SPARC

[Storn]

I posted my System Police campaign pitch in the wrong place. So I will repost it here. But we also played this last Thursday and I wanted to do an Actual Report of the evening. I am also gonna post this over at RPGnet, because that gets some traffic and maybe it will interest some folks in picking up BASH.

I'm not sure if SPARC is going to work, we were trying to come up with a cool acronym. SPARC stands for Sol Protect Aid & Rescue Confederation.

Here is the pitch and I will do the Action Report in the next post:

My online group is slowly moving towards getting this off the ground. I thought I would share some of the process with y'all.

First off, this campaign is a continuation of a Champions game called Red Dragon Universe (named after the first PC, Red Dragon) that has gone on for some 20 years. It has pretty much petered out lately due to the fact that Neil, the main GM, doesn't game much anymore and all the players scattered across the country.

I spent some 17 years playing in RDU myself, mostly as a player with multiple characters and sometimes as a co-GM.

If you are curious, RDU does have a pretty decent wiki (with plenty of pics, most done by me) up here:

http://rdu.wikispaces.com/

When RDU kinda stumbled to a halt, the one big sword of damocles hanging over the heads of the characters, was a HUGE alien invasion that was going to take a decade to arrive to wage war upon the planet. A coalition of alien forces, terrified by Earth's use of super population and a connection to a mysterious material called Crystaltech, aimed to wipe Earth off of the galactic maps.

We never got to tell that story. The group dissolved too much for that plot line to move forward. And to be truthful, I think it was too gigantic to do with anything less that a really dedicated weekly game. I had moved to Ithaca, NY, the game was in Ann Arbor, MI. Other players had drifted away too.

So, now, here is what I'm pitching to two former players and another gamer who we've played with a lot, but is new to RDU.

Here is what I pitched to the guys for an online game, which we've already been doing with a sword and sorcery game I ran called Swords of a Dying Empire using Legends of Anglerre as a system. The pitch:

I’ve also been having superheroes a bit on the brain. Probably because I just finished the 1st year of Young Justice cartoon (which, btw, starts out kinda meh...but there are subplots that take awhile to bear any fruit. The last three eps rock hard.). Recently, I acquired a light superhero game called BASH that is a cross between a much lighter Champions and the old Marvel Supers game. It kinda intrigues me, because one of its selling points is that a Daredevil type can go up against a Thor type and with a bit of luck, win. (its because the dice explode and doubles do certain things too). I have it as pdf and can share it with y’all, so no expenditures of loot.

I’ve also have been watching some police procedurals, most notably, Flashpoint. A canadian SWAT-like show. But with a really strong emphasis on talk first, shoot only as a last resort. Most of the episodes deal with trying to figure out what the bad guy(s) need/want, how to give it to them if they can, defuse the situation and keep everyone alive.

So, I was thinking of a more earth-centric, Green Lantern corp-analogy. If y’all are interested, and Neil is copacetic, I even come up with a cunning plan to put it into RDU. If Neil isn’t, then, no biggie, file off the serial numbers and do an alternate earth.

Here is my RDU pitch: One of the biggest problems that RDU faces is this alien invasion. Its so big, so weighty, I think it just kinda overwhelmed Neil, he’s never had the timing, with the players to pull it together. So, let’s avoid it all together and use it as a springboard.

The alien invasion happened. The Crystaltech arch (and other pockets of Crystaltech) in China responded and shattered into millions of pieces, flying around the globe and embedding themselves in the population. Overnight, there were 5 million new paranormals on the planet. Maybe Locke did it. Maybe the Arch did it by it self. That new force manage to take to the stars and to cripple and destroy the invasion. The loss of free will to the Crystaltech that the alien armada invaders feared (and it is why they’ve quarantined 3 other worlds) never manifested itself.
Cut to 5 -10 years later. Humanity has taken to the solar system. The Confederation of Aliens (some who allied with Earth) is still worried about Crystaltech “poisoning” of the race and some Crystaltech recipients have not become the most stable of citizens. And other supers pop up from time to time too, from other sources. So, the Confederation has as strong presence in the solar system too.

So all the close to 1g planets and moons are colonized. With P-norms as your terraforming force, the process is very accelerated. Plus, alien tech is streaming via a robust trade with Earth. Dozens upon dozens of space stations are out there, capable of supporting decent size populations.

That is where the PCs come in. They are part of a joint solar system Police force. You are human, your boss is alien and answers to the high Confed muckety-mucks. Your jurisdiction is the solar system, excluding Earth plant-fall itself. Its the Green Lantern corp meets the Wire. Well, maybe not quite as wrapped in red tape as the Wire.. because that would make for a lot of inertia. Can you have a LOT of inertia? nvm.

