Roleplaying Games

Archived Posts from this Category

21 February, 2010

Character Protrait for BSG RPG: Gaius Horvath

Posted by blackcampbell under Roleplaying Games | Tags: |
Leave a Comment 

Captain Gaius “Professor” Horvath

Born in Delphi, Caprica in 22AC (After Articles of Colonization), Gaius is the oldest of two boys to Zacarius and Melina Horvath.  He grew up in the second largest city on Caprica and the seat of military presence on the world.  His father is an admiral in the Colonial Fleet and commander of BSG-55 (Pleiades group.)  His mother is a respected lawyer and professor of colonial law at Delphi University, where he would later school.
Both boys, Gaius and his brother Augustus (Gus), grew up without the pampered background of other wealthy families, but he did reap the benefits of a classical education at Delphi Academy – one of the finest private school on Caprica.  He excelled in various sports, but was particularly good at Pyramid – enough so that he won a scholarship, despite his family’s means, to Delphi University.

At college, his main course of study was military science, with a minor in literature.  He finished his basic degree with firsts in classic literature and history.  He continued to his master’s degree in political science at Caprica University, with a specialty in interplanetary security.  After he graduated, most expected him to continue into government.  Instead, he joined the Colonial Fleet as a reserve officer and trained as a flight officer at Delphi, finishing basic flight near the top of his class.  Nicknamed “Professor” for his intelligence and higher education, he was considered by some an elitist snob, but his winning personality and good-humor won him more friends and admirers than not.

He continued to advanced combat training and in 48AAC, he was graduated into the fleet.  His first assignment was aboard Atlantia as a junior lieutenant and Viper jock.  He trained on old Mk II’s, but aboard the flagship of BSG-70, he flew Mk VII’s – the finest space superiority fighter ever made.  He quickly made friends amongst his fellow pilots, and drew the attention of Admiral Nagala himself.  He was promoted to full lieutenant a year later – very quickly!  By 52AC, he rotated onto reserve duty.  It took him three months to realize that he missed the excitement of flying vipers.  His father pulled strings and got him assigned to Pleiades, his father’s ship.  He was promoted to captain and made a squadron leader.

Smart, savvy and charismatic, Professor is a popular officer.  His weaknesses lies mostly in his grandstanding and overconfidence, which have more than once nearly splashed him.  However, he has always managed to pull his fat out of the fire.  A natural leader, most of his peers expect one day he might be an admiral.

When off-duty he can often be found reading, and he is fond of showing off his knowledge to anyone who will listen.  He is a connoisseur of fine wine, whiskey, food, and women – he has a long line of lovers –  and he is particularly taken with the technology and tactics of the military.  His love for his Viper is almost unnatural.  He calls her “Galatea”, after the statue in the Pygmalion myth – more to humor those who think him a bit too fond of the plane.  (Player chose Casper van Dien as the face for the character…)

Agility: d8   Strength: d8   Vitality: d8   Alertness: d8   Intelligence: d8   Willpower: d8

Initiative: 2d8   Life Points: 16   Endurance: 2d8   Resistance: 2d8

Age:  30   Height: 5’11”   Weight: 190 lbs.   Hair: Brown   Eyes: Blue

ASSETS:  Advanced Education d4, Dogfighter d4, Good-Natured d4

COMPLICATIONS:  Gloryhound d4, Overconfident d4

SKILLS:  Athletics d6 [Pyramid d8], Discipline d6, Guns d4, Influence d6 [Leadership d10], Mechanical Engineering d2, Perception d6, Pilot d6 [Viper d10, Ship Cannons d10], Planetary Vehicles d4, Technical Engineering d4, Unarmed Combat d4

 

21 February, 2010

Character Portrait for BSG RPG: Admiral Zacharias Horvath

Posted by blackcampbell under Roleplaying Games | Tags: |
Leave a Comment 

This week I’ll be posting some character portraits from our Battlestar Galactica campaign.  The initial series are from the “second fleet” group (we also had a ground group that will be posted later.)  Enjoy…

Admiral Zacharias “Zack” Horvath

Born 3BAC (Before Articles of Colonization) in Argus, Libran.  He is from a famous line of Libran politicians.  His father was Ferenc Horvath, defense minister of the world prior to the First Cylon War, and later Quorum member.  His mother was a lawyer of some note.  He grew up during the Cylon War.  Five years after the war, he joined the Colonial Fleet and attended Delphi Military Academy on Caprica.

