Bringer of Stories Presents GURPS: A Space Opera

Game Master ZenFox42

I actually think Jack's our best bet. He can hit harder than Terra and he's much more likely avoid damage since his dodge is higher. Brooke would be a second choice since she'd also be more likely to avoid damage, is only a little less tough than Terra, and able to hit harder as well. Terra is more likely to land hits, but she's also going to be taking them barring some amazingly good dodge rolls.

Fun times
>.>
<.<

Bringer, is Brooke's claim that bringing TK to a pirate fight would be against the rules valid? Does she know that for sure, or is she just speculating?

Also, keep in mind that Terra's punch's STR is her TK, which is 20! Granted her Dodge is crap, but I was hoping to keep it a long-distance fight.

And, wouldn't Jack's gauntlets be considered "tech" by the pirates (even if they're powered by chi)? He'd lose a lot of his fighting ability without them...

If TK and gauntlets aren't allowed by Da Rules, I'd say Brooke has the best overall fighting potential. If Jack can use his gauntlets, I'd say he'd be the best bet.

...actually, now that I think about it some more, I'd say Jack has a better chance in hand-to-hand than Brooke, even without his gauntlets.

Bringer, what kind of fight is this? Hand-to-hand, or hand-held weapons, or ranged weapons? I'd assume Brooke would know...

ILl say this:

The dueling code the pirates are using are to guide the duels into being relatively even footing.

the ultimate goal is to settle disputes. This would require, normally, the parties live to endure the dispute to be settled.

The duel was melee combat, limiting equipment to be simple in arms and armor (If it was absolutely needed at all) Avoiding tech equipment.
To clarify, nothing powered.

Jack's gauntlet, assuming its not actually 'technologically powered' could count.

They are, as I have shown on my character sheet, powered by Chi, so they should be ok.
I am fine with whoever wants to fight...if Terra can accomplish it better, then lets go with her.

I think *with* his gauntlets, Jack's the better choice.

This reminds me. Is Jack aware of the anti-psi quality of his gloves? And the other question, how convincing would Jean have to be for Jack to let him poke them a bit? Some non-invasive scans?

Jack is aware that psi does not always work around him, and he can control the ability. As it is a Chi powered ability, I am not too sure scans would reveal much, but if approached in the right way, I am sure he would let others look at the gauntlets.

*pulls out plasma hacksaw with a Dr. Frankenstein look on his face*

"For science, mon ami!"

Alrighty, so the big portion of the moving is underway. Ill be without interwebs for a little over a week. So consider this a thanksgiving break and we'll pick up around the 30th/1st.

Hope your holiday/Face stuffing goes well during this time.

Happy Thanksgiving for those who have this day off. Good luck with the move.

Check up.
I think I'm settled in for a bit.

Who's still In and who's losing interest? No worries if the latter friends, life kinda snuck up on me.

Dr. Rix reporting for duty.

HelLO HUmans.

Still around, but not sure if I'm going to continue. As much as I like both Brooke and Nedora, I think I bit off more than I realized with Brooke being a folk hero and I don't think I have the time or energy to roll up a third character. I hope you guys have fun and I wish you luck. :)

GM, if you could, please mark me as inactive. You'll need to mark my main and character aliases, if you need a list, see below. I think you may also need to mark my aliases as NPCs.

List of aliases:
-AdamWarnock
-"Nedora" S/N: 5d-1337.5694.42
-Belter Blackjack
-Brooke Xi Cho

Gotchya Adam.

Best of luck in your Gming.

We've lost two of our group thus far.

That's Nedora and Jack down.

Up to the remainder of the group if we'd like to continue.

I'd like to continue! Shame to see people go, though.

I'm having a really rough-patch week, with megatons of work, so I'll be patchy as far as posting goes. Sorry about that. But I'm still ready and able!

I'm here, I'm here! I'm enjoying this immensely, and would like to continue.

When did Jack drop out? I haven't seen anything posted by him to that effect. Or did you mean Blackjack?

Okay, so we have four.
That's acceptable for continueation.

Jack informed me via PM.

