Saturday 28th April 2018
So a good journey to the Garrison Hotel with very little fuss.
Just some of my game preparation.
Got there in time for the opening speech at the start of slot 1.
Graham presenting the opening speech.
I was running Star Wars Edge of the Empire called ‘Nerves of Steel on Dantoonie’.
So I had four players signed up on the day, the pre-booked players didn’t show up, and only one of them had played this system before.
They selected their characters so we had the Wookie, Saljacca, whom was dangerous not only at close quarters but at long-range too as he had a plasma-slug sniper rifle. Next up was Freya Farthen, the genius mechanic, who could fix and repair anything. Then there was Nash Doorna the smuggler, cocky and overconfident and oozes charm. Then finally there was Moria Sunfell, the sassy pilot who always carries her trusty pistol.
Me GMing my Edge of the Empire game. Photo by Tom Zunder.
They started stranded in the Dune Sea of Tatoonie next to the smouldering crater and the shattered remains of the ship they just raided. They had their prize, data crystals with a wealth of information on future tech and two grav-sleds, neither of which were functional. One grav-sled had its chassis wrecked but its engine was relatively intact. The other sled was structurally sound but its engine was splintered. Of course it would take all of them to work together to swap out the engines and get a fully operating grav-sled between them.
Then they decided that they would take the longer but safer route back to their spaceship, rather than the direct quicker but more dangerous route back.
So they managed to escape the dessert without incident (other than some poor flying by the pilot), and also traded with some Dessert Jawas for so drugs for Saljacca and a new Astromech droid they named RAVE-2.
Psychedelic!
They got to their spaceship without incident and were off-world, past the Imperial Blockade, and away to their homeworld, Ord Mantell. There they cleverly arranged to sell their prize to the highest bidder from amongst the most dangerous organisations in the Galaxy.
The auction would take place on Dantoonie, in the old rebel base there. The characters would only get a day to set up the place to receive their guests from the Black Sun Crime Syndicate, an ambitious Imperial Officer, a Republican Senator, and Teemo the Hutt!
They managed to cunningly hide their spaceship very close, get the shield generators to work to protect the base form orbital bombardment, set up the separate viewing rooms, and primed the whole base up with explosives.
After a bidding war between all the interested parties there was the inevitable betrayal and double-cross. After a furious fire-fight our heroes managed to escape in their hidden spaceship, leaving the squabbling factions behind.
They got their loot, their lives and their ship all in one piece. Now of course they are a mighty fine target for every single criminal group in the Galaxy!
The players from my Edge of the Empire game.
It was a trip to the salad bar at Morrison’s for lunch and a catch up with some of the con-goers.
Slot 2 was another of my games I was running, Firefly ‘No Power in the ‘verse!’.
Table set up for my Firefly game.
I had six players signed up for this game so I got straight down to the player character selection. So the characters Inara, River and Simon didn’t make the selection. We had Jayne the hired ‘muscle’, Zoe the second officer, Wash the pilot, Book the shepherd, Mal the captain, and Kaylee the mechanic. I got the players to read through the character sheets and add a couple of Specialisations to their skills whilst I headed off and changed.
I hastily dressed up as Badger, one of the criminal bosses from the TV show, with a waistcoat, flamingo badge, a tie but without a shirt, and a bowler hat. I returned to the table in full character, proclaiming in the worst Cockney accent ever, that “I was in ruttin’ charge, I was the gorram boss and that I had a shiny job for them!” From that opening everyone was on board, with big grins across their faces, and we started the role-playing session in the full Firefly flavour. I stayed in character for the most part, only dropping out when I took the players through the rules as they rolled their dice during conflicts.
Me dressed as 'Badger' Photo by Tom Zunder.
The job was a simple one, get a couple of high-value items from the Auction House on Persephone that would lead to the location of the missing legendary spaceship, Far Horizon. Everyone knows of the Far Horizon the first survey scout starship of the ‘verse, made famous by the comic-books, laser-vids, halo-films, and cortex screenings of its adventures in space! If found it would be a mighty fine prize. It would contain the raw survey data of the whole of the ‘verse revealing the as yet untapped resources that Parliament has kept secret over the centuries. Also the value of the ship as an historic object could also be beneficial and there would be, no doubt, more valuables on the craft that could be sold off too.
Of course the crew had to get hold of the obsolete data crystals that were up for auction as well as an antiquated data crystal reader. Now they just had to come up with the right ‘caper’ to get hold of the items before the rival crews did!
Me GMing my Firefly game dressed as 'Badger' Photo by Dom Mooney.
What followed was a series of calamity events with consequences growing as the crew went through multiple plans, each one getting more and more outrageous, to complete the caper. Of course in the end it was the simplest plan (with the luckiest dice roll) that got the goods for the most part.
The climax was the trip out into the black to the revealed location of the ghost ship and the discovery of the huge secret that would change the ‘verse for ever.
A magnificent game with the players pushing their characters as well as putting up with Badger himself sitting in the Serenity, getting far too involved in their plans. A great deal of fun.
The players from my Firefly game.
A pre-booked meal in the Garrison bar with a couple of pints just hit the spot before I headed into my third and final game.
North Star has it's own convention beer!
‘Testing Times on Tarsus’ a Traveller scenario run by Dr Moose.
This was my first foray into Traveller (apart from some games when I was in the 6th Form where the GM did all the dice rolls for the players behind his GM screen) but all the other players were familiar with the game system.
We were trouble-shooters for a corporation tasked to check out the security and integrity of some of the corporation’s holdings on the backwater planet Tarsus. Our boss, Rev Landfill, had instructed us to get the layout, staff structure, and copies of the contents in the safe whilst testing the security ‘quietly’. Of course the job goes south almost straight away and there was some bloodshed.
Our boss fires us from the job and we do our upmost to track him down and deal him appropriately. More dead-ends and things going wrong meant that we were struggling to get anything achieved at all. By the time we earnt our spaceship we were definitely floundering and it was only by being the bait ourselves that we managed to draw out our old boss, Rev Landfill, and capture him with some help of some Imperial Shock Troops. A fun game with role-playing our desolate cause.
With that I headed back home on the train, forced to stop in Chesterfield and continue my journey home to Derby in a taxi due to engineering works on the railway lines. Grrr!
#StarWars
#EdgeoftheEmpire
#Firefly
#Traveller
#NorthStar
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