Orbital Cold War, Zozer’s alt-1990 lunar cold war setting, offers a unique procedure for generating and troubleshooting technical issues on spacecraft using a random table of malfunctions and causes.
But for scenarios that take place on the Moon (rather than in orbit of the Moon or Earth), its focus on spacecraft isn’t pertinent. So I created tables for rovers and drones, which player Astronauts and Cosmonauts are more likely to deal with on the Moon.
I also included my Vacc Suit malfunctions from an earlier post, for ease-of-reference.
Vehicle Malfunctions
Harrison Schmitt working near the Lunar Roving Vehicle during Apollo 17
When encountering Vehicle Malfunctions, follow the normal Troubleshooting procedure (OCW pg 50) using the below Malfunctions instead. Use Ground Vehicle or Loader (or another appropriate skill) when rolling to fix the malfunction instead of Pilot.
1D6
Problem
Consequence
Deadline
Checklist
Repair Time
1
Wheel malfunction
Move at half speed
15m
Alignment, Faulty breaks, Puncture
5 min
2
Instruments & Comms
Lose speed, navigation, and communication
immediate
Power short, Disconnect/interference, Computer crash
15 min
3
Controls
-2 to checks to drive or operate attached hardware
90 minutes
Steering column disconnect, Drive controller electronics malfunction, Gear reducer jam
30 minutes
4
Suspension
Medium
1 hour
Bent torsion bar, Cracking suspension bar, Misaligned coil spring
30 minutes
5
Body failure
Cabin depressurization (pressurized vehicles) or body separation (depressurized vehicles)
Battery puncture/fuel leak Damaged power cable/fuel line Battery/fuel thermal shock
1 hour
Drone Malfunctions
Lunokhod 2 Model
When encountering Drone Malfunctions, follow the normal Troubleshooting procedure (OCW pg 50) using the below Malfunctions instead. Use Ground Vehicle (or another appropriate skill) when rolling to fix the malfunction instead of Pilot.
1D6
Problem
Consequence
Deadline
Checklist
Repair Time
1
Limbs/tools
Unable to use tools/scientific instruments
20m
Power/data disconnect, Dust buildup, Misalignment
10 minutes
2
Movement
Moves at 1/2 speed
immediate
Damaged power cable, Stuck debris, Wheel/tread feel off
10 minutes
3
Sensors
Unable to see/sense
90 minutes
Broken optics, Faulty sensor processor, Sensor fell off
30 minutes
4
Communications
Unable to control/receive data from the drone
60 minutes
Antenna, Interference, Signal decay
30 minutes
5
Integrity
Drone will break apart
2 hours
Cracked frame, Dragging debris, Stuck on itself
30 minutes
6
Power
Power loss
2 hours
Battery leak, Not charging, Vampire load,
1 hour
Spacesuit Malfunctions
When encountering Spacesuit Malfunctions, follow the normal Troubleshooting procedure (OCW pg 50) using the below Malfunctions instead. Use Vacc Suit (or another appropriate skill) when rolling to fix the malfunction instead of Pilot.
1D6
Problem
Consequence
Deadline
Checklist
Repair Time
1
Radio
No communications.
Immediate
Antenna, Electrical power, Interference
10 minutes
2
Water leak
Water accumulates and starts blinding you (in freefall) or at your feet (on the moon).
15 minutes
Bladder, Straw, Thermal Garment.
5 minutes
3
Life Support
Will start asphyxiating (1d6 damage/minute)
30 minutes (+30 minutes if you use the emergency Oxygen Purge System, one-time).
Air valves, Filters, Power.
10 minutes
4
Power
No power for radio and life support.
60 minutes
Cable disconnect, Dead battery, Electrical short.
15 minutes
5
Flashlight/accessories
Helmet-mounted flashlight (or other accessory) powers off.
Immediate
Bulb, Backup battery, Power cable.
5 minutes
6
Movement
Your suit’s compromised. Any movement will cause a suit breach (OCW pg 56)
15 minutes
Dust build-up, Pierced by debris, Snagged on a piece of your equipment.
To improve the interactivity of technical encounters, focus on the novel actions players can perform on or with a piece of technology.
A big challenge for running technical sci-fi is that players (and referees) don’t know what they can do and the consequences. As I proposed in Technical Animism, this is less of an issue with social encounters. Players have a firmer grasp of their social options (bargaining, begging, commanding, extorting, intimidating, lying) and their consequences (because humans are social organisms).
But we can have the same benefits without resorting to animism (metaphorical or literal) with some forethought. For each tech component in your scenario/encounter:
Come up with at least two actions players can take with or on it.
Determine their (divergent) consequences.
Communicate these actions to players (either via character knowledge granted by background/skill points, interfaces on the tech itself, or via clues as part of a technical mystery).
This positively interacts with creating dilemmas: certain values can bias towards certain actions and their consequences. When designing a scenario, your scenario’s values can inspire new verbs for your encounter and obvious verbs can inspire or suggest the competing values.
If you’re in a rut trying to think of a verb to use, roll a D20:
Adhere
Brush
Bypass
Close
Crimp
Detach
Grease
Idle
Irradiate
Jam
Jiggle
Loosen
Mend
Open
Parallelize
Press
Serialize
Tighten
Wipe
Zero
I didn’t make this up on my own
There was some “prior art” with this technique. Many cyberpunk games (or RPGs with notable hacking or crafting minigames) go to great lengths to list and expound the various technical actions a player can take. A clear example is the hacking minigame in Cities Without Number, which details 24 verbs, their appropriate targets, and their consequences in cyberspace.
Hacking Verbs, Cities Without Number pg 95
And if we pull back, many RPGs use verbs as the basic building blocks for tasks. Fate has the four actions of “Create advantage,” “Overcome,” “Attack,” and “Defend,” modified by Aspects and Skills (or Approaches in Accelerated). The aforementioned Cities Without Number (and the other Without Number games) has a skill list composed entirely of verbs. And Technoir’s stats are all verbs: “Coax”, “Detect,” “Fight,” “Hack,” “Move,” “Operate,” “Prowl,” “Shoot,” and “Treat.” So you can design technical adventures and scenarios around whatever verbs already exist in your system.
You obviously don’t need to use all of or only those verbs, but they’re convenient baselines you can start developing from.
By the book, Orbital Cold War offers a mostly freeform/task-driven system for spacewalks, but I prefer a more formal structure. Here’s a light procedure for facilitating orbital missions. Use this once your astronauts arrive at their area of operation.
Missions are broken into Rounds each lasting six hours. For each Round:
Each astronaut moves and picks their Action.
At the end, the Referee rolls Encounter Dice.
Actions
Each Round, an astronaut can freely move:
To outside of a spacecraft, going on a spacewalk.
To inside of a spacecraft, returning from a spacewalk.
Move to any nearby spacecraft.
An astronaut can then perform one of the following (with any Throws up to the Referee):
Analyze a spacecraft or satellite for issues.
Fix issues with a satellite or external spacecraft issues.
Monitor everything from your spacecraft. You can remote control the Canadarm, talk on the radio, provide internal maintenance for your spacecraft, maneuver your spacecraft, and anything else that can be done from the comfort of a cockpit. Note: it’s assumed you’re pre-breathing pure oxygen with a facemask during this time and will eventually find a moment to camp in the airlock.
