After Action Report: Tall Tales of the Orochi Belt Part II: Welcome to the Belt

We join our heroes on the Heirophant, the Arcana-Pattern Carrier of the Grand Dame.  Lady Talia Sabine greets her new wingman, the Viscontess Shay Sabine and they walk together to the briefing.  They briefly discuss their philosophy of war, and Talia reveals that she fights this war out of a sense of duty to the people: that the Alliance was meant to protect the Galaxy and have hidden behind the protection of Caliban too long, and that she wants to finally step forward and do her duty as a noblewoman.

This has been important for me to establish.  Talia thus far hasn't had much of a chance to make an appearance or reveal herself as a character, and I wanted to let her breath a little.  More importantly, I want to lampshade one of the major themes of the campaign: how will you rule? Talia represents the idealism of noblesse oblige.  She believes that Maradonians like herself are a cut above the rest and have a right to rule, but this is a responsibility and a duty to use their gifts to rule well.  This will contrast with the Grand Dame, who has a more cynical view of power, Callister Lee, who doesn't believe in the nobility of the aristocracy, and Sawyer Septum, who both believes in the power of the common man and has a rather cynical view on power.

The Briefing 

Then they gather to attend the briefing, which Talia herself must give.  The plan is revealed as thus:

• The Alliance has reports of three imperial dreadnoughts (the Victor's Gambit, the Resolute and the Sovereign Triumphant) and 5 Dominion-Class heavy cruisers.  Their reports also indicate that the Victor's Gambit and an escort of 2 cruisers often go on patrols to other, nearby systems and might be cut-off by the hyperstorms.
• This garrison is focused on Beauregard Station, near the gas giant Goldstrike.
• The plan is for the fleet to fly to the third of the stars of the Orochi Belt.  They will use the star as cover from imperial sensors, thus arriving at its far side.  They will secure the area ("the Veridian Field")
• Once secure, they will branch off and try to infiltrate deeper into the system, acquiring allies and activating rebel cells, and then bring out their fleet from behind "Jolly Green" and reveal their presence in a coordinated effort with the rest to strike at the Imperial Fleet.
• They must do all of this before the Hyperstorms subside, so they can mount a proper defense against the inevitable retaliation of the 137th Imperial Fleet off of Zaine.

Nobody has any real questions, but the Orochi Belters mutter among one another that that's the part of the Orochi Belt most infested with the Orochi.  This means there will be less of an Imperial presence there, but that's because there will be lots of Orochi. This makes it a dangerous, desperate gamble.  Lynwood Voss comments that he likes it.

During this scene, we also introduce a few new characters and arrange for everyone's place in the organizational structure:

• Captain Tyro Pavonis (Played by Nemoricus) will command one wing of Harlquin Squadron, including Lieutenant Kobayahi "Femme Fatale" Zero, Lieutenant Lynwood "Belter's Brag" Voss, the feisty Flight Officer Sienna "Red" Sky and the regulation-driven Flight Officer Livius "Blue" Kyne. These latter two are introduced for the first time bickering about who won in a fighter simulator contest. Tyro's mechanic will be Arietta Lee.
• Shay Sabine (played by Shinanoki) will be Talia Sabine's wingman and her mechanic will be the Ranathim Kerin Kethim.
• Baron Mallus Grimshaw (Gentleman Gamer) will fly with Malachi Harrow and will have Tadashi "Prime" as his mechanic (though he was unable to attend).
• Sir Axton Kain, who commands a full Lancer, and whose highest ranked Regular is an irrascible old cus, Sergeant Wick Rayburn, is asked by Talia to integrate Sabine soldiers into his Lancer, including the handsome and naive parade-regular, Lieutenant Lance Highguard.  Axton makes sure Wick is willing to babysit Lance.  Callister Lee and Nubbins also join them aboard their ship as engineers.

One of my struggles with the campaign concept of Tall Tales is how to bring across the scale of their operation.  This is not a group of five heroes in a single corvette, but several high level officers in the part of a huge fleet.  How do we bring across the scale of that fleet?  To do this, I've introduced a lot of minor NPCs, little more than named mooks who have a name, a snippet of description, and a single RP quirk.  I can expand them if necessary, but the idea is just to have some characters I can pull up at the drop of a hat to give a sense of a huge community in the fleet.  The big risk here, though, is that by calling out a name, already overloaded players might feel like they can't remember all these names, but they don't need to remember these, unless they interest them.

