The Black Campbell

A point of contention for the fans of Battlestar Galactica (show and game) is the size of the Colonial Fleet.  The only real on-screen information is a line in the miniseries in which the crew gets news of the loss of 30 battlestars in the initial engagement and Starbuck says “That a quarter of the fleet…”  Since the word used is fleet — I’m going with the idea that “battlestar”, like ship, is a general term that might cover battlestars we’ve seen down to various escorts, etc.

The fleet appears based on the US Navy, so that is on what I’m basing my take on the Colonial Feet.

Based on Picon, the Colonial Fleet nevertheless has local headquarters on each colony.  (The show seems to suggest Delphi or Caprica City was the regional/colonial base of operations.)  There is a military academy mentioned, and I think we can assume it’s on Picon, where the main HQ for the fleet is located.

The fleet itself is approximately 120-150 ships strong, divided into a collection of operational “battlestar groups” or BSGs.  There are twelve fleets tasked with the protection of a specific colony, with three Colonial Marine Corps Assault Groups (MAG) [these would be the equivalent of marine expeditionary fleets in the US Navy.]  There is also an exploration group, tasked with exploration and mapping of the surrounding star systems, and espionage/early warning activities.  There are also some vessels on detached duty, conducting rescue of civilian vessels, criminal investigations, etc.

The average BSG is comprised of 6-10 vessels.  The main asset is the battlestar, a heavy battleship/aircraft carrier, with four escort vessels (alternately called gunstars or assaultstars in fandom.)  The gunstars are dedicated platforms which provide missile and fighter defense for the battlestar and are positioned far enough away from the primary to give early warning and defensive cover.  Assaultstars are Colonial Marine transport platforms which allow the BSG to project force on the ground, or conduct boarding actions.  Most BSG have one or two in their group.  Lastly, there is often a tender and/or fueler with a battlestar group, providing supplies to the other vessels.

MAGs are smaller, comprised of one or two assaultstars with marine complements and equipment for fast response to crises around the Twelve Colonies.  These assaultstars are accompanied by a pair of gunstars, a tender, and a fueling vessels.  The average marine complement on an assaultstar is anywhere from a company to a battalion of marines, and their ground equipment.  These vessels are more cramped than battlestars, and usually have short “float” durations (a few months, at most.)

The exploration group is broken into small expeditionary groups, usually involving an older battlestar or assaultstar, a civilian science vessel, and a civilian tender/fueler — with the civilians being on military contract and subject to military command and jurisprudence.  Their missions range from a few weeks to six months.  (Here’s a good hook for a “second fleet” campaign.)

With spaceborne assets, ground assets, the CMC I would estimate the total manpower of the Colonial fleet is about a million men and women under arms.

The fleet was created during the First Cylon War, and incorporated military assets from all Twelve Colonies.  It is understandable that there would be vestiges of these older military units — planetary guard (National Guard units, if you will) that are colony-specific and handle most humanitarian aid, peacekeeping, and other non-kinetic operations.  I would assume they could be rolled into Colonial command during a time of war.

There seems to be a fair bit of traffic on the blog for the Battlestar Galactica RPG stuff, so here’s a few adventure seeds for those looking for them.  These were concocted for the first “season” of the campaign, which took place int eh year leading up to the Cylon War.  They could be used, as I did, to set the scene for the characters — giving them something to lose later when the attacks come, or even as a pre-series campaign or flashback episodes.

MILITARY SEEDS

1.  The characters’ ship or unit is assigned to seek out and shut down a wildcat tylium mine on the edge of the Armistice Line.  The Colonial government is worried the mine is too close to the line and could be misconstrued as an aggressive move, or the Cylons could think it an intelligence outpost.  (Twist could be that it is — set up by civilian intelligence outfit that didn’t inform the admiralty…)

2.  The group is part of a training exercise involving interatmosphere FTL jumps.  A raptor’s out of place and goes down in the mountains of Aquaria…where the equivalent of Colombian drug dealers live and rule the territory.  An SAR mission must go in, but the terrain and cloud cover makes support tricky.  An addition might be to have part of the group the downed pilots.  Or you can do a downed pilot ep where they are trying to stay free until the SAR mission arrives.

3.  The group is part of a humanitarian mission to aid the people of Palmyra, a fancy resort hit by a tidal wave.  Think the Indonesian tsunami for the scale of the disaster.