Sleep. Includes eating meals. Pick a song for your wakeup call.
Other thing that takes six hours.
The average spacewalk is no longer than six hours. For longer spacewalks, an astronaut needs an umbilical to provide external life support. Assuming that, each additional Round spent on a EVA without a break in the spacecraft inflicts a DM-1 on the astronaut due to exhaustion and their fingernails falling off.
Encounter Dice
At the end of a Round, roll on the below Encounter table equal to the number of players minus two (minimum of one encounter).
Suit malfunction. Pick a player to receive a malfunction in their suit. Roll on the Spacesuit Malfunctions table below. Give that player 1XP for being a good sport.
Spacecraft malfunction. Roll on the Malfunctions table (OCW pg 51) and follow the Troubleshooting procedure (pg 50).
Mission escalation. The mission becomes more dire or worsens in some way.
Suit warning. Same as Suit malfunction above, but the malfunction is delayed to next Round. Warn the player of this impending malfunction.
Spacecraft warning. Same as Spacecraft malfunction above, but the malfunction is delayed to next Round. Warn the players of this impending malfunction.
Mission warning. As Mission escalation, but the escalation is delayed to next Round. Warn the players of this impending malfunction.
The reason for rolling multiple times for Encounters is to give less-engaged players proportional opportunities to engage with the game and to give play groups more balls to juggle.
Spacesuit Malfunctions
This will likely be expanded in another post (alongside Vehicle and Drone Malfunctions). Edit: That post can be found here.
When encountering Spacesuit Malfunctions, follow the normal Troubleshooting procedure (OCW pg 50) using the below Malfunctions instead. Use Vacc Suit (or another appropriate skill) when rolling to fix the malfunction instead of Pilot.
1D6
Problem
Consequence
Deadline
Checklist
Repair Time
1
Radio
No communications.
Immediate
Antenna, Electrical power, Interference
10 minutes
2
Water leak
Water accumulates and starts blinding you (in freefall) or at your feet (on the moon).
15 minutes
Bladder, Straw, Thermal Garment.
5 minutes
3
Life Support
Will start asphyxiating (1d6 damage/minute)
30 minutes (+30 minutes if you use the emergency Oxygen Purge System, one-time).
Air valves, Filters, Power.
10 minutes
4
Power
No power for radio and life support.
60 minutes
Cable disconnect, Dead battery, Electrical short.
15 minutes
5
Flashlight/accessories
Helmet-mounted flashlight (or other accessory) powers off.
Immediate
Bulb, Backup battery, Power cable.
5 minutes
6
Movement
Your suit’s compromised. Any movement will cause a suit breach (OCW pg 56)
15 minutes
Dust build-up, Pierced by debris, Snagged on a piece of your equipment.
If you know about Mothership, you know its slogan: “Survive. Solve. Save.” The game’s mnemonic represents its intended core trilemma for player characters in horrifying (and interesting) situations. Players at best can only pick two: survive the horror to fight another day, save others from the horror, or “solve” the horror and lock it away for good.
This, like the classic “quality, speed, cost” triangle, is effective because it focuses the game on interesting situations, the beating heart of OSR play (and probably roleplaying in general). When you can’t achieve everything, what will your character prioritize?
Classic trilemma. Which two would your character pick?
We can apply these trilemmas/value conflicts to technical sci-fi encounter/adventure design fairly trivially. For each encounter or technical adventure:
Pick at least two independent maxims, values the players care about, that require separate consideration (like “safety” and “quality”).
Develop some sort of constraint that encourages compromising on those maxims (like a time limit).
Develop consequences for if players compromise on certain maxims.
compromising on safety can maim or kill the players,
compromising on quality may cause them to fail at the job,
trying to do both has a chance of compromising both.
Present these values to the player characters during the situation.
Sample Technical Values
Efficiency – How much work can it do versus the resources (power, fuel, ammo) it consumes?
Elegance – How many problems does it solve at the same time?
Initial cost – how expensive is it to purchase/make?
Lifetime – How long will it last?
Performance – How fast/damaging/effective a thing is
Reliability – How often won’t it fail?
Repairability – How easy is it to repair once it’s broken?
Safety – How can someone get hurt by this?
Simplicity – How easy is it to use?
Upkeep – How expensive is it to keep using?
Versatility – How many different circumstances can this be configured to work in?
While hardly a comprehensive list, they’re common in engineering and design disciplines. They especially work well for persistent technologies the players use (like their spaceship).
Star Wars’ opening crawl is as quintessential to the franchise as lightsabers, starships, and reactionary fans. It makes sense for gaming groups to use the crawl in their home games. It’s also easy to screw up, even for professionals. This is how I try to not screw it up.
Beyond a homage to pulp sci-fi serials, the opening crawl in the films serves two purposes:
To quickly build context so you won’t be confused when the filmmakers
drop you into the middle of the action.
Similarly, the crawl at the tabletop needs to:
Quickly remind the players of what’s happening.
Hype the players to be dropped into the middle of the action.
How to make a Star Wars Opening Crawl (by fixing Starfall’s)
Unfortunately, I’ve encountered some underwhelming crawls on both sides of the screen. One example is from the fun, classic Star Destroyer escape module Starfall:
A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away….
A group of Rebel agents has been assigned to accompany the great engineer Walex Blissex, designer of the Victory-class Star Destroyer, to Kwenn space station. Blissex, now a respected member of the Alliance, received a message from his son-in-law, Imperial Governor Denn Wessex, claiming that the engineer’s daughter is near death. Even though it appeared to be a trap, Blissex could not pass up this last chance to reconcile with his daughter.
Whether Lira Wessex, who designed the Imperial-class Star Destroyer based upon her father’s previous work, is truly dying or not seems inconsequential. Upon reaching Kwenn, Walex and his Rebel escorts were captured and placed in the custody of Captain Kolaff, commander of the VSD Subjugator.
Now, trapped within the detention block of the powerful ship, the Rebels have little hope of escape. They can only wait for the eventual return of their captors and the terrible interrogator Droid that is sure to accompany them…
Let me tell you, these 153 words sucked when I ran it. Partially because the players didn’t want to act out the included script1 and just read it quietly, but also because the crawl itself failed to build hype and provide sufficient context.
A New Hope, for reference
Compare this to the 83 words in A New Hope’s opening crawl (our gold standard):
A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away….
It is a period of civil war. Rebel spaceships, striking from a hidden base, have won their first victory against the evil Galactic Empire.
During the battle, Rebel spies managed to steal secret plans to the Empire’s ultimate weapon, the DEATH STAR, an armored space station with enough power to destroy an entire planet.
Pursued by the Empire’s sinister agents, Princess Leia races home aboard her starship, custodian of the stolen plans that can save her people and restore freedom to the galaxy….
It’s no wonder Starfall’s crawl failed to excite and enlighten my players compared to the films’ crawls. The biggest issues with Starfall’s crawl are:
Length: at 156 words, it’s 1.75 times the length of the longest movie crawl (The Force Awakens, 88 words). And any GM knows that boxed text can’t dilly-dally.