I also felt like Tyro didn't get much chance to do anything last session; setting him up with his wing gave him more to do and play with. 

The Duel and Downtime

Before every departs to their ship, Enzo and Mallus have their duel. Both square off in a prepared circle in  the gymnasium.  Both wear dueling armor, with gauntlet and mask, and both wield a force sword (though Enzo wears his gauntlet and wields his force sword on his left, rather than his right). Malachi is Malus' second, and Arthus Elegans is Enzo's second.  Dani Shinjurai watches from the side, her tension palpable.  Axton and Shay both attend and sit on Enzo's side, expressing support for the Elegans.

The duel commences: Enzo locks gaze with Mallus and brings his full Aspect to bear in a Contest of Wills, which he handily wins.  Mallus takes the initiative and makes a doomed effort to disarm Enzo with a quick strike that Enzo casually parries, who then retaliates with a painfully slow and obvious attack to Mallus' sword-arm, who parries it with a quick retreat, but in so doing falls into Enzo's trap: with Mallus' blade drawn out of its best defensive position, Enzo immediately attempts to disarm him.  Mallus retreats again and barely prevents the disarm.  Their blades flash, squeal and swirl during the disarm attempt, and Mallus attempts another disarm, a desperate one where he puts everything he has into it, though Enzo's blade swirls and spins out of the way and then continues its motion to finally force Enzo's blade away in a gloriously flashy display, finishing the battle by leveling the blade at Mallus' throat and demanding he yield, which Mallus does.

I wasn't sure how best to handle this.  The session is already too heavy on a wide variety of characters, and having a whole, hour-long fight scene for a single player felt excessive to me.  So Gentleman Gamer and I played it out during downtime and merely reported the results in the session.  I'll put up a detailed breakdown of the fight later.

Enzo claimed three boons.  For the first, he claimed that in his conversation with Kerin in Lithian, she revealed to him that she was a noblewoman in disguise, leaving her heritage behind her in search of a better life.  He claimed she did not want this to be general knowledge, so to not bring it up with her, but in treating her like a commoner, Mallus had insulted her aristocratic lineage and he should apologize for it. He swore all of his on his honor as a nobleman.  For his second boon, he demanded an hour-long private audience with Mallus.  And for the third, he said he would claim it at a later date.

There was some debate among the players as to whether Enzo was lying about Kerin. The answer is "Probably." By making this claim, he gives Mallus a convenient out: he doesn't have to violate his sense of propriety, he can just pretend Kerin is a noble and act appropriately.  By staking his honor on it, those who want to question it risk humiliating Enzo (and inviting a duel).  Those who ask Kerin about it risk embarrassing her, especially if Enzo told the truth. Thus, it set everything up nicely to create a situation where everyone can gain face by accepting this as true, and everyone stands to lose a lot if they question it.

During the private audience, Enzo observed to Mallus that Mallus has some training in the Swift Form, but it isn't complete.  He goes through the core basics with him for an hour, to give him the basic grounds by which he can practice the rest himself if he needs to.  This acts as justification for purchasing Style Familiarity (Swift Form) if Gentleman Gamer wishes.

 Tyro took the opportunity to get to know his wing better. They all flew in the simulators together, and then Lynwood invited him to play Belter's Brag.  They all did, and Tyro lost terribly, but the group bonded over it.

• Lynwood seemed like a big risk-taker in the simulator, but those risks often netted him results.  His bravery meant he took the initiative, making him good leadership material.  Tyro recognized that he proposed the game as a means of getting the group better acquainted, and accepted it.
• Kobayashi is quiet and reserved, hiding a part of herself from everyone.  She is, however, an excellent wingman, likely someone who is used to flying in larger formations. Through a critical failure in body language, Tyro is convinced that Kobayashi is a secret genius at Belter's Brag, and is the one to go to to better learn the game.
• Sienna is a Belter and more used to flying a Wildcat than a Valiant and still needs to get used to her new fighter.  Livius is Persephone-born and more used to flying a Raptor than a Valiant and also needs time to get used to his new fighter.  She's excellent at improvisation, he's an excellent artillerist.  Despite their constant bickering, they form a good team and have a natural chemistry.

