After Action Report: Tall Tales of the Orochi Belt Part IV - The Storm Comes

Last we left our heroes:

• Sir Axton Kain, Space Knight of House Kain, who has no heart.
• Viscontessa Shay Sabine, Space Knight of House Sabine, who sees the future on the petals of dreaming nymph
• Baron Mallus Grimshaw, Ace Pilot of House Grimshaw, who disapproves.
• Sir Tyro Pavonis, Ace Pilot of House Sabine, who sees without sight (but was unable to make the session).
• Walker Lee, Scavenger and War Hero of the Orochi Rebellion, and caretaker of one Jethro Page
• The Dread Pirate Xerxes, Captain of the Calico and its killer crew, and Asrathi Witchcat, but otherwise not a bad bloke.

They had captured the smuggler station "Port Mongo" after executing its previous owner, Mongo Corpulain, for the crimes of murder, human trafficking and Orochi poaching, and then carefully captured the rest to minimize casualties.  Then, they discovered that an Orochi Swarm descended once more on the damaged, inoperable station.

Alright, fine, let's kill Axton Kain too! Bounty Hunter Design Diary addendum

One of my players complained when the Bounty Hunter series ended, as he had hoped I would explore how to defeat all of them.  This isn't a bad idea, actually, as it informs the sorts of things bounty hunters should be able to do. The primary argument against it is a matter of time: how much of my time is better spent building sample bounty hunters vs building out more of the setting?  This isn't a rhetorical question, as I don't know the answer, but I've had to balance it, and it does directly feed into Tall Tales of the Orochi Belt, even if we're unlikely to see these hunters right away.  So, shall we come up with one last bounty hunter to fight the legendary Axton Kain?

Some of my favorite people are bounty hunters -- Greef Karga, the Mandalorian

This isn't an entirely inappropriate question.  Patrons have already seen the current state of the Bounty Hunter document, but one element I've begun to include are Bounty Hunter Lodges, organized groups of bounty hunters, and one of the three I intend to release is the Exilium, a group of hunters deeply embedded into Maradonian society, who have the diplomatic finesse to operate across several borders, including in Imperial Space, without being questioned or sanctioned.  Thus, this asks the question: how do you hunt a Maradonian?

The Maradonian aristocracy aren't Jedi by any stretch.  In some ways, they're far harder to hunt, and in other ways, far easier.  On the one hand, their mastery of psychic power leaves much to be desired when compared to the psychic mastery of the Jedi and they're not elite force swordsmen.  On the other hand, they are all psychic force swordsmen, who also have armies and international influence networks and vast wealth available exclusively to them.  When you fight a space knight, you're not just fighting him,  you're fighting his house, thus you must move with caution.  Presumably, a nobleman with a bounty on his head has been cast out of his house, and thus can be as easily caught as any aristocratic pretender, but this is not always the case, especially in circumstances where a rival has begun placing bounties on a member of the house.

Of course, Axton is a little different: he's not psychic at all, but cybernetic.  He belongs to a House that skirts the line between legitimate aristocracy and pirate-lord empire.  Where the other aristocrats play at being a space knight, he's trained in the Old Ways and has personally knocked genetically augmented super-soldiers off their feet with the full force of his cybernetic body, single-handedly taken on a dozen men and shrugged off plasma shots to his chest.  He's not an easy mark to take down, and still, someone in the Exilium must be able to take down a member of House Kain.

So how would you do it?

After Action Report: Tall Tales of the Orochi Belt Part III: Into Port Mongo

Last we left our intrepid heroes, they had entered Port Mongo, a heavily damaged smuggler station in the Botanical Asteroids of the Veridian Belt, having chased off their pirate escort and crashed the the ship of the smuggler Wyatt Van Carlo, and discovered that he carried a cargo of pleasure clones.  Once inside the base, the disgustingly overweight Mongo Corpulain, "Commander" of the base, hailed them, expressed his surprise that the Alliance had an interest in his operation and instructed them that he had no intention to surrender.