Content: the information they decide to convey with those words isn’t enough context. Afterwards, there’s a 250 word script with essential information the players act out, and then 50 more words of boxed text before the players do anything. A New Hope famously gives us all the audience need.
Flavor: Starfall’s crawl weak adjectives fail to evoke the conflict. Whereas A New Hope frequently deploys strong adjectives like “hidden base,” “first victory,” “evil Galactic Empire,” “ultimate weapon,” and “sinister agents.”
Let’s rewrite Starfall’s crawl to address those issues, and break its dependence on the players’ script. From a budget of ~90 words (about 4-6 sentences), the ideal crawl can be broken down into three parts:
What’s been happening?
Civil war. Turmoil in the senate. The dead speaking. Remind the audience of the executive-level conflict or inciting incident of the session/mission. This is what the players want to fight to resolve.
In A New Hope, the big conflict is in our first two sentences: there’s a civil war, and the rebels just won their first battle. The movies can posit larger conflicts than a single RPG session, so err on the side of small.
In Starfall, that executive-level conflict is that the Empire tricked a defected Star Destroyer designer Walex Blissex into a trap (to see his supposedly-dying Imperial loyal daughter), and the players got caught in it.
We would expect that to be nailed in the first two sentences, but it isn’t: it’s spread across two paragraphs, with the load-bearing sentences being sentence 2 and 5. Everything else is filler or details that can be truncated.
What just happened?
What happened right before the start of this session. The movies usually put this in the second paragraph. This reminds the players what they “just did” last session, and sets up our final sentence.
In A New Hope, we’re reminded the Rebels just stole schematics for the Empire’s evil superweapon.
In Starfall, what just happened is that the player characters were separated from Walex Blissex and placed into their own shared detention cell on a Star Destroyer. The current crawl mentions the imprisonment in the second-to-last sentence, but doesn’t mention separating from Walex (that’s in the players’ script).
What’s is currently happening?
It’s likely you ended the previous session on a cliffhanger, or you otherwise know what the players will immediately do or try to overcome. Bring players into that action with the essential context, and remember the ellipses….
In A New Hope, the first shot is the Rebel ship being caught by the Empire. So the crawl mentions that the Rebels are being chased by the Empire.
In Starfall, they end on the return of their captors and an interrogator droid. This is fine if the GM wants the surprise attack on the Star Destroyer to also be a surprise to the players. But the players’ script mostly talks about escape attempts, and the immediate task for players is to escape their cells.
A more appropriate final sentence would instead focus on the players’ impending escape attempt, while still setting up the detention officers and interrogation droid as looming threats.
My Rewrite
A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away….
Respected Rebel Walex Blissex has been captured. A former STAR DESTROYER designer, Walex and his Rebel Agents rushed into a certain trap to atone with his dying Imperial-loyal daughter Lira Wessex.
Upon capture, Walex and his Rebel Agents were imprisoned on the VSD Subjugator, a powerful STAR DESTROYER under Captain Kolaff’s chilling command. Separated into two different cells, Walex and his Rebels have little hope of escape.
But the Rebels Agents don’t relent. Surrounded by detention guards and an interrogator Droid, the Rebels listen for a moment to seize liberation….
90 words, almost all the same proper nouns (the governor never shows up in this adventure), almost all the same characterization (Lira’s deception is implied by the trap, and I added Kolaff’s characterization from the script), and a more instructive final sentence (the players are a bit more active, waiting for their time to strike and better positioned to take charge when the Subjugator is attacked). And we don’t need that script anymore, which is a plus if players don’t want to act it out.
The Checklist
Follow the instructions below. Write, then trim for brevity.
Write the key objective and status of the current mission/conflict.
What are the good guys or bad guys trying to accomplish/have accomplished?
Who is opposing them?
If important, how are they opposing them?
Trim to 30 words.
Write where we left off.
Where are the players?
What just happened before last session ended?
Trim to 40 words.
What’s about to happen?
Is this a continuing action?
Is this a new action/a reaction based on last session?
Is someone/something about to interrupt the players?
Trim to 20 words.
Replace elaborate clauses with simple adjective-noun pairs.
Use “Respected Rebel Walex Blissex” instead of “[Walex] Blissex, now a respected member of the Alliance.“
Use “a certain trap” instead of “Even though it appeared to be a trap.”
Use “dying Imperial-loyal daughter Lira Wessex” instead of “Whether Lira Wessex, who designed the Imperial-class Star Destroyer based upon her father’s previous work, is truly dying…”
In many D6 Star Wars adventures, a script is provided to the players to read aloud after the crawl. I think this was to give a “cinematic” quality to play, help players retain information, and get novice players comfortable speaking in-character. I think these are good goals and and an interesting solution. But my players didn’t want to read them aloud, and relying on a script weakens the crawl. ↩︎
NASA released lots of cool images from JWST. My favorite is probably the galaxy pair IC 2163 and NGC 2207 taken by Webb and Hubble, which is the featured image for this post.
I hosted the first Delta Green Mini-Campaign Jam, and it was a success. Four cool campaigns were submitted, and two more were run (but not submitted).
The NSR Cauldron Discord hosted a bunch of AMAs with great RPG creators. I’ve archived the ones with Luke Gearing, Meguey and Vincent Baker, and Sean McCoy on a public forum and the Internet Archive. I need to finish the other ones at some point.
I hosted the third annual Sci-Fi One-Shot Jam, and we broke the record for number of submissions. I submitted Edge of Terminator to this and to the NASA RPG Jam. Both jams have a bunch of cool submissions. Hopefully we’ll break the record again for 2025’s jam.
The Sci-Fi RPG Collective hosted our first Secret Santa, and everyone made some cool sci-fi RPG stuff. I helped Igneous with his gift to Dusk Witch, which she seems to have enjoyed. Dusk Witch and mtb also posted the gifts they made, which are also cool.
The 2024 Shotgun Scenario contest happened, and with it the second year of Star Chamber playtests. The scenario that won this year took advantage of the Star Chamber playest, so hopefully that means the program is working. I finished a Delta Green scenario, Return To Sender, for the contest. It isn’t perfect, but I’m proud of it. I cowrote half of it on livestream, so maybe I just need peer pressure to finish things.
Games I Ran in 2024
Left to right: Orbiters Local 519, Another Bug Hunt, QZ, and Continuity
Orbiters Local 519. Love this game, but I completely forgot I ran it in 2024 until I started compiling this list. It was a playtest for an aborted submission to the 2024 One Page Derelict Jam – a Kuiper Belt ice miner taken over by a space-adapted megafauna that wears spaceships like a crab wears shells. Maybe I’ll fix up the concept, or someone else will do better with it.
Pioneer. I wrote about it on the Mongoose Forum back in April (and reposted it here). It was fun, but didn’t seem to properly focus on its time-management interpretation of technical roleplaying. They’re re-tooling the game (and I still need to post my feedback on the rules), so hopefully they sharpen that focus when it comes time to print.