He served as a fighter pilot from 19-26AC, rising quickly to major.  During his time at DMA, he met a Caprican law student, Melina, and married before his first duty assignment.  A son, Gaius, was born in 22AC, and Augustus followed in 26AC.   He attended the War College at Picon HQ, then followed it up with three years at the Defense Ministry HQ on Picon.

Horvath was CAG for the battlestar Galactica from 30-32AC.  He was operations officer in Athena for two years and became colonel and XO for the small batlestar Bellerophon in 36AC.  He succeeded to command of the vessel in 40AC, then took command of the battlestar Acropolis in 45AC with the rank of commander.  In 48AC, he was promoted to rear admiral and took command of the Delphi Spaceport and Colonial Military Base, where he remained for three years.  He took over Pleiades group in 52AC.

Admiral Horvath is a 33 year veteran of the Colonial Fleet and an inveterate politician.  He is known for his connections, savvy, and his rivalry with Fleet Admiral Nagala.  Horvath is a big man, and incredibly strong, with a reputation for his martial arts skill.  At the time of the attacks, he is 55 years old.  (The player chose an older Dolph Lundgren for the look.)

Agility: d6   Strength: d10   Vitality: d8   Alertness: d8   Intelligence: d10   Willpower: d10

Initiative: d6+d8   Life Points: 20   Endurance: 2d8   Resistance: d8+d10

Age: 55   Height: 6’4″   Weight: 230 lbs.   Hair: Dirty Blonde [greying]   Eyes: Blue

ASSETS:  Brawler d4, Formidable Presence d4, Political Pull d6, So Say We All d4, Tough d4

COMPLICATIONS:  Competitive d4, Duty d6, Gloryhound d4, Prejudice [civilian government] d4

SKILLS:  Athletics d6, Covert d4, Discipline d6 [Leadership d8], Guns d6, Influence d6 [Administration d8, Bureaucracy d8], Knowledge d2, Melee Combat d4, Perception d6, Pilot d6 [Vipers d8], Planetary Vehicles d4, Survival d4, Technical Engineering d4, Unarmed Combat d6 [Kickboxing d8]

 

20 February, 2010

New Ship for BSG RPG: Berzerk-Class Gunstar

Posted by blackcampbell under Roleplaying Games | Tags: |
[9] Comments 

These wee beasties showed up in Razor, and  thought it was time they got some stats for the Battlestar Galactica RPG.  I looked over the orthos from Eric Chu and it seems all the heavy ordinance is on the weapons/launch pod amidships.  There are eight launch pod-looking greebles on either side of the flight line, aft and fore, and dual barreled railguns on the top of the pod, as well as two forward-facing cannons. There are four turret-like greebles on the head of the gunstar, as well, but they look most likely to be missiles turrets, rather than railguns.  I didn’t include them in the current specs. The big barrel-looking thing on the underside I assumed was a retrofire reaction system.  Feel free to fanboy it into a massive supergun, or something…

The Berzerk-class gunstars act as protection for main-line battlestars.  These are relatively modern assault craft and require a fairly small crew.  Their computer systems are fully up to date, complete with the Command Navigation Program (unlike the older Vanguard class), and Mk VII vipers.

SHIP DATA:

Ship Class: Berzerk     Ship Type:  Gunstar Escort
Length: 2779.6′     Beam: 709.5′     Draught: 389.4′     Deck: 16
Crew: 600 standard [Includes 90 pilots, 20 marines]

ATTRIBUTES:

Agility:    d6     Strength: d10     Vitality: d6     Alertness: d8   Intelligence: d6     Willpower: d8

Initiative: d6+d8     Speed: 6 [SL/JC]     Life Points: 18     Armor: 3W, 4S

TRAITS:

SKILLS:  Heavy Weapons d4, Mechanical Engineering d4, Perception d4, Pilot d4

ARMAMENT:   Medium Point Defense System [skirmish-range, vehicle-scale]:  d8, Vehicle-scale]; 22 Heavy Railguns: d12 [short DRADIS range, spacecraft scale]; 32 Heavy Missiles: d12 [short DRADIS, spacecraft scale]

AUXILIARY CRAFT:  20 Vipers, 20 Raptors, 10 Shuttles

 

19 February, 2010

Setting the Scene: Romance

Posted by blackcampbell under Roleplaying Games | Tags: , , |
1 Comment 

Often, romance is an element missing from roleplaying game campaigns, especially with male gamemasters.  There is a stereotype of the male gamer as somehow clueless, nerdy, and out of touch with women, but this is strangely not my experience; most are married or dating (often a gamer.)  This was not always the case:  in the early phase of the hobby, I’d say 90% of gamers were male, young, and way too into Conan the Barbarian.  We looked like the two guys from the Fear of Girls shorts on YouTube.