So. The Confederation police forces in their own worlds is an awfully liberal, trying for an utopian ideal. That is what they expect, but know that Earth has to police its own too. No codenames, no secret identities. In order to build rapport with criminals and try to bring peaceful resolutions, you use your full name, maybe with a Sgt or Lt in front of it. Lethal force is totally allowed and expected if the perps are about to use lethal force on others. But then expect several hours with that really distractingly cute psychiatrist and enormous amounts of debrief and paperwork (although, that will be off camera).

[Storn]

Episode 1: Rookie day

Players
Bob ( Sgt. James "Bondo" Bonderman)
Eric (Sgt. Lazzaro “Laz” Vivenzio)

I was fumbling a bit, as Rick couldn't get online at the last minute. He joined us for the last 30 mins, listening in, but not joining as he worked on his character Starhawke. Not having all three threw me a bit, I must admit, but I went on with a fairly simple adventure. Simple in it's elements, not so simple to solve.

Opens up on a space station carved into an asteroid that oribits Callisto. SPARC hq. Laz and Bondo are called into Commander Jaanarax Yuule's office as a meet and greet. He apologizes briefly for not being able to assign a veteran officer to them, but there simply not enough officers to go around. Jaanarax is Confederation and his opinion of a veteran officer tends to be those from the Confederation, as humans are babies taking their first steps into Space policing.

I did a sketch of Jaanarax.


The duo are assigned their "police cruiser", which in terran tradition is painted, of course, as black and white.

At this point, the two players talk a bit about themselves, Bondo was the product of a factory accident, is super strong and resilient and gain cause things to adhere.

Laz is a Shardling and has a crystaline body. He can teleport and interface and telepathically dominate, communicate with machines, as well as generate a small electrical charge.

I jump in and express that there is a "gold rush" analog going on in the Sol system. When the crystaltech arch in China exploded (10 years ago), it send Shards not only into folks around the world who became the 5 million Shardlings, it also sent Shards into space. Shards come in two flavors, Power and Questing. Power Shards are more numerous and are tiny in size, but can power entire cities and vast starships for years. Questing Shards are vaguely sentient and want to bond with something. These are rarer and they make super powered folk. Now, many in the Confederation are trading their technologies, goods and what have you for these Shards. Hence the meteoric rise to populate space via a sorta "gold rush" environment in the Sol system.

It means SPARC has their hands full.

Bob jumps in and says that his Bondo is pretty unsophisticated and probably joined the force because of a pretty face. It just so happened that I had designed a NPC, Hope St. Clair, to interact with the team later (and also to try building stuff in BASH). Note: Hope is the daughter of my long running PC , Vector, in the old RDU game).

So quickly retroactivated Hope as being assigned to Police Cruiser An-971. Bondo stammers and trys to impress her, fearing she will find him stupid. She responds with a gentle bubbly nature that might have surprised him a bit.

But then all the pleasantries are dashed when a distress call from Deimos station comes in, it is delayed by quite a few minutes. Deimos doesn't have FTL communications yet. Seems that the engineer of the Grey Gull, docked at the Deimos station, is threatening to blow up the Gull and a large chunk of the station, unless her incarcerated 15 year old son is brought to her.

The team punches the afterburners and gets there quickly, all the while doing research on Ruby Gellar, the Grey Gull's engineer. Talking with the station commander, Amanda Clarke and the captain of the Grey Gull, Johnny Scranton, who has been forced off of his own ship. Seems that Ruby is a Shardling, able to siphon off radiation and expel it harmless (or dangerous) wavelengths. Her son became allergic to her and was taken into family services on Mars.

Once the Team gets to the station, Hope takes the cruiser down to the surface of Mars in order to get more on the son, Toby, and possibly bring him up. Hope grew up on Mars and her father was the leader of the Mars colony until he died during the Shard explosion. She has got suction.

Laz takes over the negotiations, teasing out of not only the station records, but Ruby herself the story behind all of this. Ruby got an email letter from her son, Toby. Toby had become "activated" at 14, a year ago, getting some kind of powers. A typical mutant story. He believed, although he didn't go into any detail in the emails, that he know had immunity to his mother's powers. He was broke and was trying to get enough money to come up to space to meet his mom.

Meanwhile, teen Toby was running with the wrong crowd, they decided to steal a bunch of hover equipment to sell. He was arrested, with a pulse pistol, during the robbery. But since he is a minor, he was in juvie.