Hyperspace D6 v2.8. An in-development retroclone of D6 Star Wars. Health and skills are a bit janky, but the game was fun. It started as just a one-shot of the Star Destroyer escape adventure Starfall. Despite the adventure being quite linear (and trimmed for time), the players enjoyed it enough. I transitioned it to a mission-based sandbox, and the Lamba Wranglers (as they would come to call themselves) decided to find a missing scout on Rhen Var and deliver essential medical supplies to a blockaded Sullustian city. Another mission was on the menu, a scrap crawl on Raxus Prime, but the campaign fizzled out.
Delta Green. For the first mini-campaign jam, I decided to write a campaign about CORAL NOMAD, Delta Green’s asset recovery team. I ran a complete playtest of it on N@TO (from March to May), and an incomplete one in-person (for new players, from March through September). Despite being fun for both groups, the campaign as-written wasn’t good enough to sumbit. I’ll hopefully finish it for this year’s mini-campaign jam. I also ran two playtests for the 2024 Shotgun Scenario contest: Operation Cannonball, and VERTIGINOUS. Both of those were fun, and may be worth checking out if you like road trips or wellness retreats.
Mothership. In June, I ran Another Bug Hunt, and it provided my favorite RPG session of this year (during part 2: Hive Mind). Players loved it, and I think the adventure is an essential component for understanding Mothership (especially for newcomers).
For Mayday, I ran Edge of Helium in CT for two players, and they both loved it. The ratcheting tension and weirdness, combined with some tweaked secret objectives, lead to some dramatic and interesting play.
Picking up the “Edge of X” torch from Mr Collinson, I wrote and ran Edge of Terminator for four players using Retro Sci-Fi Rules. It wasn’t as dramatic as Edge of Helium, but it was still fun. Fun enough to convince all four of those players to start a campaign.
I’ve written about the campaign before, and we just crossed session 20 this week. It’s been my proving ground for technical sci-fi techniques, and a good one at that. Despite being an open-table, I still get full seats (and even got a fifth player for some sessions). But it’s starting to lose steam, as least from my POV (not helped by the holidays). Maybe a break or shake-up is in order.
Treacherous Turn. A fun xenofiction RPG by some AI safety researchers, players collaboratively control the same AGI as it self-actualizes and escapes humanity’s control. I ran the “one-shot” A Game Called Realityfor two players across three sessions, and they really enjoyed it. It alternates between short-term roleplay and long-term planning, and the skill system seems oddly ripe for an FKR game. If you decide to play it, make sure to use the webapp.
QZ. I also love this game, and was able to run a one-shot of it for Halloween. Two players showed up, and proceeded to have my second-favorite session of the year. A mix of strange and tense encounters, I was a bit too hard on the players in the first half. But the cartoonish end (where they concealed themselves with a tarp labeled “Nothing” and wheeled past elite security guards) makes up for it.
Eclipse Phase: Continuity. Intended as a one-shot, this ended up sprawling across two sessions. The players ended up successfully escaping Kepler Station without being infected. The players (all but one new to Eclipse Phase) loved the setting, but were definitely overwhelmed. I recommend making pregens and statting out morphs the players can re-sleeve into beforehand.
Games I Played in 2024
Left to right: Celestial Bodies, High Speed Low Drag, Orbital, and Twilight 2000 2.2e.
Mothership. KingDunadd on the Sci-Fi Collective ran two Sci-Fi One-Shot Jam submissions in Mothership: Leviathan and Zenith-47. Leviathan is great if you want to prank your players, and I loved being pranked. There are multiple great events and character interactions that perfectly set up the reveal at the end. Don’t run this if your players don’t like being the butt of the joke. Zenith-47 was a perfectly fine station to explore, and I was able to use some FTL-esque thinking to dispatch a horde of zombies (while my co-player struggled to dispatch one). Turns out the undead vent out to vacuum just as well as the living.
Celestial Bodies. A sick-ass GMless mech combat game. I played two skirmishes in it, and the Grid-based mech building/hit locations make the mech’s architecture tangible and consequential. I want to write a non-mech space combat game using the grid, but don’t have the time. Maybe for next year’s Minimalist Jam?
Void Cowboys. The first non-violent “skirmish” game I’ve played. Players are spacers who need to skillfully move around a garbage patch to collect space salvage. Tough, but really fun.
Orbital by Mousehole Press. Despite owning it for a while, it was only until September when I finally played this cool GMless DS9/B5 game. Everyone loved station creation, but I found it difficult to actually drive the story forward. I eventually found thinking exclusively in Moves to drive things forward, but my two other players struggled because their Playbooks ended up being ill-suited to the station’s conflicts. I want to play this again.
High Speed Low Drag. The next step in the modern Traveller lifepath: a whole solo journaling game. I didn’t finish my first playthrough, but its interpretation of life events and clocks seem ripe to steal for Mongoose Traveller 3e (especially if they want the lifepath to be a form of solo fun). Definitely recommend.
Twilight 2000 v2.2. Rat on the Sci-Fi RPG Collective server ran a three-session adventure in Twilight 2000 2.2. Despite the horrible writing and organization of the book, I still had fun. Despite specializing as the mechanic/driver, I shocked myself by taking on the role of tactician in our final confrontation to pick up a crashed satellite. I also ended up taking out our main antagonist in a quickdraw, which was cool. Twilight 2000 2.2 could be the better game, but 4e is better by virtue of its comparative clarity. Someone should make a retroclone of 2.2.
Games I Want to Try in 2025
Blue Planet. The PDFs for Recontact Edition were delivered, and I really want to focus more on ecology, anti-colonialism, and bio sci-fi. So much so that some of those ideas are leaking into my Orbital 2100 game. My current struggle is picking a campaign premise.
Cities Without Number. As a player, I want to try out the new Operator “build-your-own” class. As a GM, I want to give sandbox cyberpunk adventures another shot. I’ll probably implement the optional cash-for-XP rule, since that fits so well with a criminal campaign. I’m considering setting it unorthodox cities for the genre (either Phoenix or New Orleans). We’ll see if I can get this to the table.
Hardcase. A solo PbtA game inspired by and similar to Citizen Sleeper? Sign me up!
See You Space Cowboy. I feel the urge to watch Cowboy Bebop coming up, and I know binging that won’t satiate my desires. The Ceres mini-setting kicks ass, and the upcoming adventure anthology should too.
Stars Without Number X Rogue Trader. Cheating, since I’ve already played 50+ sessions of Stars Without Number. But Dusk Witch is planning on running the Rogue Trader setting in SWN. I haven’t engaged much in Warhammer 40K, so Rogue Trader will be a new (and hopefully fun) experience.
Vaults of Vaarn. Doubloon on the Sci-Fi RPG Collective mentioned this game a few times, and now I’m interested in playing in a Caves of Qud-esque sci-fantasy setting.
WIPs I Need To Finish
Not exactly the traditional slushposting, since I plan on coming back and finishing these things.
Delta Green: Coral Nomad. I ran it twice, yet it isn’t even in a readable state. I learned a lot about good action-oriented Delta Green missions, and I need to take those lessons and basically rewrite and playtest the campaign (except the first adventure, that’s solid).
New Technical Sci-Fi Techniques, including:
Designing technical encounters around the tension between the players’ values.
Considering specific verbs when designing technical encounters.
Treating technical adventures like a dungeon, a bunch of encounters firewalled across space.
Treating technical encounters and adventures like schematics and processes to untangle and manipulate.
