[SF] Fly Free or Die AP - GM Ewok

Game Master EwokBanshee

Sounds good to me!

Question. I know in some Scenarios it's been suggested that the Engineer can function just as well in Engineering as they can on the Bridge, and communicate with everyone via comms. Since Brakim are immune to low radiation, could Strek just make Engineering his quarters?

We do have two large-sized crew members, and those crew quarters don't look very spacious...

Downtime question:
A day or two before arrival at a planet, can I have Guess?, by default, spend downtime to perform research into locating possible leads/contacts for procuring goods that can be smuggled to our next destination for some extra cash?

Those goods are maybe an extra crate of whatever we've been commissioned to transport or perhaps other items of a more contraband-ish (and profitable) nature...

;-)

Strek finishes his meal quietly, but rather than get up to put his plate in the receptacle, he simply STRETCHES his arm to reach instead.

On its return journey to normal size, he emulates a couple of the goblin's flexing poses, snickering under his breath.

Strek is reminding me of Plastic Man... but less "flamboyant."

Pushing hard to hit a deadline. I'll get a post in this weekend, but probably won't have time today.

Loving everyone's kookiness btw!

Strek is reminding me of Plastic Man... but less "flamboyant."

Lol, I've literally never heard of him until now. Your YouTube skills never cease to amaze me ^_^

Back and catching up! FTR, Jaraduk's piloting ranks were for his gunnery bonus, not really about gunning for the pilot position.

... Since Brakim are immune to low radiation, could Strek just make Engineering his quarters?

Yepp, that totally makes sense! You're right, those will be some cramped quarters. I suppose that's what happens when you're stuck on a company ship.

Downtime question:

A day or two before arrival at a planet, can I have Guess?, by default, spend downtime to perform research into locating possible leads/contacts for procuring goods that can be smuggled to our next destination for some extra cash?

Well, the answer is yes but no. Yes, you could do the Downtime action. But no, you likely don't have the credits to purchase any extra cargo at this point. A big theme throughout the book is that the cargo you're carrying costs money, often more than you'll make over several decades. The smallest purchasable amount of cargo is 500 credits. So, if the crew can put together 500 credits and you succeed at the Recall Knowledge Culture check, you could.

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Also, this is a great time to talk about Downtime. If you aren't familiar with it, it's a new system in the Character Operations Manual that the AP really wants you to use during your time between planets. Its a little in depth but it allows you to do some cool things. Don't feel pressured to do it now, but sometime in the next week or two please check out the Downtime rules and write down a few activities that your character might perform. (Note that some are day length and some are week length. Depending on the Drift time, you could have time for multiple activities.)

Each time the characters have a few days with nothing going on, usually during Drift travel, we'll have another scene around the 3rd shift meal table and I'll ask what everyone's Downtime actions are.

Downtime

Well, the answer is yes but no. Yes, you could do the Downtime action. But no, you likely don't have the credits to purchase any extra cargo at this point.

GM Ewok: Got it. That makes sense. Guess? will do the research anyways because even though we don't have the disposable cash on hand to "invest," this is what Guess? would do IC-ly with his downtime. Gotta prepare in case an opportunity presents itself!!

Everyone: Explore Futures seems particularly useful in that it grants a d20 reroll!

Since Strek will hopefully be Aiding Lars on Computers checks, and Lars hopefully Aiding Strek on Engineering checks, Coordinate sounds great.

Lounge would be Strek's ideal method of passing the time, but we need better quarters.

Maintain Equipment will probably be his solo default once he gets a higher level weapon.

If nobody else is doing Downtime as the ship's Science Officer, Strek wouldn't mind occasionally Map Star System.

And he'd also be down to Refit Starship (better quarters for starters!).

After we get this first shipment of cargo loaded, though, I think Strek will Secure Area.

Hmmmm... Akh definitely lacks the skill qualifications for a lot of these downtime activities. But he could at least Work Out, even if that doesn't seem too necessary for a big robot dragon. I'll have to think some more about it.

In terms of archetypes I had been tempted by Augmented (or whatever it's called) but it seems like there aren't good enough augments to offset the horsepower lost by a technomancer's magic hacks.

Thoughts?

Either way I think I'm gonna have Lars be a bit of a cyber addict and plan on spending a goodly bit of my credits on replacing my humanity.