But Hope gets Toby released and she is bringing him up to Deimos station. But Ruby is getting increasingly agitated and is obviously a bit over the bend. Laz and Bondo decide to go in. Ruby has jury rigged both airlocks and has little sensor drones on the surface of the ship... but she is no match for Laz's command of computers and machine. Laz renders her blind by showing loops of the same ol', same ol'. Bondo first has trouble getting through the jury rigged hatch (he rolled terribly, I might have made the TN a bit too high at 40 epic, should have been 30, superhuman)

She feels Bondo's commotion at the airlock and comes up to the * to take a look around. Laz teleports into the *. She tries to "strobe" him by dazzling him with light, but he manages to avoid that attack. His electrical attack singes her, but she does absorb radiation.

Bondo gets through the airlock and runs down towards the * as Ruby turns to flee Laz to get to her "bomb" in engineering (actually, just a crude focusing devices for her radiation powers, she IS the bomb). She runs right into Bondo, who then proceeds to immobilize her to the floor.

That pretty much takes the fight out of her when she cannot reach engineering. Laz makes short work of the focusing device. And the day is saved.

Except when Hope, having gone EVA to help Bondo and Laz starts swearing a blue streak. Somehow, Toby has bypassed all the security protocols of the An-971 police cruiser and is now flying away fast from Deimos station.

And that is where we ended it. Next week, Rick's Starhawk, who actually is taking the vehicle Advantage, will stop by and they will try to chase down the reckless teenager in a police cruiser.

[Jukeboxer]

Love it! That sounds like a great way to start a new era for an old campaign. Having PCs as interplanetary law enforcers is compelling and should keep them more easily engaged in an online game. Let us know how it goes!

[Jukeboxer]

Oh, something else I wanted to mention in the previous post... Ion Guard! There is a BASHed version of that supplement and from what I've read here, it may have some good ideas and inspiration that you could merge into your setting.

[doktorelektron]

I'm not sure if SPARC is going to work, we were trying to come up with a cool acronym. SPARC stands for Sol Protect Aid & Rescue Confederation.

I'm currently having a similar problem with a silver age character who is something of a Green Lantern knock-off (a sort of space cowboy version). Trying to come up with a cool name for the galactic police guys that he works for is proving to be pretty tough.

[Storn]

Oh, something else I wanted to mention in the previous post... Ion Guard! There is a BASHed version of that supplement and from what I've read here, it may have some good ideas and inspiration that you could merge into your setting.

I picked up Ion Guard already. but thanks. I think I just figured out last night how I'm going to use Ion Guard, and it is going to be more in the antagonist role, that protagonist allies.

We were supposed to play last night, but alas, our game didn't happen due to several of us having logistic issues. But SPARC seems to have passed player muster.

[Storn]

We haven't played yet. But this weekend was memorial for my grandpap (no condolences, he lived a long and happy and successful life) and it was near Dayton. Since I used to live near all of the players of the online game, we stopped in Ann Arbor, Michigan, to visit.

So while we didn't play, two of the players, Eric and Rick (Bob was on the west coast visiting his father), and I had a long discussion about the upcoming SPARC game. Rick especially was very keen to get this game off the ground.

Not only did we talk late into the night, we then had some email correspondence following that. So, I'm gonna share those emails with y'all.

Keep in mind, this is a game spinning of a decades spanning Champions game/WORLD. So some details are so specifically that... but hopefully, reading between the lines, the gist can be sussed out.

Notes: Rick's Jason is Starhawke and was a character that I created, but then played by Matt and then by Rick in the Champions game. He is a green lantern clone of sorts. Rick really needed to know what happened in the years between playing the character because he really wants to play him in SPARC.

Rick started the email chain with:

Hey guys,

We covered a lot of ground last night, and I know, at least for me, the details are already getting fuzzy fast. So I thought I'd write down what I remembered. Please correct/expand as needed:

Vector sacrificed himself somehow during the invasion. Jason and Fleur returned soon after that (see below), and when Jason heard about Vector's sacrifice, he immediately went to Mars to to see Oracle/Karen and Hope to express his sorrow over the loss of his friend. But while he and Fleur were there, he learned something that made him suspect Max might not be lost after all.

What Starhawk and Fleur were doing during the invasion: The Confederacy had said officially they would not intervene during the alien invasion of Earth, but most of its members were not happy about this decision (it was a matter of complex intergalactic politics). So when Jason and Fleur decided to break with that official stance and work behind the scenes in defense of Earth, the Confederacy let them do it. The problem was, Fleur and Jason believed their intelligence/tech training had given them the knowledge they needed to hide their actions from the Confederacy. In fact, they had had the equivalent of a 101 course, and hadn't a hope of disguising their actions. Oops.

So the Confederacy was following everything they did right from the start. Inevitably, Jason and Fleur found themselves in a Chickamauga-style situation in which--like Gen. George Thomas--they had to hold the line while the rest of Earth's forces made a controlled retreat. (Perhaps defending Mars some time after Vector's sacrifice?) Starhawk and Fleur succeeded and Earth narrowly avoided losing a critical part of its forces, but there were plenty of intergalactic cams around to take very, very hi-res holographic videos of a Hawkship defending Earth's forces. Double oops.