Our heroes are:

• Lady Talia Sabine, the NPC space knight commander of Harlequin Squadron
• Baron Mallus Grimshaw, aristocratic adventurer and fighter ace, known for his paranoia and overweening arrogance.
• Viscontess Shay Sabine, aristocratic space knight and fighter pilot and the wingman of Talia Sabine.
• Sir Tyro Pavonis, Aristocratic (and blind!) fighter ace (though not from as prestigious a family as the other two), and wing commander in Harlequin Squadron. He has exceptional psychic vision, but keeps his sensory awareness quiet, preferring to play the role of blindman.
• Sir Axton Kain, cybernetic space knight and presumptive heir of House Kain, currently in command of a platoon of Alliance Regulars.
• Walker Lee, native of the Orochi Belt, rebel hero, and scavenger.  He watches over Jethro, a farmboy from St. Borlaug's Star near the Belt.
• Xerxes, an Asrathi pirate captain of the Calico and a practicing Witch Cat.  He has a full pirate crew, including the fanatical and blood thirsty Asrathi Sylvar Ro, the heavily armed Born Riksen, the Shinjurai engineer with a bad attitude, Winner Chau, and the innocent Asrathi college student who somehow managed to stumble into being a pirate, Persia Purasinga.

The session begins with Baron Mallus Grimshaw regarding the rest of the fighters jetting about on patrol in the space around Port Mongo, securing it from any remnant defenders.  One brings a hand-carried message from the Hierophant, which is unable to directly communicate with them thanks to interference from the botanical asteroids.  The message carrier brings it to Lady Talia Sabine who stands with Sir Axton Kain and his regulars as they keep watch over their prisoners, the smuggler Wyatt van Carlo and his pirate companion, Scipio Vash. Nearby, the farmer boy from St. Borlaug's Star sits with the candy-haired clone-girl, who now wears a donated coat and breaths from a rebreather.  She has introduced herself as Nixi but has few memories (and was likely only recently decanted from the cloning biofabricator).

The messenger drops off the communicator and an image of the Grand Dame, Contessa Styliana Sabine, herself appears.  "My eyes are opened, the prophecies are true," she intones formally, and then continues:

• The Hierophant is unable to communicate with them directly due to interference from the botanical asteroids and the "morass" between them.  They are coming to them, however, but going is slow thanks to all the asteroids.
• No other ships arrived; they have the last hyperspatial signatures of them, so a good idea of where they've been scattered across the system.
• They must control the base.  It is clearly the "mountain fortress" of the prophecy, but they must avoid death where possible.
• They have detected some movements at the edges of the belt, some corvette-sized signatures that might be additional pirates.  They've sent some fighters to investigate.
• Talia is in charge.

While the message plays, the Shieldmaiden-pattern robot, Elara, approaches Xerxes and his pirate crew.  They discuss the possible haul from the place, with Born Riksen, heavy set and jovial in his heavy armor, bragging about his knowledge of the sort of operation going on.

"Whatever you do, we have to get to the processing center.  I bet they have a scrimshaw blade and some marentine gems.  They'd be worth a fortune!"

They're interrupted by the arrival of Elara, who invites Xerxes to join Axton, as they have heard he had a vision pertinent to their circumstances. The pirates argue about their deployment; Sylvar Ro bristles at being left behind, his tail lashing as he moves with his reavers to guard the entrance, and Born exaltes at he and his maurauders joining their captain, which only irritates Sylvar further.  And so, Xerxes joins the rest of the group.

They arrive to find Callister Lee and his robot, Nubbins, explaining that they've managed to isolate the hangar bay from the rest of the comm systems and surveillance, so they can talk privately here without Mongo overhearing them.  He then suggests that he and Nubbins watch over Nixi while they repair Axton's Lancer.  Walker, Jethro's guardian, looking askance at his ward's mooning over the clone-girl, readily agrees. 

The group describes their best strategy.

• Xerxes expresses concern that the dark Asrathi god, Kilrah, has been trying to contact him and may be trying to disrupt the mission. He believes the base to be under a dark influence, and informs them that Kilrah wants him to kill.
• The group believes it best to keep the pirate and the smuggler alive, but to arrest them and keep them in the brig on Axton's ship.
• Thanks to one of the Regular's scouting (Lance Highguard), they know there are several different paths they can choose: the industrial section, the habitats, the command bridge high above, or the bowels of the base, likely where engineering is. 
• They choose to go into the bowels first, to see if they can smoke out Mongo and, perhaps, restart the fusion reactors.
• Talia decides to stay behind with the majority of the Regulars, to keep the hangar secure and to distract Mongo by "negotiating" with him.