Alrighty, we are started! I'll be posting about 6 days a week, if most folks can get in a post every 24 hour period we'll move along at a fairly good clip. Of course, if we're moving too fast or too slow for anyone just let me know. I'm always happy to adjust.

I'll normally post during my lunch break, about 9 hours earlier than right now. Sometimes that doesn't work out and I'll get a post in around this time.

If we have time to prep before a flight, Del will use Plan Route

If we're already on our way, she'll instead use Manage Course each day to try to cut down our travel times.

Once in a while she might Explore Futures instead, if time isn't an issue or we have downtime off ship.

Akh Xi wrote:

"Can that distribution center even hold 50 tons of yaro berries?"

In the GM thread, somebody did the math and found out that 50 tons of berries fills up about a quarter of your ship's cargo hold. Turns out berries can be packed pretty tightly!

Even though the description for cargo hold says it can only hold 25 tons?

(that's why Strek made a comment about it earlier)

I figured it was a weight issue, not necessarily a size issue.

But if you're happy giving us extra space, we'll take it!

Ah, the ship has two cargo holds! One on each side. I'm guessing that's why the author decided on 50 tons. The size vs weight debate is quite interesting, I'm assuming the weight is what's more important since they maxed that out and not the volume of your ship. Or they wanted to leave our Large friends room to stretch. ;)

Let's talk about time away from PbP! It is good, and healthy, to have time away from PbP every once in a while. Sometimes real life gets in the way, and that's what is most important. I do ask that you give us the most advance you can, to help everybody adjust and to help us bot you - if necessary.

In that vein, I will be on a business trip (hard to believe in this day and age, but it is what it is) 9/6-9/17 so my posting is going to be significantly worse than normal. I still expect to post at least every other day, but that two week period will be rough. And my posts will be very different times than normal. Just a heads up. :)

Erm, I might not post tomorrow night either. Ball game with the fam, box seats, free drinks. Might not be in good shape to post when we get done (wife will drive).

If things get hung up please bot me. Likely cast incompetence where opportune.

Just confirmed I'll be traveling a bit in Sept. So my posting from Sept 20 to 23 will potentially be reduced as well.

I'll be in Disneyland Sept 24th-26th with family. If I was by myself I could probably still post regularly, but family makes it difficult.

Ha, September will be a bit spotty! That's alright, we can work through that easily enough. Thanks for the heads up, y'all, please remind us right before too. :)

I'm imagining the goblin junk motorcycles to look something like this: rat bike

You're pretty close! That reminds me, there's art for this scene! Art is on Slide 2, it also has a view of what your truck looks like!

Cool! Our truck is quite the long boy in reality vs that pic.

I learned recently, from an author interview with the author of this book, that the art for most AP's is commissioned before the book is fully written. And the maps, story, and art are done by different people, so their visions are often a little different. I enjoy looking at the fight scene artworks to see the minor (or major!) differences between the original vision and the end result.

Yes! The big art orders are ordered before and you have to make sure to include those beats and scenes in your adventure, but others are ordered after the fact to match the adventure you've written (side NPCs, maps, the inner cover starship and such).

That's a fascinating behind-the-scenes factoid! I suppose that's because the big art requires longer lead time to deliver...? I honestly don't recall ever noticing incongruity between art and other aspects of the AP books.

That's a great insight, Del! Very cool! I noticed the Dead Suns art tended to have big Star Wars-esque cliff/trench drop offs within starships or dungeons while the maps were fairly flat.

I've got loot administrative questions:

What we did last game:

- Anybody who could make use of something in the general coffer should just take it and add it to their character sheet. If it's useful to them, it helps the whole party really.
- Every now and then we'd sell all leftover equipment and split the proceeds.
- After that point personal funds are personal. if you sell something its for your own funds.

This assumes nobody is claiming equipment just to personally sell it. We didn't have that problem last game and I wouldn't expect it to happen in this one.

What are people's thoughts on saving up for that UPB grinder I linked earlier? It might not be as important in this AP, since we'll probably have ample opportunity to sell and purchase the gear we want, but in the three APs I've played thus far, the Grinder was invaluable.

Jaraduk: Sounds good to me!

Strek: Picking up the grinder with common funds sounds like a good idea to me as well!