Now the Confederacy had a major political disaster on their hands, so Jason and Fleur had to take the fall. Problem was, Hawkships choose their crews, so taking away Jason's Hawkship was not an option. Instead, the Confederacy demoted Jason and Fleur, tossing them out of the Confederacy and forbidding them from leaving the solar system. They lost the "privilege" of answering directly to the Confederacy hierarchy and instead now had to answer to the SPARC administration.

Once the dust has settled, Jason will be intent on following up the lead he believes might bring Max back. Hope, Oracle, and Locke(?) may have parts to play in this.

Other stuff I recall:

Taurus survived the invasion but is now broken in body and spirit. Probably even uses a crutch to get around.

Thermal may or may not have become a star already.

Storn, you mentioned the Champs supplement that might have Fleur's real name in it. What was the title of that again?

Something came up about Victrix and maybe something about Demon Star(?) and something else about Big Guy, but now I forget.

Can you guys fill in the gaps I'm missing?

RCA

[Storn]

Eric replied with:

Demon Star is probably still on Mars, possibly in some kind of police or other official capacity. Either that or he has hitched a ride out of the system in search of his father's people. I forget his name, Hurculon or something like that. He's a genetic mutation in the species that crops up every now and again. They are revered as great warriors, as their genetic code contains instinctual combat skills, and he has had a yearning to be in space for as long as he can remember. Demon Star is the closest translation to the name of his branch of the species, a name which Tachyon urged him not to use, but it is what stuck.
Locke, being one of the "New Gods", isn't as subject to the rules goverining involvement in the affairs of mortals as the Old Gods, so he is known to appear from time to time. His followers partake of a shared consciousnous. Not a "hive mind", they are all individuals, but they are all linked psychically. There are no barriers to communication among them. He learned his lesson about forcing it onto people, and allows them to come to it in their own time. There are various levels of this sharing, some barely tap into it while others live their entire lives totally shared amongst the "Body of Mind" as they call it. He deals swiftly with anyone that attempts to disrupt the psychic plane, vowing to never again allow someone like Menton to rise. Not sure what happened to Virgo after the fight with Menton on the moon (well before the final alien invasion); she was more connected to a different version of himself, the one that was "killed" by the Mechanon machine on that asteroid from the future, as that one was the "first", the one with whom she shared one mind for a time. I think she viewed the second Locke, the one that actually fought Menton, as having killed the one she loved, and they have probably not connected again. He regrets that dearly. He may or may not have saved Vector's consicousness.

King Coil was corrupted by the Thanes (that's the name of the squid faced evil magic using aliens).

Not sure what happened to Big Guy or Thunderjock. One of them may have led the rally on the moon during the invasion, possibly taking Taurus's place.

We didn't mention the Dragons, the incarnations of various dragons, led by Master Cho; Drake, Typhoon Dragon, and the others. They failed to break into the Jade wall around Japan, and I think that's where we left that group.

We also didn't discuss the Malta Mercenaries group; they probably got called into the fight by UNITE, since they were an unofficial black ops group for them.

Vengenance probably didn't make it, might have been an ignoble death.

Mavericks fought in New York, saving the city from the ravages of Fiacho, the Dutchess, and the invading Atlantean forces. Skinwalker certainly survived, he's essentially immortal; until the Spirits release him, at any rate. He may also now be an Atlantean prince, being joined with Tak'Marin, the Atlantean princess.

Nothing concrete about the remaining members of the Zodiac.

I think that's about it.

[Storn]

I came back with this LOOONGG post (note: Jason IS Starhawke, his civvie ID):

Bob, do not worry, this is a lot of information to absorb, you do not need to know it to play in the game. This is really more for the folks who've been in RDU and want to know how the landscape has changed.

Vector sacrificed himself somehow during the invasion. Jason and Fleur returned soon after that (see below), and when Jason heard about Vector's sacrifice, he immediately went to Mars to to see Oracle/Karen and Hope to express his sorrow over the loss of his friend. But while he and Fleur were there, he learned something that made him suspect Max might not be lost after all.

I would like to amend this somewhat. Vector and Locke did their crystaltech arch blow-up in China quite late in the war as a last ditch effort to turn the tide. Which it thankfully did. Jason, Fleur and the Hawkship primarily served on the Moon front, which was the much more important stepping stone to Earth. Mars was always designed to be a distraction and a 2nd front versus the invasion. It was designed to be Stalingrad and was to slow and eat up Invasion resources. Jason might suspect that Oracle knows more about Vector, but that scene hasn't happened yet. I want to do that face to face. Because Jason and Fleur were fighting near the Moon when Vector died, Jason has never really had the chance to get that talk with Oracle. There has never been a funeral. Too many people died to focus on one man, even if he was the leader of Mars.

