Freetrader “Destinys Child”: How It All Started

[sunjester]

Great reports and sound like you are having a lot of fun!

[Ithoriel]

could i ask where the "terrain mats" are from, please?

The Undercity map used this time is a Stafinder Flip-Mat from Paizo bought from Amazon. I have a collection of them bought from various on-line sources. Most of them have been just under a tenner.

The map used in the previous game was from the Giant Book of Sci-fi Battle Mats from Loke, also bought on-line. It's a ring bound book of 62 A3 maps that can be used alone or as a double spread.

I have some other maps from Ryan Wolfe's www.0-hr.com site. Beautiful ship and building maps but pricey when you include postage and handling to the UK.

[Scorpio_Rocks]

Thank you, Sir!

Orders winging their way for some as we speak.

[Ithoriel]

In game rule terms, the crew rolled on the Loot table and the die rolls saw them acquiring a suit of Battledress armour (5+ save, +1 to Reactions to a max of 4).

Or as the narrative of the story, Mila checked the downed nomads but found nothing useful. Bio-locked weapons and vermin infested robes weren't going to be worth the effort of carting back to the ship. Just as she was about to return to the others she spotted another body, victim of some long forgotten combat. The corpse was little more than dessicated shreds of flesh holding the skeleton together but the battledress it wore seemed to be functional. Separating the armour from as much of the previous occupant as possible she hauled it back to Destiny's Child, cleaned it, fumigated it, replaced the batteries and hey presto! Working armour, fit for a captain.

Their patron put them in touch with a friendly doctor for some free treatment, not realising that none of them were hurt.

Micah was given access to the Agency Armoury and came back with a "slightly-used" Screen Generator (5+ save, not negated by enemy weapons having the Piercing attribute) which he now wears.

THK07 repaired the Boosted Arm set and helped Gunner fit it. A modified roll of 6+ is required for a repair. A natural 1 is a permanent fail. The crew decide to spend 2 credits to buy a couple of spare parts to boost the roll by 2 and THK07s Savvy of +2 is added as well. Anything but a 1 and it's fixed. Die roll .... 6. Doh! didn't need those spares after all.

Mr Smith and Micah go exploring and find an Arms Dealer with military weapons for sale but given that funds are short and the crew are pretty well armed they opt not to buy.

Gunner and Scrapper go trading, doing a deal for a Glare Sword (think Light Sabre). I like to imagine they traded those unneeded parts for it. They also hear an interesting rumour.

Clearly impressed by their performance, Jethro Gibbons offers them a job escorting a VIP to a pick up point.

Princess Irulan has given her Imperial Guard "minders" the slip to slum it in an infamous nightclub and pissed off a bunch of gutter-scum in the process.  Half a dozen no-marks armed with Saturday Night Specials shouldn't pose a problem for the now well armed and kitted out crew. The fact they are headed by the leader of the recently routed nomads may be a bonus or a hindrance. On the up side, Jethro has promised hazard pay if they kill him. There are rumours of an alien artefact in the area that might be worth checking out too.

I have a couple of new figures lined up for Mila and Gunner. So far, merely undercoated.

[Ithoriel]

Meanwhile, the crew (with new models for Mila and Gunner)



manage to get Princess Irulan to a nearby monorail station



Only to find some of the punks looking for the princess have arrived there too.




The leader has a powerclaw and a scrap pistol rather than a shotgun. The guy in the duster is local mob muscle sent to beef up the unreliable punks.

[Duke Speedy of Leighton]

Cool

[Ithoriel]

Freetrader "Destiny's Child": Turn 3 – The Great Monorail Turkey Shoot!

The crew think they have successfully escorted Princess Irulan to the monorail station and just need to hand her over until they realise that some of the punks hunting the princess are already there.

Fortunately, Mila's comm-link buzzes and a message comes through to say that if they can get the princess to the crossway where the exit from the monorail stations meets the banks of rent-a-terminals there is just room for a droid gunship to land and pick up the princess. The gunship will not land until the princess is in position.

In game terms, the princess must spend a turn within 3 squares of the nominated point to trigger the pickup.

The crew attempt to Seize the Initiative, needing a modified 10+ on 2D6. They score 7 with the dice, add 2 for THK07s Savvy rating and another 1 for the punk's attribute of Careless. Success!

The crew move cautiously forward, all except Gunner who hops up on a large cargo crate.

Rolling for reactions, only Gunner gets to act before the punks. Probably not a big deal, the punks are way out of range with their scrap pistols.

Not quite up to form Gunner puts one of the punks down and stuns another.

The punks move forward, staying in cover. The crew also push forward

Micah puts the mob enforcer down but other shots by the crew have no effect.



At the end of round the punks check morale for the loss of their two comrades. 1D6 per loss, on a roll of 1-3 a punk will bail (not counting as down but simply removed from the table). 2D6, double 1s. The two rearmost punks bail.



Turn one is over and the punks are down to the leader and a gang member.

Once again Gunner is the only one able to act before the punks. First shot is a miss, second is a stun, third puts the leader down. Has he lost his mojo?

The surviving punk moves forward but is still out of range.

The crew continue to advance but manage to miss the surviving punk with a volley of fire.