4.  The group is investigating the theft of weapons from a cache on a smaller CMCR cache on [pick planet].  Sagittaron would be a good choice.  Never got to run this one.

5.  Peacekeeping mission to stop violence in Caprica City involving the teacher’s strike.  (A good one to launch before the attack to give the players a hint it’s coming…)

more to follow…

ARTEMIS CAMPBELL aka Stephania Euripidi, aka Stephanie Campbell, aka Artemis Euripidi

Artemis was “born” in 1942 when she was rescued from a “displaced persons” camp in Epirus, Greece.  She had been badly injured and was suffering from amnesia when she was liberated from the Italian camp by Greek Partisans working with the British Special Operations Executive (SOE.)  Later she would remember that she had been moved from Thessalonika, where her parents were killed by Bulgarian troops occupying the city.  Her father had been targeted as a leader of resistance forces.  Their treatment of her had been rough and she had suffered abuse before being shot in the head.

She survived and following her rescue by the National Republican Greek League – a Royalist freedom fighting faction backed by the British– and fought with Greek Partisans through the rest of the war.  For a time unable to remember her name, she took the nom de guerre Artemis.
During that time, she was close to one of the British officers, Royal Marine Captain and SOE operative John Campbell, who was working with the NRGL and the leftist EAM, trying to keep the factions from turning on one another.  When the Germans took possession of Epirus and the Italian holdings in Greece after 1943, the fighting became fierce.  John was killed in action staging an ambush on German supply convoys, after which Artemis took his name and claimed marriage later to gain British citizenship.

After the Germans retreated in 1944, Greece tore itself apart in a civil war between the Western supported Papandreou government and the Soviet-supported EAM.  Artemis quickly found a way to profit off of the war  – in the old Greek tradition of smuggling.  While providing supplies to those who could pay, she was able to gain information for the British forces supporting the government.

Campbell has a Greek and British passport, and is an agent of MI6, working with them at her discretion.  Having fought with the partisans as a real soldier, she doesn’t acknowledge any weaknesses of her gender; she is just as good as a man, and often more effective because they don’t see her coming.  She is a decent rifle and pistol shot, has knife fighting skill, and has even used a sword in a pinch.  As a partisan, she rose to the rank of lieutenant – rare for a woman.  During the war, she formed contacts throughout Western Greece and Albania that have made her a go-to person for espionage missions and for smuggling materials.

She hates Bulgarians and Germans intensely, and finds the Croatians just as bad, but it’s not as personal.  She is less judgmental about Italians, despite their having been the enemy.  They were never as callous and brutal (to her) as the Nazis, and since the collapse of Mussolini, have been useful in the Greek resistance.

Artemis is proud, willful to the point of intransigent, and tough to the point of overcompensation for her hurts and fears.  She can be very feminine, but is just as at home in the field or on the sea, where she will put up with deprivation and danger as well as a man. She is a cool, hard woman who has formed by war.  She doesn’t form real attachments with people beyond that of “comrades.”  The last real friend/lover was Captain Campbell.  His death knocked any dreams of love out of her.  (She carries his Canadian-made John Inglis High Power 1935 9mm pistol and wears his British crop jacket in the field.)

Ht: 5’6″   Wt: 130 lbs.   Eyes: Hazel   Hair: Black   Age: ~23 (in 1946)

Body: 2   Dexterity: 3   Strength: 2   Charisma: 3   Intelligence: 2   Willpower: 4

Size: 0   Move: 5   Initiative: 5   Perception: 5   Defense: 5   Stun: 2   Health: 6   Style: 3

SKILLS:  Acrobatics 5, Athletics 4, Brawl 4, Bureaucracy 3, Con 6, Demolitions 3, Diplomacy 4, Drive 4, Firearms 6, Gunnery 3, Investigation 4, Larceny 6, Linguistics 4, Melee 4, Performance 4, Pilot (Boats) 5, Ride 5, Stealth 5, Streetwise 6, Survival 4, Warfare 4

LANGUAGES: Greek (native), English, Italian, smattering of German and Serbo-Croatian

TRAITS & RESOURCES: Allies 1 (MI6), Artifact 2 (MAS205 torpedo boat, disarmed), Contacts 2: Partisans, Followers 2: crew of MAS205, Iron Will