And so begins the "Dungeon Crawl" section of the Tall Tales of the Orochi Belt.  In addition to the space combat, I wanted to see how well the fighter aces handled on the ground.  This is a BAD 1 scenario, so it should be relatively easy and, as we'll see, it will be (especially given that everyone is 300 point characters).  I also wanted to put some extra work into bringing everyone together, which is easier in a ground-combat scenario.  I also want to note that I had all of this planned out before I knew what the PCs were like, so some of it might seem tailored for Xerxes, but it actually wasn't, he just made certain aspects a lot easier!

We did a couple of character things before this started.  First, I talked to Shay's player about her ST, and I agreed to allow her to reduce it to 9, mostly to better reflect her physical stature; this would prove an interesting choice, as it gave her the option to pursue more psychic powers, but the additional frailty of that lost HP would turn out to matter a lot.  We also explored our disadvantages more clearly, and I required a few people to invoke the Ham Clause on some of their more obscure disadvantages.  This included:

• Shay's Dreaming Nymph addition 
• Mallus's secret agenda
• Walker's Superstitions and his secret and obsession (merged into a single -2)
• Xerxes' Disciplines of Faith (Though I forgot to consider his Asrathi disadvantages).

This helped bring their disadvantages more to the fore, and made them think a bit more about their characters and their disadvantages.

Hey guys, let's fight everyone! Bounty Hunter Design Diary Part III

So, as part of my Bounty Hunter designs, I've been picking on one of my Tall Tales players, Xerxes, because he actually has Bounty Hunters as an enemy, so it's fun to tailor some opponents around him. But realistically one would not expect to see every bounty hunter tailored to their target.  Certainly, if bounty hunters realized that a Witch Cat was their target, those who specialize in hunting Witch Cats would pick up their kits and rush out the door to take down their preferred target.  But that anti-cyborg guy needs to put food on the table too.  Sure, he might not be as good at it as the first guy, but he only needs to get lucky, right?

So, we should have at least one "generic" bounty hunter.  This also makes it useful since you, dear reader, are unlikely to need a bounty hunter who specializes in hunting Witch Cats.  Thus, of the three-ish hunters I've proposed this week, this is the one you're most likely to actually use.

But what to do?  Every hunter needs a schtick, and our first one already melds excess collateral damage with precision planning.  Our second one melds melee excellence with a sympathetic character.  Every hunter should feel different enough that they represent a unique challenge for the PC, so ours should feel different.

Well!  I've been discussing Bounty Hunters with some of my Patrons, and Gentleman Gamer suggested that most bounty hunters are "either bosses or groups of mooks." I corrected him on the latter: you're unlikely to see a group of mooks.  "Why?" he asked.  Well, the real reason is that we expect to see highly competent loners doing these tasks, and that it's hard to pay an entire crew off of the sorts of bounties most people collect.  But that just means its rare, so why not have a bounty hunter with a group of mooks at his disposal?  It offers some unique opportunities: when searching for the character, his posse can canvas an area as a group and when they close in for the kill (er, capture), they can "beat" the target towards the primary hunter, like dogs in a hunt.  Gentleman Gamer went on to muse about drones, robot dogs and Shinjurai hunters, and I'm not going to dismiss any of those as ideas.  There's an entire world of hunters we could be making.  I'm going to focus, for now, on a guy who uses human mooks to help him fight.

Hey Guys, Let's Annoy the Witch Cat: Bounty Hunters Design Diary Part II

Yesterday, in an effort to keep the blog from being empty and giving the impression that I'm not busy behind the scenes, I unveiled some of my thoughts on making an interesting and rather tailored challenge for a character who took Bounty Hunters as an enemy.  The point, of course, is not to single him out for having the temerity to take the Enemy disadvantage, but to use his Enemy disadvantage as a spring board to create some interesting NPCs, because I expect you'll want to feature Bounty Hunters in your campaigns too, and why not have some ready, on-hand ones, even if these are rather specific.

But not every game is D&D, and even D&D doesn't really benefit from making every single encounter as lethal as possible.  Yes, we can treat Bounty Hunters as random Boss encounters, but  we don't have to.  An encounter, especially with something as "random" as a broad and general group of ill-defined enemies, offers us opportunities to explore and reveal some things about the setting.  Not every enemy needs to be lethal.  Some can really suck.  A weak opponent not only reveals something about the world, but makes the game feel less like a mechanical series of ever more difficult encounters and more like a real world to interact with.  And an inept enemy creates an interesting set of choices.  Sure, you could just, you know, kill them, but are you the sort of person who would do that? Or you can leave them alive to threaten you further and eventually they might get lucky.  Or you can try to talk them out of killing you.  But suddenly, you have a more interesting set of choices beyond just "kill or be killed."