Jean, no worries. Being at my In-laws between homes is a bit...intense so I wont have the overwhelming availability I had prior to the move.
Ill try to post the best I can.

I'll wright a bit here soon, buuuut...it seems Terra was the runner up for the Turing's Champion?

I've been following the discussion thread. It looks like the posting rate isn't mulitples per day, which was hard for me to keep up with.

I'd like to return, either with my original character or a new one.

Oh, by all means.
It has slowed down quiet a bit for one reason or another.

We'll have you come in with your original if you'd prefer him.
I'll allow you to consider how he rejoins the group.
Ideas from the others are also welcome.

Could I get a brief synopsis of what is known to have happened? How much time has passed since the terrorist attack on Luna?

I've got the beginnings of how Aster was stranded on Luna, and was off the surface before the bomb. Getting back to the crew will entail some serendipitous luck.

Lets see...its been a little over a week. So about nine days?

You could have gotten to the pirate base first...and if you wanted, could even be the pirate champion :P

Aster Returns! As our opponent!?

I was thinking something like:

He slipped and fell in the park. During the battle and retreat from the park he was not seen by his companions, and assumed to have returned to the ship. Just his luck that he slipped into a crevice between a rock and a bush. IIRC, they needed to make a hasty retreat from Luna. (Which is kinda funny because it then means the crew actually left two members behind)

He headed for the departure section. There he found some rich dude making a break for his own ship. That guy gets shot on in the doorway of his ship. Aster helps him into the ship, buttons the hatch, they fly off.

Moon goes boom. Dying rich dude thanks Aster by transferring command control of the ship before dying. Unfortunately, the nav system already had the pirate base locked in as the now dead rich dude was rich in part by being a fence.

Aster arrives at the pirate base. Now here we have two options. If the group needs a new ship, Aster has one. If the group has a ship, then it turns out the dearly departed fence owed some capital to a well-connected group of wealth redistribution specialists and the ship just happens to be enough to pay off the dept that was unwittingly transferred to Aster upon the death of the aforementioned corpse.

Well, you win the 'background return' thinking.
nicely done!

Very well.
I'll write up for a post tonight or tomorrow morning. Aster, I'm going to have the new ship set up as well. There will be a large owe-ing, as that's never a bad trope to utilize.

I think I'll have been on site for a day longer than the Turing's crew. However it wont be until the fight that you'll be made aware of the new arrivals beyond mummers of more "space faring boarder hoppers."

Sound good?

TL;DR for Aster.

We went on Mars, it got attacked by Baron Silus. His Squire let a small team to do some sort of weird WMD destruction with a shard from beyond the rim. After an incredible show of luck skill, Jean ventilated the skull of the guys, and we captured three of the soldiers, while the last one managed to get the corpse back on board of the shuttle.

Nedora tried to steal said shuttle, but got caught by the guards, and taken to the ship. We found an Urban legend banging on our door, just after we've managed to let out a full retreat and got the Lunatics to fight for their skins against the ship of Baron Silus. Who we called a massive coward in the process. We escaped in the process, Styx was antimattered, and we took damage in the fight. Then we got captured by SPACE PIRATES! And we also have a kindergarden, three soldiers, and a more-than-usual amount of skullduggery on our ship.

Also, hey! Welcome back!

Who/what is styx?

I recall Nedora getting captured. So you were able to rescue her? I seem to recall that you captured the device. Did you figure out what it was?

Aster isn't really the melee type to be a champion.

So Aster is bringing in a new ship, the Asset Reallocation Specialists are more than willing to let Aster work off the debt instead of confiscating the ship. Possibly by moving goods of questionable ownership to markets of opportunity.

I shall call the ship the Serene Falcon.

Sounds good.
(I'll let jean fill you in the on tom-foolery that we've encountered.)
I'll allow you to make the ship yourself, if youd like.

preferably, something smaller...Ship SM + 5. If you'd like.

We weren't, no. She's still onboard the Gauntlet, ready to be experimented on. The device, we got, and it's currently being hidden on the Turing. We know it's from beyond the Rim, so that'd make it pretty damn rare.

Regarding the new ship, that might be good, but I got quite attached to the Turing, despite it's... inefficacies. Don't know what the others think, though.