FLAWS:  Addiction, tobacco; Danger Magnet; Intolerant:  Nazis and Bulgarians

MAS (Motoscafo Armato Silurante) 205 is an early build of the fast torpedo boat the Italians fielded in WWII.   Constructed in 1936, MAS 205 served primarily along the Italian coastline as a police interdiction vessel until the war, when it was assigned to Decima Flottiglia MAS – one of the first commando frogman units in the world.  MAS 205 was instrumental in supporting Italian troops against the Greek partisans in the Epirus theater until her capture in 1943 by partisans under the command of Special Operations Executive officer and Royal Marine Captain John Campbell, who renamed the vessel Pikros (“spite” in Greek.)

Following the death of CPT Campbell, the boat became the property of Artemis Campbell, the infamous Greek freedom fighter and smuggler.  While not as large as the German schnellboots, Pikros was a smaller, more nimble craft with shallow draught that allowed her to escape the Germans on several occasions.  The little vessel was part of the naval assaults along the Adriatic in 1944, culminating with the attack on Trieste.  She remains the “flagship” of Campbell’s smuggler fleet.

Pikros  displaces 25 tons with a length of 40′, a beam of 9′ and a draught of 4′, with a top speed of about 45 knots.  Her armament has been sold off as the vessel was demilitarized in 1946, but still has the hardpoints for a 1″ gun on the front, and a pintle stand for a machinegun on the transom.  (British naval intelligence suspects Pikros is still armed with a German MG-42.)  Campbell has retained the Italian military camouflage seen in the picture.

MAS 205 “Pikros”

Size: 8   Def: 6   Struct: 20   Spd: 50 mph   Hand: +2   Crew: 3   Pass: 3

Armament:  Originally, Pikros fielded — and could again — a forward mounted 1″ cannon (Lt. cannon as per Secrets of the Surface World), 2 18″ torpedos (Lt. torpedoes as per SOTSW), and a rear-mounted MG-42 7.92mm machinegun.

Sometimes the plot you had for your game just doesn’t have enough to it to get you through an evening or the requisite number of evenings you planned for.  (This inevitably happens when you’re too busy to be working on new stuff for the game…)  Sometimes the plot just isn’t juicy enough to keep everyone’s attention, or you’re not on your game — so to speak — fully.  What do you do?

There one sure fire way to heat up a game — throw an action sequence in.  It works — just look at most Hollywood action pics.  When the story is fluff, or there’s a lull they toss a car chase, a fight, or some other conflict into the mix.  Most veteran gamemasters know this, as well.  But it doesn’t always require ninjas to jump through the window, or miscellaneous bad guys to pop up out of nowhere with the intent of using your characters nipples as target practice.

In the latest episode of our Battlestar Galactica game, it was a night without fights, space combat, or any of that…and it ran well.  The main conflicts were interpersonal.  There’s the issues of grief over the loss of their friends and families (the game has only covered 45 days since the war), there’s the issues of people having to blow off steam that led to a few characters hooking up (it’s an adult group…everyone can handle this like adults…), and the attendant interpersonal strains that come with competition for that girl/guy you were interested in.

Conflict doesn’t have to involve 9mms or a kick to the brovaries…  Sometimes it’s just about dealing with the situation around you.

A recent post on the Cortex RPG boards got me thinking about a problem with role playing games based on licensed properties like Star Trek or Battlestar Galactica, or even games with “metastories” like the World of Darkness stuff by White Wolf or Jovian Chronicles by Dream Pod 9.

The main problem is the extensive story arc (in the case of TV shows with the heroes of the universe in question being defined by the show), heavy backstory or world-building elements that are useful to the GM in setting the scene, but can get in the way of the storytelling when your vision of the world doesn’t feel with the established material.  While many GMs may be comfortable with making an established universe “theirs”, you can run the risk of what I’m calling “canon-pushers” in this piece.

Canon-pushers are, in short, the fanboys that either cannot come to grips, or are overly enamored with the fictional quality of these worlds.  You’ve met them — the guy that knows the events happening in Babylon 5 to the year, month, day, and minute; the middle-aged player that knows every detail of the deckplans for Enterprise-D, and all of the iterations every created for the original NCC-1701; the girl who will argue a story point because it conflicts with episode 304 of The Next Generation, and will point out that moon X on the Rim of the ‘Verse didn’t have cities (because they weren’t shown on screen, apparently the moon is desolate except for the set piece in episode 10 of Firefly.)

