The Black Campbell

Third Born

Type:     Heavy Bulk Freighter   Class:    Hercules HB-921/C   Registry:    TR-61330/H

DIMENSIONS:
Length: 672′   Beam: 88′   Draught: 168′   Scale: Spacecraft   Decks: 11  Crew: 50   Cargo/Passengers: 1.17 million tons (cargo) and 200 passengers; could accommodate up to 1000 with minimal cargo (250,000 tns.)

ATTRIBUTES:
Agility: d4   Strength: d8 (d12)   Vitality: d6   Alertness: d4   Intelligence: d4   Willpower: d6

Initiative: 2d4   Life Points: 14 (18)   Speed: 4 (SL/JC)   ARMOR: 0W, 1S

WEAPONS:
6 30mm Point Defense Autocannons (Planetcraft scale/Skirmish Range): d10W

TRAITS:
Mass-Produced: d4, Variable Cargo Size d4

SKILLS:
Athletics d2, Mech Engineering d4, Perception d4, Pilot d6

NOTES:
Third Born is a heavy bulk freighter designed to carry space-travel standardized cargo containers.  Each container is 60’x 15’x15′ with a grand total of 13,500 cu’ of space.  The class is designed to haul up to 87 containers, for a grand total of 1.17 million cubic feet of cargo space.  (With a full load of containers, the ship uses the Attributes in parentheses.)

The maximum payload for planetfall is 12,000 tons – equivalent to 17 pounds/cubic foot.  Ordinarily, this means the vessel can land with a full cargo load, although it is very sluggish and unresponsive.

Slow and not glamourous, Third Born has been a successful smuggling vessel due to her carrying bulk loads of legitimate cargo, with illicit cargo hidden deep inside the containers.  After the Cylon attack, her master, Gus Costas, used the weapons and ammunition he was carrying to arm the vessel against attack.

Class: GAL-365 Mk II     Type: Short Range FTL Shuttle

DIMENSIONS:
Length: 74’11”   Beam: 24’8″   Draught: 21’6″
Scale: Vehicular [Barely]   Crew: 2    Passengers: 24 [100 emergency]
Cargo: 70 tons

ATTRIBUTES:
Agility: d4   Strength: d12   Vitality: d8   Alertness: d8   Intelligence: d8   Willpower: d6

Initiative: d4+d8   Life Points: 20   Armor: 1W, 2S    Speed: 5 [SL/JC]

TRAITS:
Mass-Produced [d2], Short-Range [d4], Workhorse [d4]

SKILLS:
Mechanical Engineering [d4], Perception [d4], Pilot [d4]

ARMAMENT:
None

HISTORY:
The GAL-365 Mk II short-range shuttle is a mainstay of ship-to-shore activity, both in the military and the civilian world.  GAL-365C versions are called MLC [marine Landing Craft] and are modified with stronger deck ribbing to carry up to 70 tons – a main battle tank, or up to 4 landrams, depending on configuration.  They can carry the crews of these Vehicles, or can bee used to do emergency evacuations of up to 100 people.  They are equipped with a short-range FTL system good for two jumps (as opposed to 10 with a raptor.)

The Colonial Marine Corps also uses an uparmored version of the GAL-365, commonly referred to as an MLS (Marine Landing Shuttle.)  An MLS is usually piloted by dedicated CMC pilots, but often pilots are crosstrained for MLS and Raptors.

The MLS Armor rating is 2W, 2S, and they carry 24-100 marines, depending on the drop load.  The lower cargo deck is designed to hold a single main battle tank, or up to 4 landrams, depending on their mass and size.  With a tank, only 24 marines can be carried.  For a quick drop, 100 marines and their gear can be loaded.

Since the Colonies were named after the constellations (or vice-versa, I suppose…), here’s the patron god(dess) of each colony:

Aquaria:  Hera,   Arelon: Athena,    Canceron: Hermes,    Caprica: Hestia, Gemenon: Apollo,    Leonis: Zeus,   Libris: Hephaestus,   Picon: Poseidon, Sagittaron: Artemis,   Scorpia: Ares,   Tauron: Aphrodite,   Virgon: Demeter…

This should aid in lending a bit of character to the Colonies and their people in your game.  It also gives you “holidays” should you need them for a plot.

So my question…who is the patron god of Earth and the 13th Colony.  Could “god” — the angry and jealous god mentioned in the Kobol episodes (well, the cut scenes), be Hades?

…under “Role playing Related.”

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.