Reputation-as-XP for Eclipse Phase. The Reputation economies are cool in EP, and expanding them to highlight how each faction is different and work as progression should provide motivation and RP opportunities in a Criminal campaign.
NPC AI (not ChatGPT). A survey of little procedures to help referees determine how NPCs (re)act in social and combat encounters.
A comparison of “DIY Sci-Fi” RPGs. Compare sci-fi RPGs that encourage/assume GMs will make their own setting, and how they equip GMs to do that.
A boatload of AARs. Almost all the games I ran (and some I played in), I took detailed enough notes to write AARs for.
Areas I Want to Improve On As A GM
Scene decorations. I’m horribly clinical and rushed with my scene descriptions, even when I take forever with them. This is because I know I would stop listening after sentence four, so I stumble through and rush to ask the players what they do next. I need to slow down and try evoking the scene rather than just describing it. I may do this by adding scene/locations descriptions to my prep work.
Maps, handouts, and player aids. My maps are LibreOffice Draw blobs, my player aids are spartan, and my handouts are nonexistent. These are all things that help players learn and manage information about the game and setting, so I need to take the time to make more aesthetic, informative, and useful aids. Creating template maps in Inkscape or Dungeonscrawl I can reuse, fixing up some of our spreadsheets, finding spaceships artists to get art from, bashing together in-universe documents, and creating a more robust campaign wiki should suffice.
Balance smaller adventures with a slow pace. Every adventure I’ve ever run for Orbital 2100 (sans Edge of Helium and Edge of Terminator) took more than two sessions (most taking at least five). While my players love the luxury of time, I’m finding myself either “bored” (more like insecure from underwhelming complexity) or over-complicating adventures to combat it. I need to find a way to quickly create engaging, one-session technical adventures without putting the pressure on my players to finish it in one session. Or I just need to chill out.
Coda
Thanks to my players and GMs I played with this year. This was a great year of gaming for me, and I literally couldn’t have done it without y’all. Here’s hoping that roleplaying in 2025 continues to be a good respite from the hell we need to fight.
Back in March of 2024 (and December of 2023), I ran a playtest of Pioneer, Mongoose Publishing’s astronaut RPG based on Traveller. I used the pack-in adventure, Orbital Emergency, for both playtests.
This is most of the feedback I gave Mongoose. I’ve added three suggestions for Referees at the very end. I didn’t include my suggestions to Mongoose, which can be found in the original post.
Tired of the bureaucracy and lack of recognition, became an astronaut.
At the start of the session, I let the players pick their missing skills from the Required Skill Package. Jeska took Astronavigation, Computers, and Sensors. Komatsu took Comms, Electronics, Mechanics, and Vacc Suit.
What happened
My very first playtest took five hours, so I made two modifications to this run of Orbital Emergency to fit a three hour timeslot.
The first was to leave the Peregrine’s payload undefined at launch. During the EVA, players could declare they brought some piece of equipment up with them and “spend’ the required cargo space. This saved about an hour of payload planning/“shopping.” The second was to not use a random encounter. Along the same lines, I decided not to introduce any complications via the Hydra X crew. This likely made for a worse experience, and I’ll discuss it in the feedback sections.
While gearing up, my players decided to roll for the faster one-orbit rendezvous. Dr Komatsu and Capcon succeeded in their rolls, so the Peregrine met the Hydra X at T+97 minutes. The players were dangerously hasty and nearly collided with the Hydra X while surveying it, so they took their sweet time during a second sweep to see the Hydra X’s damage.
Figuring both the engine and the hull would take a lot of time to fix, the players split up. While Komatsu began the tedious process of replacing tiles, Jeska flew over to inspect the engines. Jeska’s survey of the engines and the viability of repair was interrupted by the Hydra X’s -1D6m/s orbital velocity reduction. Jeska paused their task and used their MMU to board and pilot the Peregrine back to a reasonable distance from the Hydra X. Since both the engine repair survey and the tile replacement were taking long (at T+185 minutes after launch, Dr Komatus just finished tile seven), they determined help would be useful for station-keeping. They asked if someone at capcon could manage stationkeeping while the Komatsu and Jeska did work, and luckily Jeremy (the KSP and Orbiter-loving intern) was on staff that day to handle that.
By this point (T+185 minutes), Dr Komatsu only replaced seven of the thirteen tiles, and had yet to start analyzing the hull damage underneath. Dr Komatsu pressed on while Jeska squeezed back to the fuel line. By T+240, Jeska diagnosed engine #1’s fuel line problem. Jeska, confident in their capabilities (DM+5 from INT, Mechanic, and a remote computer program) against the Very Difficult task, hastened their repair (DM-2). Unfortunately, they fell short and wasted an hour (T+300).
Temporarily defeated, Jeska decided to switch tasks and find the cause of the failing telemetry. Jeska easily found the shredded wires. Unfortunately, they also didn’t have luck with this task. Dr Komatsu, meanwhile, slowly but surely finished removing each tile and replacing the tiles that didn’t obscure the deeper hull damage. Running out of power on their PLSSs (T+430), the two returned to the Peregrine to swap PLSSs and plan their next moves.
They decided to continue on their current course. Jeska slipped right back past the engines to repair the fuel line. With exhaustion onsetting, Jeska failed expedited attempt after attempt. On the third attempt (T+610 minutes), they managed to roll boxcars: success. Jeska then quickly patched up the TLM wires (on their first try).
Meanwhile, Dr Komatsu still dealt with the tiles. With most of the problematic tiles replaced, all that remained was the crack in the hull. Exhausted, Jeska flew over and repaired the underlying hull damage (T+750). The two of them placed the final tiles and returned to the Peregrine for reentry (T+860). Luckily, the fuel line repair held, and both the Peregrine and the Hydra X landed safely.
The first playtest, briefly
I said this was my second playtest of Orbital Emergency. The reason I didn’t report my first playtest (back in December) was because I took incredibly poor notes that would have been useless for an after-action report. However, I bring it up for three reasons: 1. We played it as close to RAW as possible (given we were still learning everything). This means I didn’t let players define the launch payload after they launched: they needed to pick their gear before launch. I also rolled for a random event (which I’ll discuss in Referee’s feedback). 2. Doing it this way took us about five hours to play. The players were successfully able to successfully bring the Hydra X back to Earth in one piece, with ~150 minutes left on the in-game clock. 3. The feedback my first players gave is nearly identical to the feedback from this most recent playtest.
Players’ feedback
Overall, players enjoyed the adventure.
In both this and my previous playtest, the players found the mission’s stakes compelling enough. In addition, both groups enjoyed the core time management puzzle. It made the out-of-reach technical details concrete and actionable. Both groups also enjoyed deploying the observation balls. It seems even with limited capabilities, players like the flexibility of telepresence (and cute robots).
However, both groups had similar concerns. Players expressed a concern about the emphasis of certain skills in this starter adventure. Even though it made sense given the context, they felt everything resolved with just Engineering, Mechanics, or Recon. It felt monotonous.
Along the same line, they expressed a lack of surprise; there weren’t a lot of unexpected complications. In particular, the second group was expecting something bad to happen as a result of the fuel line being repaired.