Clearly feeling immortal the remaining punk passes his morale check for the loss of the leader.

Gunner and Mila get to go before the punk. Gunner needs 6+ to hit with no modifiers to the die roll and rolls two sixes! He needs to equal or exceed the punk's Toughness of 3 and rolls a 3 and a 4. Last bad guy down and they didn't even get a shot off.

Princess Irulan is in positions and the following round the gunship arrives and an Imperial Guard  steps out and ushers the princess onboard.

As Scrapper quips,"I don't know which of the Seven Dwarves he is but he sure ain't Happy!"



I am torn between hoping my crew get some more competent opponents to give more of a game and hoping they don't so they get more gear and skill before they start tangling with Vent Crawlers and Assassins!

[Duke Speedy of Leighton]

Turkey shoot! In a barrel!Great report again.

[Lord Kermit of Birkenhead]

Why would anyone want to shoot turkeys

[fred.]

The 'shoot first' tactics of the crew make these scenarios pretty easy.

If it was a war zone then shoot first seems fine as a tactic, but I think this is more of a civilian setting, so should the crew be limited from opening fire on suspected enemies, until they are actively hostile? Feels like there should be more consequences for shooting random civilians?

This does rather depend on the setting - but it does feel that (in game) the crew are allowed to know that the enemy is definitely an enemy long before they would have that certainty (in real life). Perhaps having a few groups of potential enemies around, only one of which are the hostiles, the others are groups of civilians, who are likely to be neutral (or even friendly) would make it hard for the crew to machine gun down enemies at long range.

Just some thoughts - ultimately if it works for you, it works for you!

[Ithoriel]

Thanks for the comments. As the others who post AARs regularly will know, it is sometimes hard to know if one is merely talking to oneself!

fred, the scenarios are set up as "I am your employer, here is the job I want you to do, here are your targets." So knowing what the bad guys look like isn't immersion breaking thing, for me.

I chickened out of having civilians in the last scenario assuming that late, at night, there would be few of them and that in bad neighbourhood the locals would recognise the punks , know trouble was brewing and make themselves scarce. I do have a lot of (unpainted) civilian types and I'm working on a scenario involving a fight in a spaceport with a crowd of colonists/ refugees and some cops. If combat is hand-to-hand only, the cops ignore it. If one side fires a gun or uses a grenade the cops become part of the other sides forces and colonists will move on random die rolls. If the bad guys take a morale test, failures don't cause one of their side to bail, instead each fail means they have drawn a gun and shot a bystander thinking they are part of the crew. After that round they bail as normal.  I need to run a couple of simulations and do some painting before running it for real.  

When I started I wondered if I would be able to avoid fudging die rolls but the die rolling has been so much in the crews favour that the only fudging I've done (so far!) has been to the crews detriment. In the last scenario there should have only been 4 punks. Roll 2D6 pick the high roll and add 3 - rolled snake eyes, so rolled a third dice which came up a 3. The leader, if I'm understanding things right, should only have had a power claw as a weapon but I gave him a scrap pistol too. Things like that.

Sooner or later they are going to come up against nastier things, I'm sure. So far the Conditions table hasn't come up with dust clouds that reduce visibility to a handful of squares, for example. That would cramp Gunner's style for sure!

[fred.]

If it all works within the context of the game, then that is all that matters.

And if these are early scenarios, and you are expecting more challenging opposition then good luck for those!

I know what you mean about the dice rolls - but I've been doing a bit of solo gaming recently, and like you haven't really found it a temptation. I think we games setup for solo play its less of a problem. Sometimes when I have played a standard game solo, I've been more likely to fudge dice rolls, or movement, but some of this comes I think from the complexity of a 2-player game played on your own, there can be a lot to remember and get right.

[Ithoriel]

Having made short work of the punks and successfully delivered the princess the party set about scavenging the battlefield and collecting their rewards.

Experience gained allowed several characters to improve their abilities.

More tangible rewards were in the form of cash and the patronage of House Rimush for the return of their errant princess plus a Flak Screen which provides a measure of protection against grenades, albeit the latter was damaged.

Trading and exploration provided a damaged Battle Visor (re-roll 1s when shooting) which was promptly fixed for free by a friendly mechanic, a chit for 6 credits worth of fuel and 4 starship repair parts which would repair 1 hull point each if Destiny's Child takes damage.

Placing items in their stash they discover one of their three stashed Colony Rifles was damaged.

Hearing that the punk gang intended to settle their score with the crew, Gunner and Scrapper go out to track down the hideout of the Laytown Buzzards.

They track the punks to their base in The Sump, an area wreathed in swirls of dust, gas and steam. Visibility is both limited and variable (8+1D6 squares, re-rolled every turn).

On the up side, there is an item that a collector will pay a couple of credits for in the area.

This may not be as one sided as the last fight with these punks!

Be careful what you wish for  

[mmcv]

Looking like a fun campaign, must take note of those rules if I ever start putting together some sci-fi stuff down the line...

[fsn]

You're protecting a princess! Shoot first is the obvious tactic.

Ask Han ... and Greedo.

Good read ... maybe 2022 will be Nobby's year of SciFi.