So, I propose we introduce a bounty hunter or, actually, a team of bounty hunters that isn't constructed to be a thoroughly dangerous opponent, but an interesting NPC encounter that happens to involve a strong desire to kill you. I want to introduce a "newbie" bounty hunter.

Hey guys, let's kill the Witch Cat

Pardon my silence.  Both of my children were born this month, and there's Easter, and a quarantine, so I've been busy.  I'm also trying to figure out how to handle polls on multiple patron sites without spending $20 a month on the right to get more than a couple of answers, and I'm behind on my art comissions.

But the real reason I've been quiet is that a Patron asked me to work on bounty hunters, and they're up there with Mystics and Space Knights for "You don't know how much work you just asked for." In any case, if you missed it, there's a preview up for Subscribers and Patrons. One of the reasons it's taking so long is that there's a lot of reasonable "factions" and culture-groups that we might associate with bounty hunters and while we've worked out a ton of detail on mystics and space knights (and commandos and officers and etc) under the guise of working on philosophies and factions back in iteration 6, we haven't really touched on bounty hunter or criminal factions yet, which are both things we really need to explore, but we only have so many hours in the day.

Bounty Hunters represent a whole host of interesting puzzles, especially in that they're natural monster hunters (There's even a lens for it: "Hired Gun"). A Bounty Hunter naturally specializes in their preferred prey, and so may have means of disposing of particularly troublesome aliens, robots or space monsters that the average person doesn't have.  That is, after all, why you pay them!  But if we're going to introduce Space Witchers, we need to think about monsters which, against, brings me back to a concept I've been tinkering with but haven't had the time to really explore: Epic Psi-Wars. I've discussed it before, but the idea is that while running Psi-Wars for normal action heroes is fine (and the premise of many of its more procedural inspirations, such as Killjoys and Star Wars films like Rogue One or Han Solo), you can make the case for Psi-Wars-as-Monster-Hunters, also based on its less procedural inspirations (like the Old Republic or Metabarons).  In fact, the Action Genre itself does this, as Monster Hunters Sidekicks points out, as well as the finest action-genre RPG ever written: Nights Black Agents, which clearly illustrates how one migrates from a bog standard action story to a deeper thriller.

Bounty Hunters tend to straddle that line pretty well, especially in a space opera setting.  One session, they're busting some guy out of prison, or taking down a crime  boss.  The next session, they're using their specialized knowledge to kill a space vampire.  This lets them walk between the world of the smuggler and commando, and the world of the space knight and the mystic.  But this also means that in describing Bounty Hunters, I need to describe the things they hunt, and that means tackling some of the monsters of the setting, and that's taking me awhile.  Apologies.

The other thing I've been thinking about, and the real point of this post, is that Bounty Hunters make amazing enemies.  Raymond Chandler famously said that his preferred technique for spicing up a story was to have two guys kick in the door and start shooting up the place whenever the story got stale.  In space opera, the two guys who kick in the door and start shooting the place up are, of course, bounty hunters.  They can reasonably show up at any time, they should always present a unique, flavorful challenge, and once you defeat them, you have to ask the question "Who put the mark on my head, and how do I get rid of it?"

Thus, I've been thinking about Bounty Hunters as a challenge.  I asked one of my friends to see if he could make one, but then I decided that was an unfair challenge, because I wasn't sure how best to make one myself. It's not enough to slap some stats together and have a guy shoot at people.  I mean, it is, but as we'll see from the After Action Report of Tall Tales of the Orochi Belt, even a couple of BAD 1 Henchmen backed by 10 or so BAD 1 Mooks are not a serious challenge to starting PCs. We need more than big numbers: we need to think about what makes a bounty hunter a challenging encounter.  How can they be difficult and interesting to defeat.

We should be able to finish the following sentence: "This bounty hunter always get his man because..." or "This bounty hunter is unstoppable because..."

It just so happens that on of the PCs, Xerxes, an Asrathi Witch Cat, has Bounty Hunters as enemies, so I thought it might be an interesting exercise to explore how a Bounty Hunter might defeat that specific PC and how we can make it an interesting encounter. Come, and let's muse together on how to murder on of my PCs.

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. 