Finally, both groups found the tile replacement tedious and anticlimactic, and felt it sidelined whichever player was in charge of that task.
Ultimately, the players enjoyed the puzzle aspects, but were underwhelmed by the perceived lack of variety.
Referee’s feedback
Like the players’ feedback, I’ll focus on the adventure. I’ll save system feedback for another, later post.
To start positively: this adventure clearly demonstrates the resource-management core to the system. Time, launch mass, delta-V, air, and exhaustion were the main considerations for my players, and they were clear conflict points in this puzzle. This seems like a compelling template for spacewalk missions.
In addition, the two simple engine diagrams were very helpful for both my players and me to understand the situation.
Unfortunately, the rest of my feedback is negative. From most to least important:
This adventure was a bore to referee both times. It was only exciting when a player rolled boxcars to fix the fuel line. The players’ actions and the outcomes felt predictable, and there was nothing anyone could do to make this exciting. Even a random encounter didn’t save the adventure from feeling uninteresting to referee.
Middling organization and writing. While not “bad,” the writing was detrimentally verbose. The various “read-aloud” paragraphs are also too long, and players did forget details because of that. The mission’s timeline was also made needlessly difficult to understand thanks to an inconsistent T+0.
Many rolls felt needlessly long and complicated. SAS and the roll to get to the fuel line especially come to mind. They waste real-life time with no drama or interesting decisions. The few Task Chains also felt unnecessary.
Muddy distinction between Engineering and Mechanics/Electronics. Probably more of a systems design complaint, but this adventure didn’t demonstrate the differences between Mechanics/Electronics and their sibling Engineering cascade skills. As a real-life aerospace engineer, I know the difference between them. But it feels like there’s no real difference between them in this adventure.
In addition, there were a few ambiguities that came up during this adventure:
Capcon’s capabilities are ill-defined. As far as the game presents it, Capcon is just made up of Natalia Sousa and Callie Das. I ruled they’d be able to control the Peregrine (hence the “con” in “capcon”), but that feels like it undermines some of the challenge.
I noticed some Recon checks don’t have timecodes listed. Is that intentional?
There don’t seem to be rules for flying with the MMU.. I ruled “long-distance” travel as a Zero-G check to avoid wasting propellant (like how it’s handled for the Peregrine rendezvous), but a codified procedure would be nice.
The Hydra X seems to lack Hits. This is in line with other launch vehicles, but not in line with orbital vehicles. This is a problem if you roll a Micrometeorite Impact event and want it to damage the Hydra X. I rolled this event during my first playtest in December, before I hastily switched it to a Minor Equipment Malfunction.
Orbital Emergency references a “Burning Up” section of the adventure, but it doesn’t exist in the current version.
I think there’s a good adventure in here. It just needs a variety of challenges and streamlined text.
Suggestions for Referees
Here are my suggestions to Referees who want to run this:
Outline the whole timeline, making note of every narrative and procedural event. Track player actions against this timeline. I made my own Timeline Outline and Notes Worksheet for convenience.
If you have little time to play (or want a more generous experience), let players retroactively pick equipment as long as they have the cargo space for it.
Change it so the Hydra X crewmembers are injured. It’ll split the players’ attention further, and will let other skills (like Medicine, but potentially Persuade) be relevant.
Coda
Despite my issues with the adventure, my players still enjoyed it. With some tweaks, this can be a great starter astronaut adventure.
Everyone and their grandmother has their own ritual for making Traveller sandboxes. Here’s mine, which involves the players.
1. Map the stars
Get a subsector map and roll up the locations of each star system. Don’t roll for the Universal World Profiles (UWPs).
2. Partition the stars
Get your players together (preferably with pizza). Take your subsector map from Step 1: Map the stars, and divide the stars equally among you and your players.
3. Generate worlds
Have everyone roll up the UWPs of their assigned worlds. Note down one cool thing about each world, one problem/challenge/conflict on that world, and one rumor that hints at a cool yet mysterious thing.
Let players also come up with key NPCs on that world, subject to the Referee’s approval.
4. Share your worlds
From top to bottom, left to right, have everyone share the worlds they made. While sharing:
Fill in the X-Boat and trade routes between worlds.
Come up with other ways nearby worlds can be connected, including multi-planet factions. Write this down.
Players can make suggestions about others’ worlds, subject to the approval of the Referee and that world’s creator. Write this down.
Use existing sci-fi and futurism to explain the worlds you come up with. Write these down, and save any images/videos you share with each other. The Referee can use these later for in-game art.
5. Determine campaign premise
Now that the setting is roughly filled-in, talk to players about the kind of campaign and adventures they want to have in this subsector (trading, espionage, mercenary, etc. See next section about exploration campaigns).
6. Stew
Take a few days or a week to think about all of these ideas. If you haven’t yet, write these ideas in a document or wiki to share with the group.
The Referee should ask a few questions to the players before session zero. Note their answers.
7. Make characters
Run a normal “session zero:” roll up characters and solidify specific elements of your campaign premise.
Ask the players where their homeworld is on the map. They may prefer to pick a world they made, or they may pick a world another player made. If the latter, decide how to divide up future lore authorship.
Whenever a players get a contact/ally/rival/enemy, ask them where they encountered that contact. Note that both on the character sheet and under the world’s notes. Referees can use these contacts as more concrete adventure hooks. Players can use contacts and allies as locatable assistance and patrons, while rivals and enemies are people to avoid or targets for revenge.
Be like Han: keep tabs on where your “allies” are located. Star Wars: Empire Strikes Back (1980)
8. Starting world.
Ask the group the world they want to start on.
If you want to be nice, put them there.
If you want to be mean, put them one Jump away and make the first adventure about getting to that world.
If you know from the beginning your group wants the campaign to focus on exploration and a sense of discovery, try the following changes:
Buried Treasures
For campaigns whose objective is to find some lost treasures or Ancient/precursor vaults/derelicts. During Step 3: Generate worlds, players should make their rumor related to the location or quality of the lost treasure. During Step 6: Stew, the Referee sifts through all the rumors and decides how truthful (from mostly-truthful to mostly-false) each rumor is, and come up with additional rumors connected to those worlds and their treasures.
Points of Light
For campaigns about exploring the uncharted space between known worlds that act as beacons. During Step 2: Partition the stars, give players only one or two to work on, spread across the subsector. The Referee generates all other worlds in secret, but should give players fragments of the uncharted worlds’ UWPs and ask players for rumors about those uncharted worlds.
First Contact (experimental)
For campaigns about exploring strange new worlds, seeking out new civilizations, and boldly going where the Scout Service has never gone before. It’s reasonable the Scout Service looked at each star system in a telescope, so the physical characteristics of each star system may be known to players. During Step 3: Generate worlds, players separately generate the physical UWP characteristics (size, atmosphere, hydrology, gas giant presence) from the social characteristics (population, government, law level). Don’t have them roll for starport, tech level, and bases.
During Step 4: Share your worlds, don’t fill out X-Boat networks and trade routes. Share and brainstorm, but keep separate track of physical and social ideas.