SM +5 is like tiny. Especially for something that can go interplanetary at TL10.

I'm looking through the various spaceship books for 4th.

SM +5 is 30 tons of passengers, gear, engines, hull, etc. Keep in mind that:

The empty weight of an F-16 is 10 tons
An Abrams tank is 68 tons
The empty weight of a space shuttle was 82 tons
The YT-1300 light freighter is given as about 100' in length and had a cargo capacity of 25-100 tons depending on configuration.
Serenity weighed in at 141 tons, could carry an additional 82 tons in cargo/passengers giving it a total weight of around 223 tons at 270 feet in length.

I'm thinking the first ship I listed would be a good analogy to something the size of the MF or Serenity.

Otherwise I'd look at modifying the deep space fighter for less weapons more cargo space and leave it at two passengers. That gets something more like slave 1 in size, which is still pretty close to the MF.

Ah, silly me.
I'll leave it to you then. The debt you take on will be equal to the ships total cost. Is that fair?

Here's the first pass at a draft.

Serene Falcon

I've designed this as more of a fast blockade runner.

Ship has decent all around armor, which could be reduced to save a little cash. Only one turret with a railgun for short-medium range and a launcher for long range. I didn't know if you were allowing beam weapons.

Currently it has 2 luxury staterooms, 4 cabins, can carry 95 tons of cargo, and 2.5 tons of shielded space for tariff free cargo.

As I understand it, there is artificial gravity, FTL is through a jump gate and apparently the Sol system only has one near Luna, that may or may not be in one piece.

Forcefields?

Now to the fun part. Paying for it.

Fully loaded with fuel, food and ammo, the ship comes in at 3491 signature gear points. SO that won't work. But, just having wealth might. Multimillionaire 1 costs 75 points and gives 50m, mm2 costs 100 points and gives 500m. This is more than enough.

So if we go with 80 points of multimillionaire, then we could call that the point cost of the ship. (Assuming the nice GM doesn't want to just give it to us.

I'll also be taking on a 20 pt debt to Pirates'R'Us, probably throw a quite often, extremely hazardous, involuntary duty on that for another -20. Then we can add a an enemy for the previous owner's other partners that are now quite unhappy to have lost their ship due to the very legal transfer that was made. Figure them for quite often, medium sized group for -40 points.

Great... I have a debt and duty to a bunch of easily provoked people, another group of easily provoked people out for me, but a pretty neat ship to go with it.

Oh fun times.
Railguns are easier to acquire since emergent lasers are generally stuck to military.

Also, I think it might make sense for us all to split the disadvantages among us, as associates. So if I'm not mistaken, that'll come up to 16 points each. Poor, poor Turing, though. All that time doing calibrations.

An alternative I may propose is for all of us to take 16 points of disadvantages towards said group, or the pirates. Saves Aster from taking in sole ownership of the ship and everything bad related to it, and helps the atmosphere of we're all in this together and we're all reasonable and equal.

On the phone right now, so I can't look at the books, but maybe us picking a secret regarding the ship's origins, and an enemy of the previous owner? Maybe a monetary debt towards the pirates?

All in all, we can still reuse the awesome ship map for the new ship, with slight changes, I suppose. Saves all the hard work going to waste, and we can move some of the stuff there.

PS: I suppose that finding that we changed ships FROM the Turing to the new one, might be the secret? The 80 points that the ship costs is offset by some of the disadvantages we picked up in our glorious escape from Styx.

>.>
<.<

(>")>

Thing is, the Falcon is a *lot* smaller than the Turing - for instance, it only has 4 cabins. It can also hold only 1/10 the mass. There goes our ATV...

I was thinking more like the Falcon would be *his* ship (debt and all), and we'd keep the Turing. Two ships could be better than one...

But, just to cover all the bases - Bringer, what could we sell the Turing (and ATV) for? Or is it now impossible to sell, given that EarthGov has described it (albeit a bit vaguely) in a "wanted" broadcast?

That's still an option.
Aster is coming in with this ship as a reason behind (and added backstory of) where he's been the last..w.aht..2 weeks in game?

