My very wonderful Thursday night gaming group has a rotating set of GMs, and recently I’ve been the man in the chair. After a list of votes for system, the group settled on Stars Without Number, the Kevin Crawford love letter to classic Traveler. I was delighted, because I’ve always wanted to run the system, but the scope of the campaign wasn’t aimed at the interminable sandbox wandering that often has travelers travelling…forever. So why not add the other campaign frame I’ve long wanted…FTL.
FTL: Faster Than Light is a brilliant RTS roguelike from subset games. The premise, from Wikipedia: “[In FTL: Faster Than Light], the player controls the crew of a single spacecraft, holding critical information to be delivered to an allied fleet, while being pursued by a large rebel fleet. The player must guide the spacecraft through eight sectors, each with planetary systems and events procedurally generated in a roguelike fashion, while facing rebel and other hostile forces, recruiting new crew, and outfitting and upgrading their ship. Combat takes place in pausable real time, and if the ship is destroyed or all of its crew lost, the game ends, forcing the player to restart with a new ship. The player's crew intercepts a data packet from the rebel fleet containing information that could throw the rebels into disarray and ensure a Federation victory. The goal is to reach Federation headquarters, waiting several space sectors away, while avoiding destruction from hostile ships or by the pursuing rebel fleet.[3][4] The final sector ends with a battle against the Rebel Flagship, a multi-stage fight which results in either victory or defeat for the Federation.” Doesn’t this sound like a great premise for a TTRPG campaign? In the first session the players all came with their PCs rolled, and we focused on creating the main character…the ship. Le Renard, captained by a Québec-expy named Bennoit LeBeau, is a Federation-affiliated (but not direct navy) frigate with not only the five main PCs but with a dozen other NPCs, run as secondaries by the players at times, and a bone to pick with the rebels after the Federation fleet they were with was destroyed. Armed with just the location of the rebel’s mysterious Controller and half a tank of jump fuel, the players start by hopping into a strange sector with knowledge that the rebel fleet will be breathing down their necks in a matter days. The initial session was enjoyable, with the players finding a refueling station controlled by fanatical worshippers of the Controller, then their bluffing accidentally led to a pair of infiltrators checking out their ruined bridge for messages from the Controller…and actually finding a Federation comm pad, revealing their enemy status. A tense scene to run, with half the players actually at a dinner with the station’s leader, while the two remaining at the ship fought the spies. After this first session, I began to write recaps for the following sessions to read every time. These are what we’ve had so far: Previously on “The Flight of the Fox”: A tense standoff with the Lim 9 station administrator over Le Renard’s Federation affiliation ended in bloodshed, fortunately most of it the administrator’s. While beating a hasty retreat, Captain Lebeau and his two companions managed to hijack the station’s alert system, sending the crew scurrying. Dr. Jenny meanwhile secured the prisoner Jorge Jurgen, a hapless hostage…or helpful recruit? Blasting randomly at the station as they fled, the crew went for the inner inhabitable planet Grid after hearing of a crashed Federation scout there. Landing HARD on the desert planet, Engineer Reynolds set his crew to repairing as the command crew hastened to the wreckage of the scout, finding not just a black box with a rutter [basically a map needed to jump to another star] to another system, but also the faint tracks of the pilot Charles Danyiel, who’s terrible final message promised he would be seeking water in the desolate world. Previously on “The Flight of the Fox”: While making repairs and salvaging scrap on the desert world of Grid, our heroes discovered more dangers than mere dry heat, as Le Renard discovered when a massive earthquake rolled in less than an hour after Engineer Reynolds finished repairing the landing struts. Following the lost pilot’s tracks to an oasis one hundred miles away, the Captain and his crew discovered a primitive civilization led by a “chief’canic”, who worship machines even as their ancient terraforming gear winds itself down. The Captain’s initial attempts to ransom the lost pilot ended in failure but Chief of Security Slate Bulkhead made contact with a rebellious “under’canic” who offered to free the lost pilot if the crew could heal the machines of the Ancients. The crew are now within a vast ziggurat, as their engineer frantically tries to fix the barely-understood pretech machinery…and as sonic booms announce the arrival of the advance scouts of the rebel fleet searching for them overhead. Previously on “The Flight of the Fox”: As brilliant Engineer Reynolds fumbled desperately with the advanced terraforming machinery wracking the desert world of grid, the rest of the command crew discovered, and then fought an ancient robot guarding rare pretech deep within the facility. With the help of a grateful local, the crew used a combination of stealth and distracting medical miracle-working to rescue lost pilot Lt. Chuck Danyiel. Rigging the pretech terraforming stations to send out bursts of confusing static, the crew manage a thrilling escape from the six circling scouts, forerunners of the imminent rebel fleet. Leaving at flank speed, it is only within the confines of metaspace that the communications officer discovered a hidden message from one of the rebels, speaking of a desire to defect…and warning that the fleet was less that two days from the Makis System. Now in the famously neutral Glomar System, the crew are low on fuel but a little higher on hope, making their way to the system’s solitary gas giant to refuel and take stock of their latest destination. Previously on “The Flight of the Fox”: After taking a little time refueling while hiding on the dark side of the gas giant Glomar 1, the crew votes to make contact with the aging mining station in orbit around the world, where a committee of workers, having thrown off their bosses’ control, are up a creek without a paddle with nowhere to sell their refined fuel. The captain has convinced the committee to authorize Le Renard to find a smuggler contact on the system’s main planet of Glomar 2, where alien ruins entice a lively population of smugglers…and the ancient Mandate-era Perimeter Agency ruthlessly works to suppress export of the most dangerous maltech found among the bones of the aliens’ lost civilization. But that’s not the only wrinkle in this sticky situation; as Le Renard makes landfall, the sensors officer notes a pair of rebel scouts docked on the system’s station, including the drive signature of the hopeful defector. Will the crew find a smuggler for their hapless miners? Will they manage to find a rutter to leave the system along safer routes? Will they manage to evade the rebel fleet, which must be on its way… I’ll continue posting these recaps as the campaign goes along. If anyone is interested in terms both specific to Stars Without Number, or general concepts from the game, please, ask away…science fiction gaming is a very different experience, even though many of us have played at least some before, and it’s been a learning experience for us all as we play around in the system.
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AuthorWeblog of Ben Gibson, the main writer and publisher of Coldlight Press. Archives
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