Romance, in those days, revolved around the character getting laid.  “I want to have sex with her,” enthuses Raymond in Fear of Girls, when confronted with a sexy elven priestess.  Doug, the DM, responds, “Gimme a roll…”  That was a pretty good example of “romance” in the early days.  Rape, pillage, get the treasure, repeat as needed.

Early on, I moved out of fantasy settings to modern day espionage.  Femme fatales are standard trope, and romancing them still was mostly to get laid and get information.  But the reality of the femme fatale is the honeypot:  the girl that makes you fall for them so that they can play you for information (or assassinate you…)

But by the late 1980s, I regularly had at least one female in the gaming group, and throughout the 1990s and 2000s, I average two women at the table.  Many were drawn in by different genres of RPG — there was the advent of “steampunk”, with it’s Victorian setting that brought the romance of the period to bear.  The period also saw the rise of the White Wolf settings, the World of Darkness, with the heavy-handed sexual innuendo of vampirism, and courtly style of interaction.  It, and steampunk in the Castle Falkenstein game,  favored LARP-style gaming, so they got to dress up, as well.

Women, I think, often bring more maturity to the table.  They are looking for more than macho self-aggrandizement.  They want story, they want character interaction outside of quaffing ale and randomly fighting each other (leave that to the English on a Friday night.)  And they want romance.  Not just sex.

Gamemastering romance can be tough, but it’s almost always fun, if you relax and enjoy it.  First thing:  don’t assume that characters romantically involved mean the players want to be romantically involved.  Yes, it’s often a hint –quite a few players with characters involved were themselves having a relationship…or were thinking about it.  But it’s not always the case.  Mature players will know this;  immature ones need to have rules laid out up front about the in-character/out of character situation to avoid misunderstandings.

Second, look at movies and television for ideas on how to run a romance.  There’s the popular “slow burn” romance — where the characters are attracted to each other, but don’t quite get to act on things, either because bad guys are distracting them, they sometimes misunderstand each others’ queues, or professional relationships forces them to pretend they aren’t into each other.  Even if these things aren’t in the way, real life has a habit of slowing things down a bit.

Start the relationships off slow — often a few well-placed and thought out NPCs can catch the attention of the players’ characters.  Don’t make the NPCs too easy if the players show interest.  Cock block them with missions, family issues, or put the love interest in danger.  Make them work for it a bit.  You’ll find that the players will take to it…even the guys.

This brings us to the inevitable conclusion of romance:  sex.  How much is too much?  As with violence, how (or if) to play out sex really relies on a few things.  1)  Is it something the players are going to get embarrassed by?  Making them play out the blow-by-blow is usually unnecessary, and unless everyone is feeling a bit randy, is probably not the way to go.  2) Are the players mature enough to handle it (especially if two players’ characters are getting involved)?  3) Is it necessary to the plot?  Probably not.

There’s the quick gloss over.  Think about the movies of the 1940s and ’50s.  The couples go for the kiss, then we pan to the blowing curtains, and then it’s the next morning.  This is usually enough for the players.  Some might be interested in their performance, however, and if they feel the need, you might have them test for it in some way.  (And it’s a hoot for all when they biff the roll!)  Essentially, it’s very hard to say how far a scene should be described…it’s up to your discretion and the maturity of the players.

Romance, however, is ultimately about relationships.  They connect characters to each other (or NPCs.)  If they care about these connections, they can be used as plot hooks (the kidnapped wife/husband/kid or the murdered lover or relative is always good material.)  they can also define the character for the player, giving them motivations and something to care about.  It’s easy to fly off for an adventure in Borneo when there’s no one home to leave alone.  The loss of a loved one can plague the character with guilt or doubt (if their fault), or cause them to act in a manner that might not be conducive to their safety.