As far as selling the Turing. I would advise caution in doing so. Though I'm sure jean could seduce a buyer to poking their wallet to about 50% the value...it would be damn hard to do.

The Turing can be modified as well. Alternatively, you can try to trash sell it to pirates. The ATV is still shinny and new. So that has more sellable options then the Turing, especially after the patch work.

Think of the Turing as your mobile HQ and the Falcon as a scout outpost. Its been humoring.

The ATV could just fit in a cargo hold? The holds do have big doors.

Though even if we did sell the Turing at 50%, how much would that take off the debt of the new ship?

In the same doc I shared previously, I added two tabs.

One is for a 3000 ton medium sized ship. Crew requirements go up a bit, cargo is now 280 tons standard, 10 tons shielded. This ship comes in at $198 million base, just over $222 million fully loaded.

The other is for a 100 ton fast courier. Crew requirements are really just one person, has room for two comfortably. Cargo tonnage drops to 4 tons, with half a ton in shielded cargo. I also added a clamp to piggyback onto other ships. Now the cost for this baby is just under $16.5 million base and just under $23 million loaded.

Since multimillionaire 1 gives $50 million, and Very rich is $5 million, I need about very rich of say 60-65 points. (I already have 10 spent on comfortable wealth)

I could drop the enemy to frequent from quite often changing the cost from -40 to -20. So -60 in disads to buy off to own the ship.

Did we all chip in to buy the Turing from our starting character wealth? I did not write anything down. Rix only spent about 25,000 on starting equipment, so how much she has left depends on what, if anything, she contributed to the cost of the ship.

How do spacers usually carry wealth? Is there some universal debit card equivalent or are there physical objects that serve as money?

That's a function of the physics of the game world.

With FTL communications, a central bank / credit system works.

Without that, I'd expect that you would see a mix of scripts issued by banks that have high trust. The typical government currency, precious gems and metals, or if assumed to be un-hackable, there may be something like a credit card, stick, or other device that is encrypted, assumed safe, and records debits/credits.

I have a cred stick with $20,000 on it. I can add more to it if I get paid, and I can use it to pay for my purchases. This works as long as the device can't be hacked.

I would expect that gems/metals might be a safe alternative, but it would have to be more rare than what we think of now as mining in the belt would result in a lot of these being available. It could also simply be that since gold and platinum have so many industrial uses that they remain viable exchange units. Sure, you can go mine an asteroid for its gold and platinum, and you can trade in a bag of unrefined gold dust for a reload of fuel and food, etc.

I would think that pirates would not be connected into any kind of bank/credit system, so maybe they have their own monetary system beyond basic barter. If we're going to be gadding about the shady parts of the solar system, we should work this out while we're on Ceres.

Pirates need something a little more...substantial than credits they cant use except for inner system visits...which is unlikely.

I think the pirates work off of a type of import export barter. They use transitional trade commdedities, like ores, that can be easily transferred to credits if need be.

with that said, I imagine that they use a type of bar or coin. Gold, Silver, iron...so on.

Regarding money, we all pooled our left over money and had about $283,000. Then we spent $172,000 on upgrades to the Turing, leaving us with about $111,000 in our "group account" right now.

We've invested heavily into the Turing, I think she's worth keeping...

fun times

Can you add a spoiler of the Turing info on the campaign tab?

Sure
though it is in my profile as well

POsting tomorrow morning.
Thought I was waiting on more reactions or set ups, apologies for misreading.

Thanks to those who have been dealing with the details of the ship cost. I know from experience that GURPS vehicle construction can get very complicated.

I am looking forward to getting the ship sorted out and getting the whole party on a mission of some sort so we can focus more on something specific. My character can't contribute much to events that require ship piloting or repair. And currently, I can't contribute to the combat unless and until healing is required. Right now we're effectively hostages negotiating for our lives and our future is not yet ours to decide.

So for me personally, I'm waiting for the plot to move to a point where we can all participate equally. I created a character that I knew would only be useful when PCs are wounded, which is usually a regular thing. If the campaign is going to go long stretches without injury, I might want to create a character who will be more involved in day to day posts.

Damn, sorry I'm late on that guys. Whew.
Game on!