After the war, Jason and Fleur were so involved in saving their own butts in the Starhawkes and brought before Confed lawyers and courts, that days turned into months into years and Oracle hasn't been visited. Plus, she is a bit of a recluse on Mars. Although, I love the idea of her regaining her prophetic powers that were lost or blocked. I suspect that Locke might have blocked them by somehow knowing the future or she did it herself, because she didn't see the events of what Vector and Locke did. She had no idea.

I was thinking on the car ride down to Dayton how the Hawkship could be used for maximum impact vs. the Invasion and what I came up with is that as the alien armada approached the moon, the dark side of the moon was already a high tech power base thanks to Taurus, Protectors and such. The Hawkship became a high tech insertion vehicle. Taking one superteam (or high tech strike team of UNTIL, Viper, Raven, pardoned criminals from Stronghold or whoever they could scrape together) to an alien dreadnaught and then dropping back to the moon to pick up another one. A superteam could sometimes take out a dreadnought, but those who could fly at speeds quick enough for space combat are far and few in RDU. Getting folks to the battle, well, was 1/2 the battle. Then retrieval of survivors was next so they could be dropped off at the next alien battleship. Not glamorous. But effective and oh so necessary.

Instead of Chicamunga, because the front was so fluid, I liken it more to the Battle of Britian, where Earth was losing ships and supers at alarming rates, but the Armada was taking even heavier losses. Loss of entire superteams was the real problem. The Moon war might have been 2 or 3 months and turned when 5 million Shardlings entered the fray. All of a sudden, there was more than enough personal to take the fight to the stars and in the final weeks, I think Jason and Fleur barely got 15 hours of sleep, because of the amount of action the Hawkship saw.

Mars was invaded, but pockets of resistance had so much territory to hide in, it was never really secured by the Armada.

The Armada on several occasions slipped past the Moon and Mars forces to launch direct attacks on Earth. Remember, these guys weren't trying to take territory. They were trying to eliminate the human race, the planet and crystaltech. Using asteroids as bombs, they tried to soften up the Earth. The Jade Shield came down of its own accord and behind it, Japan had been in a pocket dimension where some 75 years had passed and it emerged as a super-scifi-anime bubblegum crisis nation forced to defend an earth it barely knew. Japan put more ships in space than any other nation. They intercepted more asteroids than any other nation, and were a tenacious, edge of atmosphere defense force.

The Armada did launch invasion forces, NYC was a target that the Mavericks beat back. But they were designed to hurt and distract Earth, not really to hold ground unless as a staging area. Paris took several hits through a protracted street to street fighting as the Armada took UNTIL HQ for intell purposes. In the end, UNTIL blew its own HQ in order to stop intell falling into Invader hands. The Asteroids bombardments were more devastating on Mars than Earth, since Earth's denser atmosphere contributed in slowing and chipping away at the massive missiles. Mar's defenses were much more thin to boot.

Sanctuary was wiped out by an asteroid strike that got through, changing the gulf bay fairly radically. The Armada dropped several rocks in the attempt and one got through. The Armada seemed * bent on wiping out Sanctuary and suggested some pretty sophisticated intell. While Sanctuary was relatively empty (most of its peoples were on the front lines), the carribbean had horrendous losses from the tsunami that ensued. Mystical England was also a frequent target, but asteroids kept getting transformed mystically into flowers or something equally odd and would just burn up harmlessly in the atmo. England never got hit. And mystic forces from England absolutely terrified the Armada, as the Thanes were very reluctant to share mystic countermeasures with their tech allies, the Tresselaine and Azure.

I don't think many asteroids made it through, simply because I don't want to have denote how the earth changed from so many impacts. Plus, with the Moon and Mars not secured, the Armada took on frightful losses when projecting their power to Earth's atmosphere. Ironically (and I have no idea if this scientifically valid, but who cares... its superhero comics), the asteroid strikes on Mars actually quickened the terraforming process in the years after the war (more dust in the thin atmosphere...yah... that's it <g>)

Storn, you mentioned the Champs supplement that might have Fleur's real name in it. What was the title of that again?

Watchers of the Dragon. One of the last 4th ed books. Mine is buried in the barn.

All we talked about Victrix was that she was leader of the New Champions and her being Vector's cousin. I haven't made up my mind if she survived.

Not sure about the Dragons. Space combat ain't the forte of HtH combatants, but they could have been in China or split up and inserted into various strike teams. I'm not sure if it is al that important to touch upon them for the stories we will be moving forward with.