After Action Report: Tall Tales of the Orochi Belt, Session 1

Part 1: Introductions

Our session starts with the Calico, Xerxes' Tigershark-Class Assault Corvette. As Xerxes pilots it into Caliban, we get treated to a view of the mountainous planet below, the distant red sun, and the majestic and terrifying view of the Hammer of Caliban and the Orochi Liberation fleet docked with it.  I introduce his crew:

• Persia Purasinga, an Asrathi med student turned pirate (by accident!). She seems quite pleased to be moving away from piracy and towards "mercenary work," especially against the Empire, who pushed her into piracy to begin with.  She's small and cute, with red, tabby fur and large green eyes with a pair of glasses.
• Sylvar Ro, a terrifying and religiously fanatical Jagarathi assassin with "siberian tiger" markings and cold blue eyes.  He argues that they shouldn't get involved and "let humans kill one another.
• Born Riksen, a native "Belter" to the Orochi Belt, heavy set and half-drunk, who loudly announces his excitement to be part of the liberation fleet, and reminds Persia that they won't be engaged in piracy, but they might engage in the "legitimate salvage" of Imperial ships they defeat.
• Winner Chau, a Denjuku native Shinjurai punk girl with a white face, black make-up, straight black hair, chunky boots and purple-and-black striped hose who rolls her eyes at everyone and gets back to work on the engine (with her kleptomaniacal robot, Ripper), while listening to tunes via her earphones.

Next, Walker Lee lands his Nomad-Class Modular Corvette, the Bad Penny, on the Heirophant, the flagship carrier of the liberation fleet. As he and his "Pilgrim" companion, a young man named Jethro Page, depart from the corvette, Walker gets tackle-hugged by Arietta Lee (No relation), one of mechanics of the liberation fleet, and daughter to the head mechanic, Callister Lee. They discuss his heroism in the resistance against the Empire in the Orochi Belt, and whether he'll need any help maintaining his corvette.  The Calico also lands, and Xerxes' pirate crew interacts roughly with the group.

Then, aboard the Hammer of Caliban, Baron Mallus Grimshaw enjoys one last holo-call with his wife, princess Dani Shinjurai, who instructs him to wear a specific outfit to the gala aboard the Heirophant, cut after the style of the Shinjurai, but appropriate to a Maradonian noble like Mallus, with an orchid motiff.

As an ally, Dani has Fashion Sense, so this allows him to claim his bonus

In a dueling gym aboard the Hammer, Talos spars with Axton Kain, trying to teach him the basics of the Destructive Form, as Axton's own Knightly Form is unsuited to dueling. Talos makes quick work of Axton, proving his point, when they are joined by Asura Kain, the white-haired, golden-armed daughter to the Archbaron, who complains about the coming party, and the Elegans brothers, Enzo and Arthus. Enzo is a space knight with a thick braid of dreadlocks and a quick and easy grin and Aspect with the Avatar of a lion, who immediately wins Axton over with his smile, and then joins in to perform a quick practice duel, wherein they fight to a standstill.

Then they are joined by the belle of the ball, Lady Thalia Sabine and her handmaiden, Lady Peony Pavonis; the latter, dark-eyed with long, curly hair and Mediterranean features, fetching but betraying a low blood purity, cannot stand to not be the center of attention and thus inserts herself right into the middle of the duel, announces her intention to participate, and then realizes how outclassed she is, and is saved by Thalia reminding everyone of the need to attend the gala.

The group leaves to go to the Gala, where they are joined by the Baron, and walk the promenade, the great ring constructed around the ancient artifact of the Hammer of Caliban. While walking, they encounter Kerin Kethim, a Ranathim mechanic.  She crouches over her son, the toddler Caliban Kethim, as both gaze upon the world of Caliban through the window.  Enzo Elegans approaches, and greets her in Lithian.  After a brief exchange, she reveals she works under Callister Lee on the Heirophant and hopes that her service in the liberation fleet will earn her Alliance citizenship.  Enzo invites her to attend the gala as his date, but she demures.  Mallus is offended by Enzo inviting someone who is clearly not noble to a noble event and says so, to which Enzo retorts by questioning exactly how noble Mallus actually is, to which Mallus responds by drawing his force sword.  Before Enzo can do the same, Arthus intervenes, notes that a formal challenge has been issued, and that the duel can be fought after the gala.  All parties agree and move on.

Kerin is a bit of a relic from my original conception of the Tall Tales, where the players would be serving on a station in the Orochi Belt and have to deal with a sudden Imperial incursion.  The mechanic Callister Lee had a reputation with the station's... ladies of the night as employing only beautiful women (Kerin and Arietta) whom the women referred to as "Callister's Whores."  All of this has had to go to the wayside, but I like the idea of an outsider alien trying to become an insider, and so she's stuck around, as have Callister and Arietta, and the idea of an "all female mechanic crew" from the "Orochi" side of the mechanics team. 