The same depth of detail that makes the universe so interesting can be turned against you faster than Enterprise moving at the speed of plot.  One of the easiest ways to get around this (if you have a reasonably adult crew of gamers) is to point out when you are getting the campaign started that this is your gaming world.  For a Star Trek campaign I simply used what JJ Abrams would — it’s an alternate reality.  I gave a quick run down of what I was keeping as “canon” for the game:  certain eps of the old show, most of  The Next Generation and Deep Space 9, none of Voyager. The movies, save for the first two, were out the door.  There would be changes to the technological timeline — tech that was discovered, then never talked about, was brought in.  You weren’t allowed to rewire the spiraling quantum whatsinator into a pulsing positronic whosijigger…unless the technology was similar.  With the understanding this was a different universe, we were able to turn what was supposed to be a mini-campaign into a 5 year game.  And it was good!

I love running licenses property-based games.  It cuts down on prep time for world building and most of the players have an idea of the look of things — clothing styles, equipment, aliens, etc.  It gives me a chance to do my own take on these universes.

Our Babylon 5 campaign was the most “canon-conscious” of the games I ran, based in a far corner of the action in the series.  It worked because there was overlap with the series’ events, but it didn’t not directly impact the characters and their actions.  The Serenity/Firefly campaign was set before the series (but after the war), giving me the chance to do some adventures in the ‘Verse without having to address the series at all.  Our current Battlestar Galactica campaign has run well, as there are plenty of places for survivors to be active ont he Colonies without ever running across Helo and Boomer/Athena, and another fleet might be running about looking for a habitable world, directed by “God” to help insure the survival of Man.

The GM should never be afraid to toss the stuff that doesn’t work, and keep the stuff that does for a game universe.  I have an upcoming transhuman sci-fi campaign in the works.  I was originally going to use the Eclipse Phase setting and rules set, but on further reflection realized that there were elements of the backstory and setting that were unwieldy and didn’t work with my vision of this kind of setting.  I began fusing elements of Eclipse Phase with Jovian Chronicles — one of my favorite settings for “hard” sci-fi (too bad Silhouette is clunky as a Model A) — and Transhuman Space.  All of these settings have something in common — RPG systems that were (in my opinion) a detriment to the gaming experience.

They’re getting mixed up, shaken hard, and ported into Cortex (Margaret Weis’ system for Serenity and Battlestar Galactica) and I’m hoping a for a successful synthesis.  I’m keeping the high-order AIs getting out of hand from EP…but using the old standby of they were defending themselves from being shut down by a UN edict against smarter-than-human AI (borrowed from River of Gods.)  I kept the Fall from JC, but now it was a fight between the AI and their mechanical minions, and the posthumans and transhumans.  the Edicts of the JC cover high-order AI, but it’s hazily defined and there will be a lot of gray area in the game.  I’m keeping some of the anime flair of JC — the giant mecha (themselves intelligent), for instance.  You’ll still be able to play uplifted animals, robots, human-like androids, etc. like in EP.

Running games in established game settings can take a lot of stress off the GM in the early stages of the campaign, but you and the players should be willing to throw canon out the window when it interferes with the storytelling, or more importantly, making the world your own.

Just in time for Christmas…okay, not in time for Christmas…  Three new weapons for your James Bond: 007 campaign.

AS “VAL” 9x39mm ASSAULT WEAPON

Designed for the Spetnatz, MVD, FSB, and other security forces, the “Val” is an assault rifle with an integrated suppressor, using the 9x39mm SP-6 subsonic, armor-piercing round.  The round is a necked out version of the standard 7.62x39mm military round, and has twice the power of the 9mm Parabellum round used around the world… but with subsonic speeds, allowing the AS to be extremely quiet.

The AS has a folding stock, as is typical for Russian military weapons, and uses the same 10 and 20-round magazines as the VSS sniper rifle.

PM: 0   S/R: 2/10   AMMO: 10/20   DC: G/K   CLOS: 0-8   LONG: 25-70   CON: n/a   JAM: 96+   DRAW: -3   RL: 2

GM Information:  The AS is remarkably quiet and requires a PERCEPTION EF3 to hear the weapon at close ranges.

