Author: Ronan McNamee

I run thedicepool.com, a blog about ttrpgs and my experience with them.

Write Your Own Star Trek Adventure

Star Base 343

In between missions, the crew of the USS Challenger had time for some R&R on Star Base 343. This particular star base is mentioned only once in a TNG episode as a spot where Picard hinted Riker should take some rest after he had to disintegrate his not-girlfriend. So, I figured it must have something to recommend it for shore leave. It was also where our PCs transported the survivors of the Cressida disaster aboard the Challenger after their city plummeted into the heart of a gas giant, so it stood to reason there would be medical facilities there. Finally, I knew that it was a place where starships could seek repairs. So, when the party arrived on station for a bit of a break, I asked the players to paint the scene for me; how can we tell this star base is a centre for ship maintenance? What shows us that Star Base 343 is renowned for its medical care? What about the station lets us see that this is a good place for rest and relaxation?

And the players did not disappoint. Especially on that last question, I got plenty of detail. All of their answers allowed me to build a living, believable community and place and inspired me to write a short, station-based side-mission.

Laniyar Tennan, Betazoid technichian character sheet
Laniyar Tennan, Betazoid technichian character sheet

Newly minted Lieutenant Junior Grade, Tennan, our Betazoid, felt the need to reflect on the events of the last mission at a sort of temple of his people that stood alongside other places of worship and meditation on the station’s central concourse. I imagined a place where the Betazoids that frequented it went naked as was their practice, and consulted elders for advice. Laniyar discovered a great shift in his outlook that urged him to change one of his own Values, in fact. After that, he got dressed up in his best shirt and went to the bar that he had also described when asked to paint the scene.

Burk ven Jaxa Tellerite engineer character sheet
Burk ven Jaxa Tellerite engineer character sheet

Lieutenant Commander Burk ven Java, our Tellarite engineer, wanted to indulge his longing for a good debate as well as his pastime of metallurgy, by finding someone working on their ship at the docking ring and telling them what they were doing wrong. The Orion freighter captain, Bashorat was incensed, frustrated and, finally, exhausted by Commander ven Jaxa’s arguments. He allowed him to make the necessary modifications to his ship and declared them life-changing! Bashorat took Burk by the arm and dragged him to the bar, insisting on buying him a drink.

Rashid Kemal, human pilot character sheet
Rashid Kemal, human pilot character sheet

Lieutenant Kemal, the pilot, had a personal connection on the station, an old roommate from the academy, a medical track colleague, who had been assigned to one of the star base’s many hospitals. Groznik was a Denobulan who had been taught the wonders of skate-boarding by Kemal at Star Fleet Academy. After a few drinks and some time to catch up he decided it was time to do some show-boating on the rails of the promenade. He replicated a couple of skate-boards and got his ass handed to him by Kemal in a contest of tricks. Kemal watched Groznik come acropper off a rail and they scarpered before station security picked them up for dangerous horse-play. They retreated to the bar, of course, and that’s where they ran into the others.

Bashorat took them all to meet his sister who had arrived on the Challenger as well. Administrator Damaad, who had tried to bribe the star fleet officers to let her use the transporter to beam up her clients’ valuables as Cressida fell, was not best pleased to see them, since they had refused her deal in order to help save the natives of Kizomic VI instead. But she soon came around enough to make them another offer…

Twenty Minute Trek

Here is exactly what I wrote for the short mission I wanted them to breeze through in a single session along with a few notes I took as the session progressed. Is it weird to block quote myself?

R&R on Starbase 343
What do they want to do here?
Passtimes
Consorting

Pike’s Place – the bar

They will run into Administrator Damaad again. She says she bears them no ill will but this is not true. She will ask them to help her recoup some of her losses. If they were to accompany her to complete a deal with a federation contact, it would lend her a sort of credibility that would be invaluable. She says she would owe them a favour. This could involve her contacts among the Klingons.

The deal is a for a shipment of medical supplies which she won in a game of chance. She says she needs this to repay several of her clients from Cressida. If she doesn’t, they may get the Orion Syndicate involved to collect from her in some other way. She is desperate for that not to happen.

But there is a complication: the supplies are aboard a ship that’s docked at the Starbase. It’s an old freighter named the Utah. She claims she won them in a game of chance but that the captain (Captain Ken Sato) of the ship since disappeared. This is true but sounds false.

She would like the PCs to help her get the supplies off the Utah and to the rendezvous that evening.

If they take her up on her offer and go to the Utah, they will find a mystery. None of the cargo is on board, but neither are the crew.

In fact, in order to avoid having to pay up, Captain Sato, desperate, tried to use the transporter’s pattern buffer to hide both the cargo and the crew. But patterns are beginning to break down and, in an attempt to rectify this, the ship’s main computer occasionally re-incorporates the crew in random parts of the ship for a few seconds to refresh their patterns. To the PCs, they will hear momentary noises, thumps and bumps from around corners or the deck above or below, cut off comms and screams of terror or frustration.

They will also discover that the Utah is having problems with both warp and impulse engines. It’s in no fit state to leave the station any time soon.

Ship traits: Engine Faults, Haunted, freighter, Unlocked, stabilise transporters

Captain Sato traits: Freighter captain, desperate, human

That’s it. It took far less time to write that up than it’s taken me to write this blogpost. Here’s how I approached it:

  1. Involve an NPC they already knew – the first part of their time on Star Base 343 all took place in one session. So, I was able to connect Bashorat (who had been improvised) to Damaad when I realised they were both Orion. This bit was not planned but it felt like it was.
  2. Think Star Trek episode – I wanted this to be a stand-alone Star Trek episode, like most of those from the franchise. I wanted it to involve a hapless, maybe unlikeable NPC or one who required help of some sort. I was thinking of characters like Mudd from Mudd’s Women or Vash, from the TNG episode, Captain’s Holiday.
  3. Mystery – I wanted to create a mystery for them to solve with the skills and advantages they had as characters and with the universe knowledge the players had.

Conclusion

This turned out really well. I was ready to just wrap up their downtime and continue with the campaign from the starter set if they didn’t bite. Their previous encounter with Administrator Damaad was less than friendly, so there was every chance they’d tell her to bugger off. But curiosity got the better of them. Well, mostly. Tennan, as the junior officer and the one most affected by the risks they took in the previous adventure added a necessary level of trepidation and desire to run everything past the Captain. The other two heard him out but just kept pushing forward until they were aboard the Utah, investigating the ship itself.

I like to think I brought some OSR sensibilities to this scenario as well. I created the problems but not the solutions. I also improvised a bunch during the session as the players came up with new and varied avenues of investigation. I had to imagine a crew for the Utah, rather than just the captain, and they were pissed off at him, let me tell you. I also had to round out Sato’s motivations and his reasons for taking such drastic measures. I had to figure out a lot on the fly, but since I had kept the framework loose and the details flexible, it worked pretty well.

Also, it turned out quite spooky! I was hoping for a haunted ship feel and that’s what it felt like on the night. I’m very proud of my descriptions of the quickly cut-off comms and the unexplained bumps in the dark and flashes of light on the ship, actually.

We’re taking a short break from Star Trek to facilitate the Tables & Tales Third Annual Talk Like a Pirate Day One Shot (probably a 3 shot this year) but I’m eager to get back into the stars!

The Editioning, AD&D 2nd Edition, Part 5

Surprise!

Welcome back, dear reader, to the Editioning, our challenge to play an adventure in every major edition of D&D over a period of about two years. We’ve already completed OD&D and Basic D&D adventures. Had a great time with them. They were both quite rules-light, even if some of the mechanics were not exactly instinctive. And, even if you didn’t know any given rule and you couldn’t find it in the book, the DM could easily make a ruling in the moment. AD&D 2nd Edition is another beast.

Now, I will preface the following complaints with the fact that I am really trying to play each edition as close to rules-as-written as possible. One of the things I wanted to get out of the Editioning was to be able to learn all those rules and another was to be able to compare them to each other. There are, of course, a lot of similarities across each of the editions. They’re all still D&D, after all. But some things change in every edition for some reason. Surprise is one of these things, initiative is another. Today, I want to discuss Surprise in AD&D 2E… because I have a bone to pick.

You know, it’s not even the rule itself that I have a problem with. The rule is pretty simple, actually. Each side, if there’s a chance they could be surprised in the situation, rolls 1d10. If they roll a 1, 2 or 3, they are surprised. There are a bunch of modifiers that can be applied to this roll, including a PC’s reaction adjustment, which comes from their Dexterity. But that’s it. Easy, right? Easy to find? WRONG!

Where would you expect that rule to exist, dear reader? Well, let me tell you where I thought it would be. I thought it would be in the Combat chapter of the Player’s Handbook. But to narrow things down, I checked that book’s index. S, s, s… there it was! Surprise, pages 89, 112 and 113. OK, I thought, now I’ll find out how to determine Surprise in AD&D 2E. WRONG! Page 89 provided me a definition of the term, “surprise.”

Surprise can happen any time characters meet another group unexpectedly(monsters, evil knights, peasants etc.). Surprise us simply what happens when one side–a person or party–is taken unawares, unable to react until they gather their wits. Their opponents, if unsurprised, are allowed a bonus round of action while the surprised characters recover. It’s entirely possible for both sides in a given situation to be surprised!

This is only the first of three paragraphs telling me about the concept of Surprise. At no point does it actually explain the rule to me, however.

I cannot quite express to you, dear reader, how much unnecessary text is contained in the PHB. I don’t think the majority of people reading this book require a definition of surprise, especially when it is not immediately followed by the rules for it.

Medieval Cheers
Medieval Cheers

On to page 112 and 113 then. The index gets this slightly wrong. It should read 111 and 112. 113 is a full page illustration. One of my favourites in the book actually, medieval Cheers! Anyway, we are now in Chapter 11: Encounters. The Surprise Roll is finally described here in some five paragraphs. Here’s an example of some of the absolute sawdust they used to fill out this book.

Naturally, surprise does not happen all the time. There are many easy and intelligent ways it can be prevented. The most obvious is if the player characters can see those they are about to encounter well before getting close. For example, the characters may see the dust of a group of horsemen coming their way, or notice the lanterns of a group of peasants coming through the woods, or hear the grunting barks of a gnoll war party closing through the trees. In these cases there is no way the characters are going to be surprised by the encounter.

And it’s not just a matter of ignoring this bumph. The rules are cleverly hidden away within paragraphs like this!

Anyway, this section has finally described the rule for me, and even told me what the effects of surprise are for both sides! The surpriser gets a free round of attacks but not spells and the surprisee is caught flat-footed so loses their Dex bonus to AC.

But here’s the kicker:

The surprise roll can also be modified by Dexterity, race, class, cleverness, and situation.

I’m sure the designers of this fine game thought to do something as convenient as to provide the potential modifiers to a rule on the same page as the rule itself. WRONG!

The DM has the listing of modifiers that apply to given situations.

“I do?” I thought.

At this point, I was close to despair, dear reader. I had a little cry and a big swig of my beer and dove back in. But this time, I used my noggin. I googled it and found the answers I needed here on the Murphy’s Victim blog. By which I mean I discovered that the table of modifiers I needed was on page 102 of the Dungeon Master’s Guide, in the Encounters chapter of that book. So, at least it’s consistent.

The Surprise Modifiers table from the DMG
The Surprise Modifiers table from the DMG

Anyway, there I discovered that the PCs, being in poor light, would have a -1 modifier to their surprise roll. None of the other modifiers applied in their situation.

Dear reader, they rolled a 6, meaning they were not surprised. Nonetheless, they still lost a full round of attacks because they had just been rousted from their makeshift beds and were still a little bit eepy.

I went exploring this rabbit-hole because of a single line in the description of the encounter Sunday’s session started with. This is from the Shadows Abroad in Sigil section on Chapter II The Mortuary:

If the PCs have no watch and are awakened in the middle of the night, the Shadowknave and his men have a +4 bonus on their chance of surprise.