This scene was mostly Nemoricus' idea, but I went with it.  It gave them all a chance to get to know the group better, and to see more fighters in their natural environment. I had to gloss over things for the sake of time (something I had to do a lot in the session), but I thought it was a nice moment.

Xerxes has his suspicions about Kobayashi and his own vision.  He has Sylvar Ro search over the Hierophant for a secret stash of Kuruma, but he is unable to find one.  He has Winner Chau hack the personnel files of the Hierophant and she comes up with Kobayashi claiming to come from "the most generic and well known district of Denjuku," which makes Winner express even more skepticism about Kobayashi.

Blood Feeds the Storm 

As the Heirophant nears its destination, all the fighter pilots get the alert to go to their fighters and prepare for hyperspatial shunt.  We briefly get a scene of Axton's cybernetics being maintained by Elara, his robot.  Then we see the roiling hyperspatial storm, and then a thundrous clap of energy and everyone shunts into real space, scattered across the system.

Axton's ship has been savaged by the storm.  Nubbins and Callister are able to restore power and gravity, but the pilot is badly hurt.  One of the Regulars is able to take over the controls and pilot the ship.  They look out and see green, botanical asteroids,  a ruined, capital-scale ship armed with harpoons and heavy armor.  They also see a smuggler base bristling with defenses.  Xerxes' Calico also arrives, but is undamaged.  He offers to assist.  They decide to make their way to the base.

The ship is a Nantucket-Class Orochi Hunter.  While working on the Orochi, Gentleman Gamer commented that there should be "Orochi whalers," and I actually hadn't thought of that, so I created two new classes of ship: the Nantucket and the Drogue, the fighter we'll see later.  Both are built to hunt Orochi.  It's one of those oversights that, in retrospect, I really shouldn't have made, and once I realized it was necessary, a lot of the scenario design suddenly made a lot more sense, so thank you for that, Gentleman Gamer.

Speaking of blindspots and mistakes, in retrospect, it was a mistake to drop the Calico here.  I did it for two reasons: first, Xerxes is indirectly responsible for the sheer scale of the damage done during the hyperstorm, while he himself was fine, so the contrast highlighted the "bad luck" of a Witch Cat.  But I also had Xerxes classed as a "boarder" in my head, not a "space combat fighter."  This is actually wrong.  Xerxes is built as a pilot, just a corvette pilot, and a Tigershark is actually pretty quick.  As we'll see in the coming space fight, if a Nomad can handle itself well in a space fight, I bet the Tigershark could have as well.  So I put him and Axton here so that they could get to the base quicker and not "hassle" with space combat, but I should have "let" Xerxes fight.  My mistake.

Another mistake: I should have had everyone roll Navigation. It wouldn't have made a difference, but it would have let us talk about hyperspace some. 

Then Walker and Jethro show up in their Bad Penny, and find themselves in the midst of a bunch of Wildcats and Drogues.  Another nomad, run by smuggler "Wyatt von Carlo" hails them and asks them if "that fat bastard Corpulain sent them" as he's been waiting for his escort for over an hour now.  Walker convinces Wyatt to just transfer the cargo over to him directly ("A change of plan") with a critical success at bullshitting, and they're about to do so when the Hierophant suddenly appears.

On the Hierophant, the claxons suddenly wail.  Everyone gets their last minute check-ups: Arietta complains to Tyro about how weird his fighter is, but that she also upgraded his afterburners to burn hyperium directly.  It'll be great!  Shay and Kerin have a quick discussion, in which Kerin praises her fighter for "making sense," and shows her a good luck charm she placed in Shay's fighter.  Then they launch.

Seeing the wave of fighters explode from the carrier, Wyatt and his escort turn and flee into the asteroids (One of the Drogues takes off like a batt out of hell.).  Walker immediately jams Wyatt's comms.   Talia gets her command from the High Admiral: "Destroy all the fighters."  She instead orders her squadron to target the engines and try to keep everyone alive that they can.

So, here again, I tried to emphasize some of the nature of the Alliance.  We have these conflicting orders, we have people making their own minds up, and idealism getting in the way of the chain of command.  Cole believes that it's too much of a risk to leave anyone alive who might get around the star and warn the Empire. Talia believes that's no way to conduct a war and so modified the instructions before sending it down, but Shay and Tyro both know the truth.  Insterestingly, they seem to agree with her.