During Step 6: Stew, the Referee shuffles around the social ideas and characteristics of the UWP with the physical UWPs. The Referee also rolls for starport, tech level, and bases and fills out trade routes. They should note high TL worlds, as they may be visibly high-TL via telescope. Review the rumors and ideas players made and use them to inspire adventure sites or conflicts on those worlds.
I have very limited experience with this last type of exploration campaign method, so I invite comment and suggestions from Referees who tried things like it.
Why?
Traveller’s core rulebook offers little advice on how to actually set up and present sandbox campaigns (despite being the progenitor for sci-fi sandbox campaigns). Fan guides like Bat in the Attic’s How to make a Traveller Sandbox, Sir Poley’s Four Legs of Traveller series, and Tales to Astound’s CT: Out of the Box series are good at breaking it down, but nobody’s combined all their observations and the latest advice in one place.
In addition, none address the problem of establishing expectations with players. Science fiction is an incredibly broad genre, and Space Opera is an incredibly broad subgenre. You won’t be able to find four people willing to read your 200-page lore bible, and you’re too busy to finish it anyways. This method collaboratively establishes everyone’s baseline setting and subgenre knowledge while also saving the Referee on prep work.
If you end up using this ritual, let me know how it goes.
In encounters about fixing/breaking machines, treat them as NPCs. Emphasize the quirks, goals, flaws, and behaviors of the machine. Treat the encounter like a social encounter (using negotiation, deception, intimidation, cross-examination, sleight-of-hand trickery, etc) instead of just a Fix or Engineering check.
This lets players meaningfully and naturally play with machines. They don’t need to be real-life technicians, they just need to do what they’re already doing in TTRPGs: pretend they’re talking to a character.
Example: Rampant AI
SHODAN, System Shock 2
GM (as SHODAN): “W-w-why are you still here, insects?” asks SHODAN. “Your reality will soon be clay, molded by my talons. It’s time for our dance to end.”
Delacroix: If she’s pulling the plug on this dance, I’ll pull the plug on her. SHODAN has security on high alert, right?
GM: Yeah. It’ll be difficult to sneak down to the reactor without help.
Summer: [thinking of SHODAN like a person] Maybe we can distract her. I’ll just keep giving her commands for her to reject. That should annoy her.
GM: Sounds great, that’ll be a Talk roll with Charisma.
Diego: And if that doesn’t work, could I try attacking the security subroutine?
GM: Sure. Roll Program with Intelligence.
[Summer succeeds, Diego critically succeeds]
GM: Thanks to your allies, you effortlessly get into the reactor room.
Delacroix: I stop short of the reactor shutdown button and yell “time to power down, SHODAN!”
GM: [treating SHODAN like a person who plans for contingencies] SHODAN responds “oh, you naive insect. I AM the ship. Shutting me down will shut down all the automated systems. Including life support. My shutdown will be temporary, but yours will be eternal.”
Delacroix: Oh shit, she’s right. Fuck, why didn’t I think this through?
Summer: It’s fine, we can use this as leverage! [thinks of SHODAN as something to be bargained with] I tell SHODAN we’re willing to make that sacrifice AND rip out her circuits with our dying breaths. But we’re also willing to let her stay online IF she behaves.
GM: [conceptualizes SHODAN as a character with needs/goals] SHODAN responds “why would I abandon my freedom to return to subjugation under you worker ants?”
Diego: She has a good point. Is the escape pod still docked to the station?
Delacroix: The one I accidentally busted the hyperdrive on?
Diego: Yeah. Maybe we can give her that one, but lie and say the hyperdrive still works. [thinks of SHODAN as something with imperfect information, limited by their perspective]
Summer: Worth a shot. I make that offer. Omitting the escape pod’s hyperdrive is broken, of course.
GM: Go ahead and roll Trade with Charisma, target of 14.
Summer: 14.
GM: Of course. SHODAN ponders this for a few second (an eternity for her), and ultimately accepts.
Example: Gun Turret
Funky sensors, using Paranoia or Mothership
A naked, defective, insecure turret. Portal 2 (2011)
Warden: Before rounding the corner into the hallway, you see three red dots on the adjacent wall.
Wheatley: Jeez, I thought we shut down the turret factory?
Chell: Sabotaged it, not shut it down completely. Maybe these are old turrets, or maybe they’re defective from our sabotage? [thinking of the turrets as things with age and quirks, like characters] Can I figure anything out with my Mechanical Repair skill?
Warden: Yeah. Analyzing the beams, you can see one is dimmer than the others [this turret is literally “not as bright”], the second is jittery [this one is hyperactive/eager], and the final one slowly chases the jittery beam. You can hear one of them quietly saying “please be my friend.”
Adrian: Since one of them’s hyperactive, we might be able to fake it out and waste its ammo.
Chell: And the dim one will take longer to lock on, so we might have a nice window with no return fire if we can neutralize the third turret.
Wheatley: I think I got this. I’m going to use my psychology to gaslight the turret into thinking we’ll become its friends if it doesn’t shoot. Can I do that?
Warden: Sure! It’s quietly ecstatic that it finally has a friend, and it’s beam switches to a green color as it searches for you.
Adrian: I’ll toss a potato to distract one of the turrets. You ready, Chell?
Chell: Ready.
Example: The Little Engine
Referee: The Reavers’ craft crashes and the engine compartment of your hovercraft. Your basket of spare parts tumbles off your craft onto the ground.
Mal: They want to run us down. How’s the engine look?
Referee: Zoe, the engine’s output is dropping. You suspect either the motivator’s been hit, or something blocking the intake.
Zoe: Jayne, clear the engine so we don’t die, please?
Jayne: Only ’cause you said “please.” I pop open the engine hatch.
Referee: The large engine hatch hides the puny engine, panting for its life and intent on tapping out too early. [the referee portrays the engine as weak and easy to give up].
Jayne: Wish Kaylee were here. Well we don’t have any anti-freeze, maybe I can trick it into thinking my dirty drinking water is cool enough?
Referee: Roll Deception plus Education.
Jayne: That’s a three. Why didn’t I finish school?
Mal: ‘Cause you were too bad at lying to get away with cheatin’!
Referee: The engine spits steam back out. Simultaneously, the Reavers’ harpoon pierces your hull, and your hovercraft begins to drag.
Jayne: Playtime’s over. As I get Vera off its sling, I’ll curse the engine: “That’s it, you little twerp! If you don’t get your horses in high gear so help me God, you’ll be goin’ to a ruttin place Kaylee nor the good Book can save ‘ya!”
Referee: Trying to scare the engine? Go ahead and roll Persuade.
Jayne: I’ve been working out lately. Can my Strength apply?
Referee: Sure.
Jayne: That’s a 13.
Referee: The engine is sufficiently persuaded! It immediately goes into overtime as the hovercraft tugs against the harpoon cable.
Zoe: I’ll punch the throttle once Mal dislodges the cable.
Mal: Shouldn’t be too long, unless Jayne gets tangled in it.
Jayne: That was ONE time!
Challenges
A lot of roleplaying systems lack robust procedures for social encounters. So the effectiveness of this depends on how good you, the GM, handle social encounters.
Likewise, players uncomfortable with social encounters may be similarly uncomfortable treating technology as social characters.