Remember to use romantic attachments not just for cheap thrills, but to help the plotting and the definition of the characters.  The players will thank you for it.

 

18 February, 2010

Setting the Scene: Violence

Posted by blackcampbell under Roleplaying Games | Tags: , , |
[3] Comments 

It might seem a bit silly to do a piece on violence in roleplaying games.  From Chainmail and Dungeons & Dragons, to Twilight: 2000 and Space: 1889, to the Vampire and other White Wolf titles there is one overarching connection — fighting.  For D&D, the whole raison d’etre is violence — against monsters, against people, against other races in the hopes of glory and wealth.  Vampire and Werewolf appear to be more courtly, and more backstabbing in their type of violence, but ultimately you’re still playing creatures that eat people.  Or war on each other, ala Underworld.

However it’s the approach to violence in the various settings that I want to address, and how you can capture the appropriate tone for your game.  Over the years, I’ve tried to make violence fairly realistic in my games.  That doesn’t necessarily mean gory, but violence has real consequences beyond how many “hit points” you lose.

I’ve run espionage games most of my life.  The goal is frequently to avoid violence, or even the hint that you were operating in the enemy’s AO.  But when it happens, it’s usually fast, messy, and not well choreographed.  (The latest James Bond movies have captured the frenetic pace and hurt of fights for your life.)  So how far do you go with describing the attacks, the injuries?

The easiest genre to attack is War, and combat-oriented games like Twilight: 2000 or Battlestar Galactica.  War is dangerous, fast-paced, confusing, and often deadly.  you might not have to give graphic depictions of everything happening around the characters — in fact, often “fog of war” keeps people on the battlefield from having a full picture of the proceedings.  Think of the beginning sequence of Saving Private Ryan — the chaos of the battle, the randomness of injury.  The character has his hearing go out temporarily, time seems to speed up and slow down.  There a re moments, like the soldier looking for his lost arm, that catch his attention.  This give you an idea of the kind of flavor you might want for this kind of campaign…

Here you would go over the effects of the injuries sustained, as much as the hit points/life points/whatever points lost.  Say a character has 14 life points and is shot with a high-caliber rifle — say a .50 caliber.  The damage they sustain might only be 5 points (they get really lucky), but that’s still roughly a third they can take…they’ll live, but they’re mashed up pretty good.  Maybe they lost an arm or a leg.

Smaller caliber weapons do different things.  The 5.7x28mm of Galactica‘s colonials is a .224 round.  It does a lot of temporary damage through hydrostatic shock, but it’s a small wound.  They tend to close and not bleed heavily.  9mm rounds in ball zip right through a person, even in the chest cavity, with some possibility of doing slight damage.  Or they can paralyze you.  The exit holes tend to bleed worse the the entrance wound.  Knife wounds hurt! and they bleed!  They also have a higher chance of doing permanent nerve damage.  Even a fist fight, the person delivering the blows — in my experience — rarely walks away without bruised knuckles or some kind of mild sprain.

You don’t have to go through the blow by blow, as in The Morrow Project, of what is happening as a bullet passes through someone.  Usually, most people aren’t that self-aware, and often an injury incurs some level of shock.

But say you’re not interested in the traumatizing effects of violence.  For a more genteel campaign, like Space: 1889 or Castle Falkenstein, you might want to keep the description of violence to a minimum, instead going with a “movie style” or “TV style” of violence.

Think about the way violence was portrayed in old Westerns, pulp movies (including the Indiana Jones series.)  There might be blood squibs, but often there’s just a clutching of wounds and collapsing.  Only during the truly horrific — the wrath of god or the evil fiend torturing an NPC do you see anything.  (Or not even then.  Think about the end of the flying wing fist fight in Raiders of the Lost Ark, for instance…)  No hero loses limbs, and no shoulder wound involves the brachial or subclavian arteries and bleeding out; no brachial plexus that means no feeling or movement in the arm.  The character, if tortured is given their resistance rolls, as the villains move in to do their dirty work and we pan away to the sounds of their screams.  (Think Han Solo in The Empire Strikes Back…you didn’t need to see the torture to know that it sucked egregiously.)  This sort of violence style is much more appropriate to the pulp campaigns of Hollow Earth Expedition or Savage Worlds, and it works well if you want the more campy period of James Bond.

Even TV-style violence varied from the weekly “shot in the shoulder but I’m okay” violence of Starsky & Hutch, to the more serious effects of gun play in Miami Vice.  Magnum: PI avoided gun play for the most part, and when it happened, it was sanitized for the prime time audience.

Cartoony violence, in which violence is used as slapstick comedy might be appropriate to Paranoia or Toon campaigns.  The horrific ends the character might face are mitigated by the internal logic of the campaign itself.  Similarly, a “golden age” style superhero camapign would involve a lot of collateral damage and knockback…but ultimately, the villain is only knocked unconscious and taken into custody (only to escape later.)  People rarely die prior to the angsty-realistic comic themes of the 1980s and later.

The key is to 1) Know your audience.  Are they mature enough for graphic violence?  Are they the kind to go into vapors if their character is tortured, raped, scarred or physically impaired by injury?  2) Is it appropriate to the setting?  More realistic campaigns the answer might be yes, but for light entertainments of pulp or romantic adventure..?  Probably not.

 

17 February, 2010

Some Plot Seeds for Battlestar Galactica RPG, Pt. 3

Posted by blackcampbell under Roleplaying Games | Tags: |
Leave a Comment 

Following yesterday’s post, here’s some ideas to post-attack “second fleet” campaigns for Battlestar Galactica.

Key to this is the idea that another ship or ships survived the apocalypse.  In our campaign, the players’ battlestar and one of its assaultstar escorts survive the attacks on the Colonies because they are out investigating the lack of communications from Armistice Station.  They do run into the basestar there, and they lost much of their fighter group to the CNP attacks.  Fortunately, the assaultstars were upgraded, and the crew of the battlestar figure out the issue quickly enough to save the vessel (barely.)

Returning to warn the fleet, the ship misjumped due to problems related to the Cylon hack, and they were out of action for hours, trying to repair their vessel and get back into the fight.  By the time they do, Galactica and her fleet are gone.

Another idea is an exploration task force, out on patrol on the edge of the Armistice Line (or elsewhere) on a mission to look for Cylon activity, map the surrounding systems, and do science.  We encounter one of these in our campaign that has a science vessel (a Space Park style vessel), and agroship for supplies, and a tanker/tender, in addition to an older battlestar.  It’s a good assumption that there would be a few of these task forces, and that the Cylons might know where they are, thanks to their access to the Colonial Defense Mainframe.  Maybe they were held up on their patrol and aren’t where they’re supposed to be, saving them from attack (or warning them of the attacks when they get hit.)

There are two main storylines you can use here:  1) the ships stage a guerrilla war to free the Colonies, 2)  they haul ass into the Black, looking for a place to live.  If you don’t care about show canon, you could have them eventually find the fleet and aid them in their attempts to find Earth.

Some ideas for the guerrilla war option:

1.  The fleet does a series of dangerous recon missions with raptors to find out what is going on in the Colonies.  The opposition should be big enough that they cannot just go right at the Cylons.  I think we had something like 32-36 basestars (so thousands of raiders), and the Cylons were retrofitting battlestars they captured to fight.

2.  Deep Space Interferometer Telescope.  In our campaign, the SDIT was a series of telescopes rigged together in an interferometer, and controlled by a space station that the Cylons hadn’t discovered yet.  They rescued the crew, and reprogrammed the telescope to take orders from their battlestar.  With it, they were able to get reasonably fresh intelligence on the Cylon movement, and pick up transmissions from the survivors on the surface.  (Works well if you have a ground group, as well…)

3.  A series of search and rescue missions, or recon missions to connect with people on the surface of one or more of the Colonies to organize resistance.  A good twist here is that the survivors are sick from radiation, etc. and the rescuees or crew that liaise with them bring illness back to the ship.

4.  Staging a mission to capture mothballed ships (if you have enough crew to man them), or destroy Cylon bases of operations.

5.  Discovery of Scylla and her fleet.  these civilians have had everything of use stripped off of their vessels by Pegasus and they need help.  Play up the inhumanity of the move by Cain and co. to push the players to moral conundrums.  A good twist:  the fleet was seeded by Cylons with sleeper agents following the Pegasus event, and the ships have signaled the Cylons of the rescue attempt.  Have the Cylons show up right when the SAR is underway and muddies the rescue effort.

Here the key is to give them some hope that their loved one might have survived; having a relative of a character or two be found can heighten this.  Another important element is that they have to constantly move on the outskirts of the Colonies, and occasionally leave the system to hide — leaving them out of contact.  There should always be the element of discovery and a real battle in the offing.

For the Second Fleet idea —

You might start with some of the above and realize at some point that the Cylons are too many and have too tight a hold on the Colonies.  Lighting out into the Black, they come across Cylon fueling bases, mining operations.  A possible idea is that they keep coming across evidence of Galactica‘s fleet, leading them to Kobol, etc.

1.  Some kind of malfunction or sabotage causes the fleet to need water, fuel, or some other material.  Maybe it’s material to make repairs to the vessels.

2.  Murder mystery:  a young girl is found in a 55 gallon drum.  There is little forensics evidence (or no facilities to really follow up on the evidence) and the characters must scour the fleet looking for the killer.

3.  Mutinous Intent:  without hope the crew is trying to force the leadership to return to the Colonies.

4.  Religious Hints:  pick one of the characters and have them get messages from God (the Gods) leading the fleet to their next home.  Maybe they link up with the Galactica fleet and you replay/rewrite the last few seasons to suit your group, maybe they are lead to another world (maybe God wants to hedge his bets…)

5.  Disease — either natural or Cylon-caused.  How far do they have to go to seal off the infection?

There’s a wealth of ideas here to work from.  For my group, they aren’t working with the Scrolls of Pythia, but of Sybil — another oracle who wrote about another cycle of time.   The tale follows the Jericho/Masada/Troy idea of the noble resistance that eventually falls, but those that escape found the next major civilization.

 

16 February, 2010

Some Plot Seeds for Battlestar Galactica, Pt. 2

Posted by blackcampbell under Roleplaying Games | Tags: |
1 Comment 

Previously, I had posted some ideas for Battlestar Galactica campaigns preceding the Cylon attacks.  Now here are a few for things post-attack…

For a Ground Survivor Campaign:

One of the things I found effective in my campaign was to have the attacks happen in the middle of an ongoing adventure/mission.  In our case, the Critical Investigations Unit of the Colonial Marshals’ Service was in the process of hunting a bunch of escaped convicts whose bus overturned on slick roads and went down a mountain ravine, not too far from Oasis.  While in the midst of this, they lose comms and hear a strange rumbling.  That was Caprica city getting nuked, only 50 miles away (but they were shielded by mountains from the initial gamma burst.)

They then had 30 minutes to race to usable vehicles and get to Oasis — a small mountain town (think First Blood) — where the nearest fallout shelter was.

Other ideas include 1)  survival in the shelter for the 8 days it will take before radiation levels should drop enough for them to move.  Plumbing problems, tight and darkspaces for claustrophobes, and general fear make this a good environment for the first adventure.  The radio isn’t working for whatever reason, or they can’t get their transmissions out so they get a fragmented and frightening picture of what is happening topside.

2.  After coming out of the shelter, they must forage for supplies — canned foods, bottled water, first aid supplies –anything they didn’t have in the fallout shelter.  Maybe they grab vehicles.  Remember, metal holds radiation — the car hulls will be hot, but not necessarily more dangerous that causing contact injuries.  It’s raining a lot on Caprica after the attacks (we can assume the same on many worlds), so puddle will be dangerously radioactive.  Spice it up with a Cylon attack to get them moving if they dally too much.  (Our campaign lost 20 of their initial 42 survivors this way.)

3.  Hide and seek:  using vehicles in the mountains to avoid the Cylons, the characters try to find survivors and bolster their numbers.  Radiation sickness in the animals can make for an interesting encounter.  Our players ran into bears foraging in garbage dumpsters that were loosing their hair and were on the…upset…side.

4.  Trying to fortify an area.  The players might try to find a defensible spot for raids or to hide.  Another good variation on this is finding the survivalist camp where they can get aid, but perhaps the people are a little too eager to have women here to help repopulate the colony; the military camp where everyone’s gone a bit ’round the bend (ala 28 Days Later); or the religious end-of-the-world cult (possibly even the monotheist Soldiers of the One from Caprica.)

5.  A good ol’ The Road Warrior-style adventure where the characters have to either run the gauntlet through a Cylon platoon or other road gangs.  I added a motocenturion similar to the motorcycle Terminators from the execrable movie.  Also, I figured the Cylons — if they didn’t have their own vehicles — would use what they could or retrofit vehicles with their Cylon brains to fight Colonials using vehicles to do hit & runs.  (Yes, it’s not canon, but it’s more fun.)

6.  A raid on CMC reservist caches.  They’ll will, of course, have to get past the Cylons sitting on the reserve bases.  This should probably be a later adventure, with serious danger, but the rewards being military medical and food supplies, tanks or APCs, guns and ammo.

7.  One group had no pilots, so their goal was to get to the sea and get a small boat out onto the water, hoping to avoid Cylon attention.  Pilots might have the goal of getting a hold of an FTL-capable ship and getting off of the planet.

8.  Something you can string in is the danger of radiation sickness, but also of exposure to other disease caused by the death of animals and plants around them.

9.  The farms.  Have them discover the Cylon Farms.  I made this much more horrifying than the show did, playing up the machine rape element of it with a spicing of Japanimation tentacle/machine porn.  Make it truly disturbing.  We also had healthy men being “milked.”  Yes, disgusting…that’s the point.

10.  The Offensive — the characters have enough followers to stage guerrilla attacks on locations:  farms, bases of operations, etc.  You can do variations on theme until the end of time…or Day 282.  (More about that later.)  Perhaps they find a bunch of planetary guard, or Colonial Marines that have been successfully playing hit and run.  We had a tank battle between the Cylons and CMCR in our campaign.  Eventually, the Cylons just nuked the site from orbit, but it was a glorious battle…

One thing to remember, the Cylons stage a cease fire and leave Caprica on Day 282.  The characters don’t need to know this, but if they can hold out until then they have a chance to possibly rebuild one of the colonies…  Yes, it’s not canon, but we can’t assume that only Sam Anders’ bunch were the only survivors in the Twelve Colonies.

Next time, ideas for a “second fleet” campaign…

 

11 February, 2010

New Ships: Cylon-War Era Basestar & Raider

Posted by blackcampbell under Roleplaying Games | Tags: |
Leave a Comment 

Here’s a quick take on the Cylon vessels of the first war…

Cylon Basestar Mk I

The Cylon basestar was a combination aircraft carrier and battleship used by rebel Cylons during the First Cylon War.

Dimensions: 1200x1200x600′   Crew: 5,000 Cylons

AGL:  d6   STR: d12+d2   VIT: d10   ALE: d8   INT: d8   WIL: d8

Initiative: d6+d8   Life Points: 24   Armor: 3W, 4S   Speed: 4 (SL/JC)

Traits:  Memorable d4

Skills:  Mechanical Engineering d6, Pilot d6, Technical Engineering [Electronic Warfare] d6 [d10]

Armaments:  Medium & heavy vehicle/scale, capital-range missiles (can be used as point defense) d12W; heavy spacecraft scale, capital range missiles: d12+d2W; nuclear missiles (spacecraft-scale, short DRADIS range): d12+d6W

Auxiliary Craft:  200 Cylon raiders, 50 shuttlecraft (similar to raptors)

Cylon Raider Mk I

The Cylon Raider of the First Cylon War was a bulky thing, compared to the latter biomechnical versions.  They carried a crew of three centurions, and acted as a landing craft, as well as an attack fighter.

Dimensions: 23’x40’x13′   Crew: 3

AGL: d6   STR: d8   VIT: d10   ALE: d8   INT: d6   WIL: d8

Initiative: d6+d8   Life Points: 18   Armor: 2W, 2S   Speed: 7 [5 in atmo] [SL]

Traits:  none

Skills: [Cylon crew]  Mechanical Engineering d6, Pilot [Raider] d6 [d10], Perception d6,Technical Engineering d6

Armament:  2 30mm cannons [vehicle-scale, skirmish range]: d8W, 2 vehicle-scale, skirmish-range missiles: d12W or 2 anti-ship missiles [spacecraft-scale, capital-range]: d8W

 

10 February, 2010

Cinema Tricks in Game Play, Part 2

Posted by blackcampbell under Roleplaying Games
Leave a Comment 

Pacing, pacing, pacing!

This is one of the tougher things to get right as a gamemaster.  Depending on the type of adventure being run, you might want to have the characters go through a series of hoops to get things done, other times, you want to keep the speed of events high.