Space Combat

And so, space combat commences.  Walker chases Wyatt into the asteroid field, and both see the base.  Walker targets Wyatt's engines and blows them out but (accepting a impulse buy point for Shenanigans) and damages the cargo bay slightly as a result.

I didn't realize he had a B00-M cannon.  Those things pack a wallop! It basically took out Wyatt's ship in one shot.  The "shenanigans" was to allow Nixie to come crawling out of her cryopod in the next scene.  Similarly, I wanted things to end up in the base, so the Wyatt's ship needs to coast in a controlled crash into the base, but it's effectively out of the fight now.

 Tyro's prognostication module shows him the peril of the Thalline filaments between the asteroids, and so he warns Sienna and then takes off after the Drogue with Kobayashi at his side.  She performs driving fire that makes it harder for the fighter to escape, Tyro's super-charged afterburners helps him catch up, and he pulls up right behind the Drogue and blows its engines apart by hitting it with all but one of his shots. The pilot ejects and the fighter explodes.

Shay chases after a Wildcat pilot in a dark green wildcat painted with a fanged skull.  It evades her and disappears into the asteroid field. As she flies deeper, he suddenly ambushes her, shoving his fighter up against hers, bumping and jostling through the asteroid belt.

Walker chases Wyatt into the base and joins the Xerxes and Axton in docking at the station.

Tyro is joined by the rest of their squadron and chase the remaining fighters into thalline filaments, trapping them.

Shay and the pirate Wildcat (piloted by Scipio Vash) suddenly find themselves on course for crashing into an asteroid, and they disengage.  She slips through a canyon in the asteroid and takes a short-cut, ambushing him on the far side.  She fires and misses, and then spends an impulse buy point to instead ensure that Talia, erupting from the Asteroid belt, lands a hit instead.  Scipio' engines are shot, so he too makes a crash landing into the smuggler base.

In the Den of the Hunters

Everyone arrives in the docking bay of the Smuggler base.  The base has been severely damaged.  Lights flicker and sparks spray.  The meat of Orochi dries from hooks, and Drogues and Wildcats stand in varying state of disrepair.  There is still atmosphere, but it's thin and filled with the toxic pollen of the botanical asteroids.

Axton and his crew pile out and immediately advance on the smuggler. He sends Lance and his soldiers to scout out the entrance to the docking bay.  Axton activates his force sword and commands Wyatt to throw down his weapons and he complies. Walker, Jethro and the crew of the Calico join Axton, with Walker moving towards the cargo.  Scattered cryo chambers show various, nude women (and a couple of men) all with alabaster-perfect white skin and the same candy-red hair as Rayna Septum and the same tattoo barcode on their cheeks.  They look different, but like different "makes and models" of the same basic design.  One, a "teen" model with a cheerleader physique, had her pod damaged and slowly crawls out, bewildered and confused.

Axton confronts Wyatt as a "slaver." Wyatt protests that he's "just delivering passengers," and that he doesn't know or care where they came from or where they're going. Talia lands her Valiant and Tyro and Shay join her.  She takes command of the situation and gets a report.  She sides with Axton's appraisal of Wyatt.

Lance reports that the hallway is dark, but seems to have functional surveillance systems.  Suddenly, a hologram of the base commander, Mongo Corpulain, appears.  An anti-gravity chair, well-armed, supports his considerable and unpleasant bulk. He welcomes them to the base, finds it interesting to see an Alliance presence in Imperial territory, and informs them that he has no intention of surrendering the base to them, but they're free to negotiate with him.

And there ended the session.

Retrospective

Where the first session was about introducing everyone to the fleet and crews involved in the war, this session was about introducing everyone to the Veridian belt, the more overgrown part of the Orochi Belt. It was also nice to get into some space combat.  In that sense, I thought it worked and was a success.  But I don't think everyone agreed.  One player commented privately that he'd like to write a post on "what not to do in Psi-Wars" and use this session as an example.  I don't think he meant it in such harsh terms, but it made me reflect.  What went wrong with the session?