I like Eric's idea of Star Demon on Mars. Maybe he is Mar's chief of security? or maybe just a high ranking sherriff? Might be nice to have him as someone for SPARC to bounce off of in jurisdiction finessing that is sure to come up.

I don't remember who was left of Zodiac to comment. I think the death toll among supers was pretty * high. Being near exploding alien battlecrusiers doesn't lead to long life expectancy. I think as original RDU teams were being nickled and dimed to death... new teams were formed. Former supervillains were just as instrumental in the fighting as longtime heroes. Extinction of the human race had an amazing coalition building effect <g>. Only the most nihilistic or insane villains withheld their services.

I'm sure I could come up with plenty of dramatic stories by going through the RDU wiki. But I'm not sure it is productive. If we all understand what an enormous change the human race has undergone... I think that is good enough. And if for story reasons/seeds/adventures moving forward, it is cool to revisit a superteam or individual....I'm sure we will. Having a wiggle room is probably a good thing.

Eric, as you wrote this and I responded, I got to thinking, Demonstar is a perfect candidate for SPARC if you would prefer to come in with an already established character. We could explore more of his space origins, search for Herculon, etc. I just didn't even think of suggesting him when I was first coming up with this game. You and I have had SOOOO many RDU characters. Hard to remember and keep track.

[Storn]

Since the game broke up due to logistics a few years ago, we never got to Neil's great alien armada invasion. The characters of SPARC are directly influenced by what happened. So we've been giving a lot of thought to how the invasion played out.

Sometimes, stray thoughts keep coming, as in this case, I posted:

Sorry, had a couple more thoughts.


I think not every team that hit an alien ship blew it up... many failed, many armada ships were blown up or crippled or severely damaged. But a few were actually captured, and then pressed into service against the armada as the high tech brains of earth figured out the * ships....not Thane ships, they were just too * weird.

I also think the Confederation wasn't happy about the Armada and economic sanctions against the three Armada races were already in effect before the fighting began. After the war, Azure, Tressalaine and Thane are all severely hurting. Earth was their collective Russia into Afghanistan, with huge economic drains, loss of military power and political bridge burning that has really hurt them. Severe loss of political capitol in the Confederation, the Azure especially were big movers and shakers and now are a 2nd rate political block instead of a 1st rate. Very much like Russia. Not totally defanged...but humbled and not as relevant. Some in the Confederation are thrilled with the outcome, all the while, fearful of what an unleashed crystaltech powered humanity on the stars could bring.

[Jukeboxer]

Very cool for you to give us a glimpse of this long and deep campaign! This is good inspiration for any other BASHers looking to transition or reboot their old stuff.

Hopefully your group will settle-in and forge some new chapters this year.

[Storn]

Very cool for you to give us a glimpse of this long and deep campaign! This is good inspiration for any other BASHers looking to transition or reboot their old stuff.

Hopefully your group will settle-in and forge some new chapters this year.

Thanks Juke!

We finally got a session in last night and we had a blast!!

I will get to an AP report shortly.

[Storn]

Episode 2: Rookie day part deux

Players
Bob ( Sgt. James "Bondo" Bonderman)
Eric (Sgt. Lazzaro “Laz” Vivenzio)
Rick (Sgt. Jason "Starhawk" Relm)

After settling Rick in and going over his newly built Starhawk PC, we had a quick discussion about some of the rules... as we are still learning the system.

We last left our heroes on Deimos Station as some 15 year old punk named Toby Gellar was taking off with their police cruiser and heading towards the asteroid belt.

Bondo, Laz and Hope commandeer the mother's, Ruby Gellar, ship and take off, sending a communiqué to Starhawk who was on his way to rendezvous with the team anyhow. They continued to track the police cruiser, which luckily, Toby didn't figure out the stealth field on. Quickly docking in space, Starhawk takes on his team mates aboard his quicker intercept hawkship.

Laz is quite impressed with the Hawkship, which is grown for individual Starhawks. The ship's AI, Isabella, Izzie for short, kinda freaks out Bondo. some nice quick roleplaying bits by the players here, nice bit of color as this was really the first time all 3 PCs were face to face

Just as the hawkship is about to catch up with Toby, the police cruiser disappears. Did he figure out the stealth mode? Izzie mentions a large object that isn't an asteroid might be interfering with scans.

Pressing closer, the team spots a huge Tresselaine battle crusier (2 kms long). It is damaged, no power, floating through space. Obviously a relic of the Armada from 10 years ago. (The Tresslaines are mollusk like race based on Champs 4th edition villain Cancer and one of the 3 races that made up the Armada).