Note that Mallus has 2-4 points total in his force sword skill, while Enzo is a full-on space knight skilled in not one, but two force sword forms.  Mallus' player was playing his disadvantages, particularly Code of Honor (Gentleman) and Overconfidence.  Should be an interesting, and quick, fight. But something for another session.

Finally, Viscontess Shay Sabine finds herself in a fighter simulator flying a Valiant against a Javelin. She quickly loses, as she's more familiar with her own Devil-Pattern interceptor. The opposing pilot, an old veteran of the Alliance navy who stands ready to retire soon, Captain Quentin Scott, steps out of his simulator and explains the need to expand her flexibility into other fighters, because of the limitations of the Devil-Pattern Interceptor.  Then they both notice the time and that she needs to attend the Gala. He says he won't be going ("It's by invite only,") and that some of the mechanics and Orochi pilots are having a small get-together that he wants to attend, because he fears that the combination of Orochi pilots and Maradonian pilots in Harlequin squadron will cause friction and he wants to overcome it.

When it comes to introductions, I tend to let the characters and their background seep over me as I picture what their introduction might be like.  Tyro Pavonis and Shay Sabine came quite late, so I didn't have much time to introduce them.  I had this idea for a generic "Fighter simulator" intro for SOME pilot, which I gave to Shay because Tyro is blind and thus can only fly a Devil-Patter interceptor. As a consequence of this, plus some unfortunate Will rolls later, Tyro got very little "screen time."

The Heroes of the Tall Tales of the Orochi Belt

So, it's been awhile since I talked about it, as I had to postpone it, but the Playtest for the Psi-Wars vehicular combat system, the Tall Tales of the Orochi Belt, is go.

I had intended to give each PC their own post, but I didn't get enough full background stories to do that, and I only have the art for a single character, so I'm going to give brief summaries so you at least have a solid idea of who's who.

Wiki-Showcase: What the hell have you been doing over the past month?

I had a nice, long vacation, and also announced the up-coming playtest for the action vehicular combat system (which, alas, had to be postponed, as all the actual action vehicular combat characters couldn't make it.  I've added a new one so this is less likely to happen in the future).  In the meantime, I've been doing a lot of work primarily on the wiki, but not a lot here on the blog.  So, I thought I'd take a moment to highlight some of the bigger updates.

The great thing about actually running something is that it totally clarifies what you actually need.  Thus, most of the changes I've made have been to facilitate the coming campaign. Not all of them are "complete" or as thorough as some of my previous work, but we can always go back and change them.

The main changes include:

• The Fighter Ace Template
• The Officer Template
• The Wanderer Background
• Cybernetics
• The Orochi Belt as a setting

Most of these are just a port of the original material over to the blog, though all of them involve some reworking.  The Orochi Belt is wholly new, but treat it as a draft; it will doubtless get a lot of changes over time. I've also made little changes to various other parts, such as:

• The "Don't Drink the Water" sidebar in Broken Communion

I've also written up some additional things as Patreon Previews, such as the Asrathi and the Scavenger template, but these will be ported into the wiki soon.

There are always lots of little edits (I have a few readers who love to send me little bits of errata, so we discuss them. I try to get on them right away, lest I forget them.)

Playtest: The Tall Tales of the Orochi Belt

I've wanted to explore the Action Vehicular combat rules for awhile, and there's no better way to do that than to use the actual rules that we've built up and run a game with them.  Furthermore, actually running a game helps me focus on what I actually need, and what actually matters.  A great deal of material comes from run games.  Finally, I've not put enough time into running games of late, as my family and work have been eating into what time I have, but with luck, I'll manage to schedule enough time to do this.

The Tall Tales of the Orochi Belt will be a (roughly) episodic mini-campaign.  I have three to five arcs planned, all episodic.  They follow in an obvious sequence, more or less, but it should be relatively easy to have players drop in and out as necessary.  The premise will be the liberation of a star system, the Orochi Belt, that features no planets to speak of, and thus all "space" action, ideal for testing out space combat rules.

The first session will be January 4th, and we already have 5 players.  As I get more details (such as who the characters are, other than one Kainian Space Knight and one Asrathi Witch-Cat Pirate), I'll tell more.  In the meantime, enjoy this introductory snippet: