Ship Card minor update

I made a minor change to the ship cards on the Wiki.  The Commercial Vessels document had a mistake in the Fuel, Cargo and Maneuver Drive ratings for the "Far Trader" vessels, I've changed the document there to the correct ratings.

Andrew comes to Heroni

Having mustered out on Rhylanor,  Yes Paul, Roland McGintley and Jax Tyvoid were recruited by Baron Carlo Fossi to join an expedition to the more backwater half of the Rhylanor Subsector.   Baron Fossi is on a mission to survey his family’s holdings in the subsector and search for business opportunities, now that the Fifth Frontier War has come to an end and things are settling down.  The Baron has decided to use one of his family’s Far Traders,The Countess Cassandra, for this leg of his trip.  Yes Paul signed on as ship’s engineer, Roland McGintley as the pilot on The Countess Cassandra, and  Jax Tyvoid as a bodyguard for the Baron. 

One  evening in orbit around Belizo, the baron charts a course for a jump to Heroni.  Roland is a bit puzzled, since Heroni is a dead-end, nowheresville of a planet, with no water, no gas giant and a joke of a starport.  The Baron says that he has a deal worked up with a man named Ace Nubunto to collect a package of ancient documents from the starport on Heroni which will allow him to lay legal claim to the planet, ousting the Ling Standard Products fief-hold.

Recruiting

The rules for recruiting employees are as follows:

RECRUITING

1. DECKS: There are 5 decks of NPC’s for use as potential Employees.

GREEN:  mercenaries—with an Army Background

RED:  mercenaries---with a Marine, Sailor or Flyer Background

PURPLE:  thugs---with a Rogue, Barbarian, Pirate or Assassin Background

YELLOW:  ship crewmen---with a Scout, Merchant or Navy Background

BLUE:  specialists---with a Doctor, Scientist, Bureaucrat, Diplomat, Hunter, Agent or Entertainer background.

2. RECRUITNG SKILL: GENERAL SEARCH:  To look for employees, requires 1 week of active arrangements, and the response is based on the Tech level and population of the world.  The search requires at least 1 character with Recruiting Skill 0+ to pursue it full time, and only one attempt is made per firm, unit or ship per week.  Multiple characters cannot make multiple attempts, but can apply their skill bonuses separately.

Very Low Population:  if the population code is 0,1,2 or 3 then recruiting is going to be on a role-playing basis, since the players can actually meet everyone who’s there.

Low Population:  if the population code is 4 or 5, then draw one card per point of recruiting skill from each deck after one week of work.

Moderate Population:  if the population code is 6,7 or 8, then draw 1d6 cards, plus 1 card per point of recruiting skill,  from each deck after one week of work.

High Population:  if the population code is 9 or greater, draw 2d6 cards, plus 2 cards per point of recruiting skill, from each deck after one week of work.

Low Tech:  if the Tech level of the planet is 4 or less, treat it as a Low Population world, regardless of actual population.

3. TARGETED RECRUITING

If a character has Recruiting Skill, he can attempt to find a specific employee, instead of making a general search.  He rolls a Recruiting roll equal to 12 minus the Population code of the world.  If he succeeds, he may search a particular deck and pick out 1 card of his choice per level of recruiting skill.

4. OTHER SKILLS:

Streetwise: may be used in place of Recruiting, but character only may draw from the Purple Deck.

Liaison: may be used in place of Recruiting, but character only may draw from the Blue Deck.

Carousing: may be used in place of Recruiting, but character only may draw from the Red Deck.

Steward: may be used in place of Recruiting, but character only may draw from the Yellow Deck.

Leader: may be used in place of Recruiting, but character only may draw from the Green Deck.

Next Session Priorities

It seems that next week, the players priorities are:

1) Getting the fudge off of Heroni
2) Finding the dirty bastard who sent you to Heroni
3) Finding the dirty bastards who currently have the Festivus
4) Seeing  if Dorkon can be revived (probably Rhylanor is the closest place with an adequate hospital)
5) Finding the parts needed to fix the totally awesome Death Ranger
6) overhauling the weaponry in the Death Ranger locker
7) Informing the finance company that the Festivus was stolen (not a problem if Dorkon stays dead)
8) Avoiding prosecution for murdering a starport administrator and hijacking the beat-up free trader.

Besides #1, I don't know in what order you consider these to be important.

Tim's Tornado

I just had an amusing idea.   I did the Tim's Tornado solo adventure because I had all the stuff for the asteroid assault all ready and it seemed a shame to waste it.  But now, maybe through the summer I'll just have Tim's Tornado follow the PC's around, getting hired to clean up the messes that the PC's make.  We could even run short TT adventures during the regular session if it's convenient.

I don't need you, I can do this act alone.

Since Bob and Jason decided to skip the chance at 150,000cr for assaulting the asteroid base in session 1, and since I had 2 NPC's who were capable of attempting it and had been present for the chance, I decided to see if they could do it.

Baron Church and Sgt. Griswald each had a fairly large credit balance so, they pooled 120,000cr and recruited 9 employees to form "Tim's Tornado".  I'll send everyone a log of what happened, and put it on the wiki as Rhylanor 3.

Honestly, they were almost massacred.  3 of the 11 had mortal wounds, and they were about to be swamped by 12 or so bad guys with much better weapons.

 In fact, gunnery and Forward Observer were the two key skills,  They entered the base by landing on the asteroid by surprise and then creeping up to the entrance and using Forward Observer to direct a missile to blow the door in, and then to blow the inner cargo door in too.   But, having 2 crappy accelerator rifles and 6 cutlasses is no match for a crap load of laser carbines.   The captain then sees that the bad guys are clumped together by the entry hole.  He orders the back-up pilot to rush the ship's boat right over, fired a Sand Caster and shreaded the bad guys.  My freaking glob!  a sand caster in personal combat is just completely murderous.  If you are in the danger space and not in some very sturdy vehicle (not even an ATV will do), you are just dead. 

Also, having a first rate doctor is really nice, they recruited one by good fortune, and he saved all the injured troops.  Dr. Hakamora may only be Medic-5, not 7 like our own Dr Spurlock, but that still gets the job done.

I also saw one more time how melee weapons may be useful, but the fact the enemy gets a "return fire phase" with guns before you can hack, and that hurts.

Behind the Screen, Rhylanor Express #2

I'm still ambivalent about the multiple characters.   There are good things and bad things, and I can't quite decide which is better.  It was nice to have a variety of skills, but it seemed like a bit of a mob, and the focus wasn't nearly as tight as it had been in session #1.

The main adventure was actually, for once, based on an adventure I found online called "Dismal Luck." I had to change some features, move it from the Solomani Rim to the Spinward Marches, change a few details to match the sector and planet details.  I had to change some of the combat details to match the Striker based system I'm using, and also decided to change a few names to make them more pronounceable.  (For example, Bigsby's name in the original was much longer and much more French).  Luckily, Heroni was just as much of a butthole of a planet as Dismal was in the Solomani Rim, so it was easy to put the adventure there.

I enjoyed the Hobos and how everything with their exploding barrels of gunpowder worked out.   It was just so wrong that your ATV, running noisy, managed to surprise the first group who were cautiously concealed in the mountains, but bad luck can't always fall only on the PC's I reckon.

I was a little surprised when the security dude killed Dorkon.  I had assumed he had picked up some cloth armor or a vacc suit by then, but apparently not.  Without some armor, shotguns are super bad.

It is going to be interesting to see how you manage to get off planet.   I suppose the easiest thing would be if Andrew happened to roll up a guy with a ship and happened to wander by.  But, that probably won't be the answer.