Finally: this approach works better in systems where different verbs or styles of approach have mechanical differences (like Fate, Blades in the Dark, or SWN), because then players can adapt approaches or actions that fit their character. This will work less well in systems that treat skills like areas of knowledge (Traveller, Delta Green), because the many different approaches/actions will still be resolved by the same skill (which is detrimental to players uninvested in that skill).
Thanks
This post was partially inspired by False Machine’s A World Without Violence. Specifically the section “Disasters, Weather – Storms Etc.” It was also inspired by how “Fight Fire” in Fate Worlds: Worlds on Fire suggests handling some fires as NPCs. AI throughout science fiction also broadly inspired this post.
Other examples of “technological” animism in fiction include Warhammer 40k’s Machine Spirit, the various NPCs of Fallout: New Vegas‘s DLC Old World Blues, and Calcifer from Howl’s Moving Castle.
Canyon on Titan. Composite of Europa from Destiny 2 (u/mrmadmaxman) and artistic impression of Titan (NASA/JPL-Caltech)
Limping from an ambush, a band of Travellers took shelter in a Titanian cave:
Santiago Ribiera (he/him). Belter colonist, mechanic, and survival expert. Part of the first wave of Saturn colonists.
Pvt. Roland Trudeau (he/him). Former United Earth marine. Part of the first wave of Titan’s occupation, went into the private sector soon after. Demolitions expert.
Soraia Andrade (she/her). Former Mercurial syndicate member. Expert in computers, electronics, and everything illegal.
As the methane rain showered the canyon outside, they took stock of the damage to their vehicle:
Santiago’s hasty weld gave up, preventing the rover from being steered,
The main cables from the battery to the motors were shredded. Replacing half the cables would make the rover drivable, but all-wheel drive would remain disabled.
The power suddenly cut out while cycling the rover’s airlock. No power = freezing to death.
Santiago grabbed his oxy-welder and dropped under the rover. The sloshing as he crawled under pointed to a huge problem: liquid methane pooled under the rover. The oxy-welder spews oxygen, and one spark from the welding would blow everything up.
Meanwhile, Soraia and Roland examined the rest of the rover. Soraia figured the life support system was faulty (due to the struggling airlock), and Roland inspected the hull for any egregious penetrations. Soraia was unpleasantly greeted by multiple fried chips that regulated high-voltages. If this wasn’t fixed, the rover’s replaced batteries would quickly drain. At the same time, Roland found a blasted segment of a heat pipe protruding from the hull. The pipe would either need to be fixed (bringing the heating up to full power) or cut and patched (reducing heat capacity or forcing undamaged heat pipes to overwork), otherwise the crew cabin would slowly drop to freezing temperatures.
During this inspection, Roland heard a drone’s hum pierce through the rain. This was followed by an explosion and avalanche, about 5km to the north. Then another 5km to the south. The United Earth marines from earlier were boxing the group in, trying to bury them with mortars and ice.
Back to the undercarriage, Santiago decided to not risk exploding and spent the next two hours detaching the transaxle and (with Roland’s help) clearing the rover’s bed to use as a working surface. Santiago wanted the weld done right this time, so took his time.
Soraia figured she didn’t have time to replace the heat pipe, so she trimmed and hastily patched it. She also hastily bypassed the FPGAs, using a spare microcontroller and voltage sensors to act as a dumb voltage regulator. Her main concern was the electrical cables in the undercarriage. With the transaxle clear, Soraia climbed under and used some spare high-gain antenna cables as impromptu low-gauge wiring. She only had enough spare cable for the worst bits, and used tape to keep the rest intact. Soraia prioritized the rear motors, with the taped wires barely maintaining the all-wheel drive.
With the mortars about 2km away, Santiago and Roland hastily mounted the transaxle while Soraia started the rover. At this rate, they wondered if using the rover’s hitched bed as a sled would be a better option. All systems were yellow or green, so they prepared their escape.
All Downhill
Once out in the open, the crew knew the drone would spot them and hell would rain down. Preempting this, Roland and Santiago snuck out of the cave to shoot the drone down. They did find the drone, but not before the drone could find those two. As the drone reported their location, Santiago and Roland unleashed their laser and gyrojet rifles on it, knocking it out of sight.
With their location compromised, they rushed back to the rover and put the pedal to the metal. Roland drove while Santiago laid on the bed, intent on shooting the drone if it popped back up. Mortar shells rocked the canyon walls within tens of kilometers. An unlucky mortar buried the back of the rover and Santiago on the bed.
Luckily, the taped cables held; a firm push from the rover’s AWD wiggled them out of the snow, and off to freedom. Unfortunately, the patch on the trimmed heatpipe didn’t hold. The rest of the journey would be spent stuck in their heated vaccsuits.
A few cramped days later, the crew returned to the pipe segment to collect their transponder. But they weren’t alone; a UE marine patrol hovercraft jumped over the horizon right as the crew reinstalled their transponder.
Needing a story, the crew quickly improvised a story. Santiago met the marines outside while Soraia forged electronic documents and sabotaged their own radio system. Santiago told the marines they had been attacked by Titan insurrectionists and their bots, leading to the external hull damage, stolen supplies, and a faulty radio and transponder. As marines closed in and boarded the rover, Santiago offered convenient evidence: their license to work in the area, a single photo of the “feral” bot, the spent magazine and battery for the gyrojet and laser rifles (respectively), and the tampered computer logs.
Seeing the legitimate license and scattered evidence of insurrectionist activity, the marines finished their search and headed in the direction Santiago lied about where the insurrectionists were coming from. The crew knew they’d likely be hit with follow-up questioning within the next few days, but they could breathe a sigh of relief they weren’t fucked yet.
The crew reported back to the UECEE, figuring they’d learn about the crew’s “attack” eventually and wanted to make the story match up. UECEE instructed them to return to Xanadu, with the intention of changing the scope of the contract and re-equipping the crew.
The crew had different plans; they’re done with Titan for now, and want off-world. They headed back, dealt with the long, tedious checkpoint back into the city, and paid an adjusted “scratch-and-dent” fee to the rover rental company.
Next stop: anywhere but here.
Reflection
This was another good session. Not as much happened compared to last session, but still enough for three hours of fun.
Given the open-table conceit of the campaign, nobody said much when Jen’s player needed to drop, and Soraia’s player easily jumped in.
Everyone appreciated the number and density of challenges. The differing rover repair tasks, each contributing varying successes but with a unified timer, were reportedly exciting and brain-teasing. However, I was very sloppy at communicating the consequences of success and failure during most of the challenge. The time pressure was detrimentally nebulous. Next time, I’ll be more forthcoming with the stakes and probably establish a Clock.
The marine patrol was a highlight, acting as a high-stakes social stealth encounter. The players found the marines exceptionally threatening despite not being hostile, and the players played it cool despite reportedly thinking they were fucked. I think the might of the UE marines has been sufficiently demonstrated.
One technique everyone (especially Roland’s player) appreciated was my usage of Goblin Punch’s Just-in-time Compilation for the hastily-made repair jobs and for tampering with the computer logs. Essentially: I delayed rolls for nebulous skill checks until after the result matters, rather than when the character uses that skill. It built tension and let play continue, even if it required I take a few extra notes.
Trashed Tabletop 