Everyone: I've picked up a pistol and dogslicer/survival knife from the coffers

Agree with Jarduk, the process seemed to work well last time and this one seems to have much more time to actually buy the gear want.

Much like Zulu was at the end I don't see myself needing a ton of gear, some armor, a decent gun, and plan to spend my funds on augmentations mostly for RP reasons.

UBP grinder seems cool.

I'll get an IP post tonight. Jarduk nailed it, I was thinking of Map Starsystem to try to help us once we left the drift.

No post today, sorry y'all! I'll reply to these tomorrow morning.

Hmm, map Starsystem doesn't seem like it would apply for this task? Almost wonder if just aiding piloting would be more helpful. Though with Del's rolls I don't think it would matter.

What are people's thoughts on saving up for that UPB grinder I linked earlier? It might not be as important in this AP, since we'll probably have ample opportunity to sell and purchase the gear we want, but in the three APs I've played thus far, the Grinder was invaluable.

I'd be in to get one. Though they are pretty expensive for 1st level.

As a note, GM, you can place a Spoiler within a Spoiler, but the second one can't be named. So like...

Sorry sorry sorry, impromptu family gathering this weekend that wasn't planned. I'll have to catch up tomorrow night-ish.

@Guess
Yepp, I like your suggestions. Anyone can take any looted item and delete it off Slide 6 when they want. As long as it's not a super expensive item, it's probably easiest to just give the funds to the individual when it's sold. That won't make much of a difference. When the remainder of the items (that no one is using) are sold, those credits are split among the group. As for the individual credits, feel free to take those as soon as they are mentioned in the loot. I count them up because I know some players don't add their credits up until the end of the book and that makes it easier. (This AP will be different than others I've run since you'll hit trade cities so much more than most.)

@Strek
I might be misunderstanding the Portable Grinder. Does it give you any benefits over just selling the items? I expect this book (and probably the remainder of the AP) to hit a lot more selling/buying opportunities than other AP's.

@Lars
Yepp, I don't think Map Star System would be valuable here.

@Nefreet
Huh... I've never been able to get that to work before. Thanks, I think I figured it out this time! Years on the boards, still learning new things. Thanks for the help!

I don't have diplomacy, so I'll leave any negotiating to the rest of you.

After my recent rolls I'm pretty gun-shy with anything social.

Jaraduk can always try to assist!! It doesn't hurt! And if it does, then that just makes the situation all the more interesting!!!

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As I mentioned in OOC within the gameplay thread, is it safe to assume that all of our characters are okay with the implication that they smuggle goods illegally?

I'm thinking this party wouldn't cross the line to doing things like smuggling an armed bomb as a part of an assassination attempt. Nor would the party smuggle weapons of mass destruction, bioweapons nor participate in trafficking of unwilling sentients (but something like smuggling refugees off a war-torn planet would be okay).

I'm not sure if the party would be up for smuggling arms or other weapons either. Maybe not since a few of our characters are good-aligned, except maybe to enslaved rebels or something like that? But perhaps narcotics is okay?

Guess? would not be willingly okay with WMDs, bioweapons and sentient-trafficing - too risky and leaning a bit too much towards "evil" alignment. Aside from that, Guess? is okay with most other items but he won't willingly agree to smuggle other items that anyone on the crew finds ethically objectionable.

So if other characters on the crew object to smuggling certain other categories of items, Guess? will agree to decline those jobs. He may first try to convince his crewmates but ultimately won't go against any conscientious objector because trust amongst the crew (in the dead of space and while under fire planetside) comes first.

So, as far as Del's aware she's a delivery pilot who performs legal shipping services. Which doesn't mean we can't be smugglers. It just means Del thinks it's all on the up and up. And if she's aware we're about to do something shady, she'd probably be uncomfortable and worry. Del would rather do a legal job for worse pay than a shady job for more pay any day.

She would not let things like armed bombs, drug shipments, human trafficking or something go down on this ship. That said, I'm sure some situations could convince her to allow some of that: the aforementioned smuggling weapons to "good" rebels or helping refugees or something.

So, smuggle away (with Del's complaints or obliviousness) but nothing too morally objectionable.

Nothing morally objectionable for Strek. Emulating my real life view, he gets a sense of fulfillment being useful, even if the pay isn't great (I deliver medical devices overnight to people who desperately needed them earlier that day, but for whatever reason the original delivery fell through).