I used this pic I found on the interwebs


They quickly spot the missing cruiser tucked into a landing dock and land next to it and start exploring the deserted ship. Eventually, they come to a jury rig airlock and enter to hear a distant conversation. Evidence of several folk living here is found in some of the side rooms. Jury rigged power cords coming from generators they must have brought, the Tresselaine ship itself is dead.

Hope stays behind with the two ships (allowing me to not have to run her as an NPC). The team eases forward to investigate. Bondo with no stealth skill beats the awareness check of the folks inside. Laz spots a simple webcam that recorded them coming in, but his machine telepathy and domination allows him to rewrite the "film" on the laptop containing solitaire and a spreadsheet of space ship parts.

"Its a chop shop." Laz muses (correctly, it turns out).

The large cargo bay is revealed with several people in it, two spaceships in various dismantled stages and Toby Gellar talking over with some giant alien, Kront. Yup, I stole (borrowed) several concepts from the BASH forums! Thank you all for allowing me to share them!)

The SPARCs ask for surrender. And for a moment, it looks like the surprised choppers, Kront, White Dwarf and Vermin, might comply. White Dwarf going as far as to offer his wrists for cuffing. But Vermin has other ideas and launches himself at Starhawk and the battle is on.

I was running these guys at 60 hit points and Kront at 70, because I didn't want to have a fight for the player's first time to be full on battle mode. It turned out into quite a slugfest anyway... as White Dwarf was taken down early by Laz's electrical zap and a great roll... I brought Cote (the tport on others) and Splatterpunk (a psycho wolverine clone) into the fray, responding to Vermin's comm.

Bondo and Kront went toe to toe for probably 15 rounds of combat. Starhawk and Laz managed to put down Vermin and Splatterpunk almost took out Cote by himself (that berzerk while in HtH combat mental malfunction is gonna get triggered a lot)...when Cote tported Laz, who was Splatter's next target.

Finally, Kront goes down to a massive blow by Bondo...and I had already had it in my mind that if Kront goes down, everyone else would surrender. But Cote went down in the same round and the only left was Splatterpunk. And Splatterpunk doesn't surrender!

So we had some 20 rounds of trying to tag Splatterpunk. I was rolling insanely on his defence rolls... which were high skill to begin with. We got into some of the Teamwork rules, which are cool, but often inconsequential to my rolls of 11+

Finally, Splatter goes down. Only to pop up again, because he has Never Surrender and gets 20 HP back. And again, the players pile on. Bondo keeping Splatter busy while the other two sniped away. Splatter could not win. And didn't.

Some gm thoughts. I really enjoyed the battle and the rules are pretty easy. We had to look up a few things (Danger Sense, how to use force field on others), but having the pdfs for an online game makes that pretty easy. The math is quick, despite my fears of it could get complicated, it never really did.... and we got to the point of looking very quickly to see if an attack missed... if it did, we moved on in just a few seconds. So the combat probably had 30 rounds (er, pages)... but it only took an hour, not bad for a our first real combat.

I do think, across the board, the combatants we had, had better defences and soak than offence, both NPCs and PCs. We might see some tweaking as we move forward.

I am using XP rules and awarded XP at the end of the night.

Looking forward to the next game, which will pick up at SPARC HQ trying to explain to Cmmdr Jannarax how a 15 year old hacker managed to make off with a police cruiser (which really comes down to Hope screwed up).

[Storn]

Episode 3: Complications

Players
Bob ( Sgt. James "Bondo" Bonderman)
Eric (Sgt. Lazzaro “Laz” Vivenzio)
Rick (Sgt. Jason "Starhawk" Relm)
gm: me, Storn

We started the game with mini scenes for each character. The opening setting is SPARC hq (see enclosed pic!)



Jason (Starhawk) had a scene with his wife, fellow Starhawk, former UNITE member Genevieve "Fleur de Lis" Devereaux. She has moved into more of behind the scenes role as a forensic expert who is studying all kinds of xeno-Confederation physiology.

She was * because Commander Jannarax fingered her for the tribunal looking into Sgt Hope St. Clair's leaving a possible juvenile criminal in a Police Cruiser. She didn't want to mess with the politics. Worse, the Starhawks were sending a delegation to pick up Kront, who has a Confed rap sheet as long as a Drengorian arm.

Jason wasn't looking forward to the Starhawks showing up.

Laz was approached by Tony Leung, prosecutor in the Toby Gellar case (Toby is the kid who stole the police cruiser). Laz totally stone-walled Tony, not giving anything that would make Hope's case more difficult.

Bonderman, Australia's most famous hero, was tracked down by Regina Newhouse, a reporter for the Sydney Morning Herald for an interview. Something he was more than happy to provide. Some heavy flirting ensued.