GM-94 43mm GRENADE LAUNCHER

The GM-94 is the latest weapon by the boys at Tula.  Designed for use by the Russian special forces for urban warfare, the grenade launcher has a unique pump action that allows the weapon to carry three grenades in the magazine above the barrel. The GM-94 can fire non-lethal rounds (tear gas and bean bag), or high explosive warheads with a plastic casing for reduced blast radius of roughly ten feet, perfect for room-to-room operations where the operator might have to fire at ranges closer than recommended for traditional grenade weapons.  The weapon is surprisingly accurate at close ranges, and has a maximum range of 300 meters.

PM: 0   S/R: 2  AMMO: 3   DC: varies   CLOS: 0-6   LONG: 20-70   CON:  n/a   JAM: 99   DRAW: -3    RL: 4

GM Information:  The VGM-93 thermobaric round is designed to impart high-pressure and temperature in a limited range.  A direct hit from the round halves armor benefits, and has a DC of H, but WL is reduced by two and applied to everyone in a 10′ radius.

Rubber rounds do DC G, but will not kill.

RPG-32 “HASHIM”

The new RPG-32 is a 105mm rocket launcher designed to defeat tank armor.  It utilizes either a HEAT rocket to defeat tank armor, or can use an FAE/ thermobaric charge with high fragmentation against soft targets.  The HEAT rounds are specifically made to set off Explosive Reactive Armor (ERA), like the kind used on Western tanks like the M1 and the Merkava.

This capability, coupled with the  RPG-32’s ease of use explains why it has been bought by the Jordanian military.  The launcher can be reused, is lightweight and easy to maintain.

PM: 0   S/R: 1   AMMO: 1   DC: K   CLOS: 0-15   LONG: 30-60   CON: n/a   JAM: 99   DRAW: -2   RL: 2

GM Information:  The RPG-32 has a blast radius of 20′, with a WL drop every 10′ after that.  The HEAT round will negate an armor DC reduction of four.  (Ex.  Armor Level IV would have a -4DC, instead of a -8DC.)

Twenty-five years of running espionage games has allowed me to develop a quick template, if you will, for plotting an adventure.  Strangely, this isn’t always the obvious (and successful) technique of having a bad guy/group and their desire (say…the destruction of the US economy.  Oh, wait…)

Normally, something on the news will catch my eye and get the brain working.  Somalian pirates have been nabbing ships…what if they get lucky and snag that weapon that was being transferred from North Korea to Iran?  Now you have to recover the weapon, but wait!  the Koreans are going after it to.  Quick thumbnail for an adventure.

Time to fill it in.  In this case, the story itself drives the location of the action, and possibly even the type of sequences.  Pirates:  we need a boat boarding sequence.  Good enough for a quick one-off, right there.  Need to fill another night or two?  The device was already moved!  The team must find the pirate vessel — damn!  It’s already in harbor in Mogadishu.  They need to slip ashore, not get killed by the Somalis in the area, and find the captain/crew.  Interrogate them.  Locate the weapon.  Throw in Korean commandos to make things interesting.

Maybe you just aren’t finding something to inspire you that day and the game is in 3 hours.  (This never happens, right!)   Sometimes starting in reverse works.  (Often, for me…)  Set it up like a Bond movie:  pick three exotic locales.  What do they have in common?  String a mission into it.

Example:  I know I want to do a big adventure where the team finally gets the chance to take down the bad guys they’ve been fighting.  We start with a teaser in the desert Southwest (just because.) Then the story gets rolling in New York (or London), next location is Shanghai in China (’cause it’s a big city, busy, and there’s a lot of cool architecture.)

Research the areas for action sequence locations.  The southwest gives you places for rock climbing, river rafting, or maybe they’re at a combat ranch out there, hoing skills when the bad guys hit them.  Lots of open space for an off-road car or motorcycle chase.  In New York, you’ve got Wall Street, the Empire State Building, the ruins of the WTC.  Just those quick choices tell me I’m thinking an economic plot.  Collapse of the world economy so the bad guy organization can make a mint shorting against the market (or whatever…)  The plot has been discovered in some manner, they start to investigate, leading to the next action sequence — car chase in the busy streets of Lower Manhattan?  A break in on a suspected connection’s apartment or hotel room?  I like the latter and want to keep it, but this is going to be a high-octane sequence, I’ve decided.  Their surveillance of the suspect is interrupted by his assassination by the lead henchman for the sequence.  I want a foot chase in Wall Street/downtown area.  Google Earth the location.  Find stuff to make it interesting.  But eventually, it’s going down into the subway for a chase on the multiple levels of the station.  Now I’ve got my henchman — a freerunner that can use the area to his advantage.