@Del: Gotcha! Guess? would know this about Del and take it into account in how he approaches situations. I'll have Guess? act accordingly moving forward!

Guess? wrote:

Errrr... Also I hope everyone is okay with Guess?'s direct approach...

You're the only "face", so I'd say we're at your mercy! Which is ironically probably why EJ hired you for this crew >.>

Well, depending on the situation, we could always talk ICly or OOCly about how we'd want to approach a set of circumstances. And if a character jumps into a social situation with a particular course of action before Guess?, then Guess? will certainly try to support his crewmates. But of course the exact words that come out of the goblin's mouth might be offbeat or not quite what everyone expected... which should be about right for a goblin! hehe!

Perhaps these minklink circlets may be useful although I wonder if there are cheaper alternatives.

@Strek

I might be misunderstanding the Portable Grinder. Does it give you any benefits over just selling the items? I expect this book (and probably the remainder of the AP) to hit a lot more selling/buying opportunities than other AP's.

I suppose if we didn't have a lot of sell opportunities, this would be useful to grind things down and craft gear during drift downtime? But if we're often in locales that allow us to sell items for creds and/or UPBs, perhaps this is less useful?

Time for some interesting notes about this AP, several of which Guess? pointed out.

-The economics are weird. They definitely did their best (and I can't think of a better way) but they are weird. The author very intentionally doesn't give a number for the shipment price, because they don't want the players to take the money and run. (And because the price is probably a few million credits, given that just one crate is 500 credits.) And yet, you're responsible for where the money goes when you only get a partial payment... I'm reconciling it that you were supposed to give the buyer two account numbers, the profit to be split evenly between the two.

-This AP is all about normal folks getting screwed over by "the man" and doing their best to survive. That's a really fun idea that covers tropes from media like Alien and Firefly and others. However... that also means you're going to get railroaded into bad situations a lot more (or at least more obviously) in this AP than others. When you're a simple space trucker, sometimes life is hard and you just get screwed. It's less about what created the problem and more about how you adapt to it. That being said, I get that bad things happening outside of your control can be frustrating for folks. This AP is less of a heroic epic and more about carving out your own part of the galaxy to feel safe and happy in. If you ever feel frustrated about a specific situation, please raise it in the Discussion tab and we'll talk it through.

-Smuggling is a really interesting concept in the Pact Worlds. The worlds have wildly different sets of laws and something could be legal and unethical, or legal at your pick-up location and not legal at the drop-off location, or not legal in the section of space you're flying through, etc. This AP seems to be written for a Good-leaning Neutral crew, with allowances for evil-leaning ones so I think Del and Strek will be just fine with most of the content. That being said, the book also intentionally creates ethical dilemmas for the crew - like this one.

-Also, your two crates of yaro berries can be sold at full price to any vendor. Those are outside of the current dilemma. (It's easy to sell 2 crates, tough to sell 20,000.)

GM Ewok wrote:

I might be misunderstanding the Portable Grinder. Does it give you any benefits over just selling the items? I expect this book (and probably the remainder of the AP) to hit a lot more selling/buying opportunities than other AP's.

I suppose if we didn't have a lot of sell opportunities, this would be useful to grind things down and craft gear during drift downtime? But if we're often in locales that allow us to sell items for creds and/or UPBs, perhaps this is less useful?

That's where I was going with this, yeah. When you're inside the Sun, or traversing the unexplored Vast, or holed up against the Swarm, not a lot of opportunities to buy and sell.

Being so close to civilization has its perks!

Yes, the grinder would have been quite helpful in the Dead Suns AP.

Also, riffing off what Strek said, one of the biggest complaints about this book is that it promises that "We're No Heroes" then keeps asking if you're a Hero. lol.

Haha!!!

All this talk is making me want to re-watch the Firefly train heist episode...

Also, riffing off what Strek said, one of the biggest complaints about this book is that it promises that "We're No Heroes" then keeps asking if you're a Hero. lol.

Darn it! Lol

So, Jaraduk left the Diaspora in debt having tried to work both sides of deals too many times. He's not at all unfamiliar to "doing what it takes" to survive, and perhaps a bit too risk prone. So, unless there were be a lot of needless suffering from a plan, he's very likely to be down with it and trust the group.