I've experienced a lot of tedious and boring sessions in my long and storied career as an RPGer.  After awhile, you get used to them, but I still make an effort to avoid them.  Some of my preferred tactics are making sure there's plenty to do, and to make sure pacing is quick.  But these often conflict, and they conflicted here.  Like a dad on vacation who wants his kids to see everything in a day, the result is a whirlwind of interesting things that nobody is allowed to spend any time with.  We got:

• The mission
• The duel
• New crew to interact with
• The mystery of the prophecy from last session
• The mystery of the vision from last session
• The mechanics and the changes they made to various fighters
• The interactions of Orochi Belters and Alliance snobs, as well as conflicts between rough-and-tumble Kainians vs sophisticated Sabines
• The conflict of ideals and morals between Cole and Talia Sabine
• Wyatt van Carlo, Scipio Vash and Tommy Scrambles, who they are and what they're doing out here
• The Botanical Asteroids and the culture therein
• A space fight
• A smuggler base
• Sex-Clone Slavery

All in the space of 3 and a half hours. That's a lot!  I think I could have easily cut it in half and let it breath a bit.  I find a part of myself gnawing at the idea, saying "Yeah, but if you slow this down, it'll take forever." Then maybe it takes a long time.  Players need a chance to explore.

There's another problem that I see cropping up, which contributes to the above.  The premise of the campaign is that they're part of a massive military undertaking.  They need a sense of the vast scope of this, how many people there are involved, which means there are a lot of faces, a lot of people involved. It's realistic that Axton has an entire combat crew, or that Xerxes has a pirate crew, or that Tyro has his own wing.  But the net result cocoons the players off from one another.  They interact with their NPCs more than they interact with one another.  They become islands of story that don't interact with one another.

When you take the two together, players can't provide story to one another and people can't interact with one another's stories.  They have to wait for me to get to them and their story, and with 5-6 players, that can involve a lot of waiting, and when someone else's story is going on, they can't really interact with it.

What I need to do, then, is sit back and let the players breath in a space where they can interact with one another a lot.  Fortunately, the base is an ideal situation for that.  They can discuss what to do, argue with one another as necessary, and go out to explore the base and have whatever combat encounters arise, and then when I want to bring it to a close, there are certain events I can activate.  The problem isn't that I don't have enough story for my players to play with, it's that I don't give them enough time to play with it.

As for space combat, I thought it went well (though it fell prey a little bit to me needing to push for a particular outcome and losing some details, like what happened to the rest of the Wildcats and Drogues).  It definitely went better than the space combat of Tinker Titan Rebel Spy. I felt like it flowed, was dynamic, and a lot got done in the two-to-three turns we played out. Most of the complaints I heard were:

• It's weird how gunslingers and aces get so much bonus from Accuracy
• It's a bit hard to calculate the ranged attack values, and that takes time to work out.
• The die rolls would be better if they equalized around 10, rather than 25-35 like they currently do.

And I guess that was it.  For the first, that's true, and actually, in retrospect, I should give Ace Pilots half accuracy, rather than full accuracy (as Gunslinger does with rifles) when they Move and Attack.  That might require retooling the rules a touch.  

The ranged combat modifiers are inherited from GURPS, and actually a bit simpler than what we see in normal combat.  I'm not sure how much I can do about this: Pilot Skill, ROF and targeting computer bonus are static, so you know you're always going to have them except in specific circumstances, and range and size modifier will just change, so can't be worked out in advance.

This brings us to the weird values that we get.  GURPS Spaceships equalized around 0, but it also dealt with much farther ranges, and it had trade-offs that made it less compatible with other aspects of the game (like how well these weapons fared on planets).  It's also a factor of how Fighters operate: capital ships and heavy corvettes tend more towards 0 or even negative values.  Fighters are just that fast and that maneuverable.

Some of this will just require players getting used to it, but that itself poses a problem: how often will space combat come up? In TTotOB, it'll come up all the damn time, but in your campaign? Likely once or twice over the whole campaign and you'll have to spin up the whole system for that one moment.  If you use it in chases (as its intended), it might come up a lot more than that, so that might not be so bad. 

The other dread aspect of space combat also came up: the fighter aces had plenty to do, but the non-fighters were left to their own devices. In retrospect, I should have allowed them to participate with the fight, and seen what happened, as that was, in fact, part of the idea behind the playtest. But that won't be an issue with the next big space fight, as everyone is there, present, with their fighters or corvettes, and it should provide an interesting challenge for both Corvettes and Fighters.