Then everyone ended up in the bar to commiserate. That is when the Starhawk's showed up. I used the Ion Guard's trio of Caine Carston, Maug and Tamari...but as real arrogant, throwing their weight around big fishes in a small pond kind of way. Maug and Tamari started to insult Jason as being a former Starhawk. Caine ignored Jason completely and started hitting on Regina. Bondo tried to placate everyone, despite being real * at Caine's interference.

No fight broke out. Thankfully. But Laz comes from a long line of "cops" and these yahoos were messing about on Laz's turf. So he sabotaged their Hawkships recycling, so it would start to stink really bad in a few days.

Then some days pass uneventfully. Hope gets desk duty for a week as not taking precautions in securing her prisoner, but it is a mild slap on the wrist, because no one could predict that Toby had machine empathic abilities. And all reasonable safety protocols were in place on the Police Cruiser along side that a hostage situation on Deimos station was unfolding.

Finally, the trio gets a new mission. To investigate a "ghost" signal that keeps popping up on incoming/outgoing Confed merchant ships scanners and the occasional SPARC patrol. The signal is similar to the very low readings that the Tresselaine ship from last ish gave off when the ship was scrutinized more thoroughly after recovery.

The signal was coming from Chaldene, a 2km moon around Saturn. The team approaches in Jason's Hawkship and they discover a Thane base built into the moon. The Thanes were one of the 3 invading races and were the mystics who really hated Crystal-tech, coveted for their own. Worse, 3 lifesigns were spotted in the odd, mystic base.

Continuing with my rampant pilfering of BASH characters from this forum and the BASH character website. The three perps are Darkstar, Singularity, and Genocide I rewrote some of their mental malfunctions to fit the storie. And unbeknownst to the PCs, all three were friends/team-mates of Kront... and they were tapping into the mystic power of the Thane base.

The SPARCs tried to talk them into surrender, but it wasn't happening and the fight flared up. Here is where I used an idea that i've seen my friend Judd use and kinda comes from Danger Patrol, a great pulp game. I told the players there was a countdown of 10. Everytime doubles were rolled, the countdown would go down by 1. Something would happen.

The fight raged back and forth, with SPARC steadily gaining the upper hand. The countdown ticked down steadily... making the players squirm a bit. And then it hit 0. Singularity and Darkstar (who was actually unconscious and floating aimlessly) suddenly sparked with power, streams from the mystic runes of the base. Both had teleport abilities and tapped into the base to do a cosmic teleport of their friend, Kront.

Who appears quite startled, plucked out of the Starhawk's Hawkship, wearing power dampners. Kront tries to use Singularity's damage shield to short circuit the power dampners, but has bad luck.

With Kront pretty much hamstringed, Singularity is further entrapped by Laz's clever use of static electricity (Laz has the Versatile advantage). Then, the SPARCs just start laying down some serious firepower on Genocide and Singularity, finally taking them both out.

Kront sheepishly surrenders.

And that wraps up the ep.

Some thoughts.

I think the defences of both the PCs and the NPCs have been outrunning the offences. Many, many attacks whiffed, either against the defence roll or it was Soaked. However, one of the things I really, really like about BASH is that a round of combat is really quick, so while a player might miss, we come back to that player fairly quickly.

Combats are lasting a bit longer than I would like....and I've been doing hitpoints of 70 instead of the full 100 for the bad guys. Partly, this is because I want the SPARCs to be a bit better than their opposition in these early eps anyway. But it is also keep the combats from running too long.

We are still learning how to use the rules. Something about playing with PDFs instead of dead tree versions make it a bit more difficult for me to learn rules...and the amount of powers the villains have require me to look stuff up in the middle of combat (or make Eric do it, as he is brilliant with rule questions! <g>). Unfortunately, I've been so busy with my art work that I haven't had time to do a lot of prep.... like building my own villains... which is the process that would really help me learn the various abilities and powers that are in the book.

After the game, I found the Pushing rules, which would have been very, very useful for Singularity to get out of the Immoblization. Next game, I will be sure to point out the Push rules to the players. The idea of trading Hit Points for better temporary competency is very appealing. Hit Points become a kind of ability currency as well as staying on one's feet currency. neato.

But despite my learning pains, I am really enjoying the game. I look forward to this coming Thursday for the next session!

[Jukeboxer]

Lots of good stuff there! Thanks for sharing those sketches too. Love the Hawkship!

Regarding Hits (HP) and long combats, we've had a few combats that dragged-out at bit. I've contemplated using a 3-wound method, sort of like Savage Worlds, but then some other aspects of the game would also have to be changed - such as Pushing. Soooo... I have also experimented with reducing HP for most villains (50 instead of 100) and that works predictably well. For Heroes, I've also thought about going with a base of 30 + Brawn x 10 for HP, but that would probably unbalance Brawn as a base stat.