They’ll be able to find a clue to the plot through the dead man’s computer/emails/whatever — he’s investing in the futures market but his investments make no sense unless the whole system is in turmoil.  His money is coming from a Chinese concern in Shanghai.

Shanghai.  Way cool buildings.  There’s the Jin Mao Tower — very cool building with a fantastic atrium for an action sequence, and an outside scaffolding made for a climbing sequence.  Break into the offices of the organization.  Discovery and chase through the building, culminating with a jump down the inside of the massive tower, maybe?  Or a parachute dive off the outside and across Shanghai?  That gives the Chinese police a chance to get involved for a foot chase through the historic Bund section of town.  There’s a crazy cool tunnel under the river there.

Important in these types of games is to keep the action flowing fast enough to keep the players interested, but not so fast they can’t track the plot (unless you don’t have one…then it’s a good cover for that until you do.  This technique works better in games than movies.  See Quantum of Solace, which would have benefited from slowing down a bit.)

I rewatched the new Star Trek the other night and thought about the old game campaign I’d run and the possibility of a new one.  What would I change?  Would I use the new movie background or no?

A new Star Trek campaign for me would have to combine the trappings of both, I think.  I much, much prefer the old movie Enterprise to the misshapen thing they stuck on screen in the new movie, but the Apple Store interior, with some work, would be alright.  The hyperkinetic warp drive with the Earth-Vulcan travel times of a few minutes seems a bit extreme to me, as does the aerobatic maneuverings of Big E…this is a monstrous large ship.  She’s not going to be competing in the Red Bull Space Races anytime soon…

I like the new movie’s offhanded comments that suggest the new universe is much more dangerous.  The main fleet is massed somewhere…why?  Are they at war?  The fleet is described as a peacekeeping and exploration fleet.  Peacekeeping was one of their missions, but rarely mentioned as their main (although that was obvious) mission.   They promote a cadet to captain!?!  How friggin’ high is attrition in this universe, when captains are just turning their craft over to junior officers whenever the going gets tough?  Note the ships are more heavily armed, bigger, and faster…

I’d keep the idea of the galaxy being a much, much more dangerous place…not just due to combat, but the critters and situations run across.  I’d keep the larger ships, I think.

What I would keep from the old shows:  I like the racist, hypocritcal Vulcans.  This was a trope from Enterprise I really liked.  The Andorians with moving antennae from the show… keepers!

What I think needs added:  what, exactly, is the Federation?  Is it a collection of worlds/nations that act in concert but have internal sovereignty — like the early United States or the European Union, or is it an alliance, like NATO or even the UN?  I would go with something akin to the early US, with states having a level of internal autonomy (to preserve their cultures, etc.), but subscribing to certain set laws and principles.

What kind of economy does it have?  Is it a socialist utopia like the Next Generation envisioned, or do people actually work for a living?  And why would they?  Is there a population problem?  With space open, why worry about breeding restraints?  Would “protest” societies be out there — fringe groups looking to preserve their Celtic/Native America/whathaveyou culture, or groups looking to avoid the Federation “monoculture?”  What is the status of Starfleet in the Federation — do they meet with suspicion (as in the initial episodes of the original series), or are they viewed with pride? (as in the later series.)

What needs to be tossed off (in my opinion):  the World War III thing.  It was the standard future event in Cold War science fiction…I think it’s a bit worn now.  The Eugenics War is intriguing, and could be rescued, complete with Khan’s Central Asia Empire — replacing WW3 as the main event.  Perhaps throw in some AI troubles to cause the Federation to avoid strong AI usage, and you placate the transhumanists in your group.

I think my best bet is an alternate universe, free of the “canon” nonsense that trekkies are so prone to, and not constrained by some of the Star Wars-ishness of Abrams’ vision, but using trappings from both.