It’s a problem moviemakers have, as well.  And cinema gives us a few ideas of how to do pacing for certain genres.  For the mystery, for instance, you will want the characters to wander through a series of clues and red herrings until they get to the bad guy.  However, even mystery movies often leave out or gloss over things like the foot work required.  And how do they do that?

MONTAGE!  The characters roll a test or two to sweep the streets, leading to the sequence where they actually find a clue.  They’ll know there’s something worthy of paying attention to in a sequence, because you aren’t glossing over the process.  It allows you to control the pace of their investigation — say the flat foot took 3 hours to get to the sequence where Eddie the Nose finally drops a hint for where they need to look.  It allows you to make sure things unfold as your want them to, without looking like you’re railroading or stifling the pace of the players.  And you don’t spend an evening wasting the players’ time.  The story unfolds at a pace that keeps people’s attention.

The montage also allows players who aren’t in the center of the action, but whose skills are necessary to the plot, to get in important tests.  For instance, the spies/detectives/whathaveyou need to find out about the actions of a dead real estate mogul.  One player is walking the streets, talking to the gangs, etc. that might know of a hitman that could have killed the guy.  Meanwhile, another player goes through the escrow records to see what he might have been into, while another scours financial records.  Describe the montage quickly, while they do their rolls.  Did each get the piece of the puzzle necessary?  If not, how can you get them to the place they need to be..?

The montage gets things done that are overall boring to most players.  No one wants to sit on the sidelines while Jane Doe asks scads of questions about the intricacies of investment portfolios.  If they got the roll, explain what they need to know.  Give them their clue and press on.

Most stories work better if the pacing is faster.  One, the players will sometimes (but not always) miss the plot holes that you didn’t account for.  Two, they are more involved in the action, and action sequences take up more time due to their tactical nature, than the main storyline.  If you need to stretch an episode over a few nights — a damn good firefight/fistfight/car chase will do that.

That brings us to another important thing you’ll see in movies.   When things start to lag, throw a problem in their way.  Usually, this is an action sequence, but it doesn’t have to be.  Take Burn Notice, for instance.  Are the players getting ahead of your plot?  Have one of the character have a family emergency (it’s especially good if it’s not a real emergency.)  Maybe the party is hunkered down from the Cylons or the orcs int he area, or what have you…they’re making their move tomorrow.  Maybe a sentry finds them.  Or — as a friend of mine related to me — your fire team is camping in Honduras waiting for the big operation tomorrow.  Rebels are in the area.  Then your warning flare goes off because a big friggin’ pig comes through the camp!  Rebels!  Oh, wait!  Sorry I almost shot you, dude…

The axiom in Hollywood:  when there’s a lull, hit them with a car chase or an explosion.  It works.

Occasionally, you want to slow things down to allow for character interaction, or to allow the plot to unfold.  If you keep pushing the pace too hard, you get Quantum of Solace — where the plotline is lost in far too many chases and fights.  You lose the narrative.  If the players start to lose track of what they’re doing, where they are, or what their objective is, back off a bit and give them a breather.

 

9 February, 2010

Some Additional World-Building from Caprica

Posted by blackcampbell under Roleplaying Games
Leave a Comment 

Gleaned from the twitter account of “Serge”, the Graystones’ butler bot:

The planet in the Caprican sky is not a moon, but a “twin” planet…Gemenon.  They orbit a common center of gravity.  Gemenon, in addition to being a hotbed of religious and fundamental pantheism (which adhere to a literal interpretation of the Sacred Scrolls), it is also the cynosure for monotheism.

Sere informs us that Canceron is a beautiful, but very poor world with first class beaches.  Scorpia also has some of the loveliest beaches, as well, according to The Caprican (see the Caprica website on syfy.com) a rather dangerous and low-brow quality to it.  the description seems to be suggesting a sort of Central/South American quality to the places.

Arelon and Aquaria are relatively close to each other.  Arelon is the breadbasket of the colonies, we know from BSG, and low class.  Aquaria is mostly cold, “brackish” ocean, with a lone continent.

Leonis is a “declining empire” with extensive vineyards, and is known for illegal drugs and energy drinks.

Picon is know, according to Serge, as “little Caprica” and was colonized by Virgon.  From the new show, we can surmise that Virgon is a much more libertine world than Caprica (Sam’s comment about Virgons being able to fornicate in public, while Taurons are arrested for anything.)

Serge also relates that much of Libran is a game preserve…

 

« Previous Page — Next Page »