign on to do this much work, ferk-dangit! 😃

The unexpected stuff your players will do can *absolutely* lead to extra work!

But seriously:  this plot-twist they've given you?  Man, it's made of pure story!
 

[Peter Fitz]

I've added the latest installment of the campaign journal at https://mojobob.com/roleplay/hero/sci-fi/terranempire/campaign_notes/campaignindex.html

[Peter Fitz]

I found an STL for a 1977 Traveller version of an Air/Raft on Thingiverse, so I re-scaled it to more or less 15mm to fit with my elderly RAFM Traveller minis and printed a couple. The one on the left is resin from my Mars Pro, the barely distinguishable black one on the right is FDM from my Ender 3.

The blue one at the back is one that I clobbered together ages ago from a Hot Wheels toy.

The resin version took about 50% longer to print than the FDM one, but comes out smoother. The FDM print is fine, but the supports in under the dashboard are a bit of a nightmare to remove, and if I was going to do it again I'd probably fill in that space since it's not really necessary for a gaming model.

When Marc Millar invented this thing back in '77, I assume that either (a) he was envisaging some kind of force field to protect the passengers, or (b) he had never sat in an open-topped vehicle traveling at 250 kp/h.

Also, why the slash in Air/Raft? I've always found that incomprehensibly dumb, and if the slash character was closer to the hyphen on the keyboard I'd assume it was just a typo.