This is an awkwardly phrased sentence, but, essentially, what it means is that, should the Shadowknave and his mates roll to be the ones who are surprised, they would get a +4 bonus on that roll. This would, most certainly, make it more harder for them to be surprised. But, why in the Nine Hells would they ever have the potential to be surprised in a situation where they are breaking down the door to the home of four sleeping individuals who they know for a fact are inside and sleeping? But, since I didn’t understand the surprise rules when I first read that sentence I had to look them up to understand what they meant.

Dear reader, I did not make a surprise roll for the Shadowknave and his lads. That would have been absurd.

This is a pretty good point to segue into what happened last session.

To the Mortuary

It was a hard fought battle in the little run-down church to Varuna that they call home. The PCs were caught off guard (if not precisely surprised) and lost a full round while the mercenaries burst into the church. The enemy spell-caster immediately used his Sleep spell, downing Glaermond the Paladin again straight away. I ruled that our tiefling, Trance, as a half-lower-planar creature, was allowed a saving throw. She managed to save and, somehow, avoided getting hit by the three mercs attacking her and immediately kicked the Paladin to wake him up. The three attackers on Devansh Rao, our Cleric, were not so unlucky (he’s got a Dex of 4, so no surprise.) They knocked him out and then went to focus on the Necromancer who lived in the basement. Aurora managed to use her wand to move the earth from the walls and floor to block off the entrance to her underground lair, while her goat familiar and Spectral Hand continued the attack. Back upstairs, the spell-caster Scared and Slowed everyone in the church, his own men included, and Trance cast a sphere of Darkness that encompassed the entire interior. The Paladin, who had the Blind Fighting proficiency, managed to get a couple of licks in. Trance climbed up into the rafters and then through the front window dropping down silently behind the hooded spell-caster to successfully back-stab him. When he turned to face her, she saw that it was the same half-elf they had seen leaving a “dead” body on the floor of an alley in the Hive the previous day. At this point, the half-elf issued the order to retreat. The mercs grabbed Devansh and his stuff and scarpered. Glaermond managed to take out one of them as they ran off but they soon lost them in the maze of Sigil’s streets.

Devansh woke hours later in a vault otherwise occupied by a foursome of skeletons and a sarcophagus. He had a look around, experimented with the skeletons and examined the sarcophagus. He discovered the skeletons only reacted when he made for the door and then found that there was a cache of useful and incriminating items inside the sarcophagus. Long story short, Toranna the Grey, of the Dustmen faction was involved with someone called Marvent and had something to do with the disappearances of the barmies from the Hive. He also got his stuff back and immediately turned the skeletons with his holy symbol. Unfortunately he was still locked in the vault.

Mortuary Map 1
Mortuary Map 1
Mortuary Map 2
Mortuary Map 2

Meanwhile, the others returned to Bendon Mawl, their patron, to explain what happened and to pick some useful items, Oil of Elemental Resistance (fire) and a Potion of Invisibility. Interestingly, these matched the sorts of useful items that Devansh found in the sarcophagus. Then they formulated a cunning plan involving a coffin delivery that allowed them all to enter the Mortuary by the back door. Once there, they soon heard Devansh calling for help and freed him from his vault. Once they were all together and disguised in Dustmen robes, they ascended all the way to the Overvalue where the portal to the Elemental Plane of Fire was. All the evidence they had gathered so far suggested that there was some connection between Toranna, this portal, the disappearances of the barmies and the return of Eliath and the Dancing Man to Sigil. Toranna was there, feeding another barmy into the portal. The party watched as they planned what to do next…

Conclusion

I was glad I didn’t have to look up that surprise rule at the table. I did all that before the start of the session. But just imagine if you did have to? I would simply not have bothered. I would have made a ruling as soon as I got stymied in the PHB Combat section.

I don’t really remember how I dealt with these situations when I was originally playing AD&D back in the ’90s. I do think I had a better grasp on the rules back then, but I also remember having a fair amount of frustration with the game too.

Despite all of this, I think we’re all having a good time with the adventure still and even with the system, in many ways.

I’ll be back with more Editioning in a couple of weeks, dear reader. In the meantime, don’t be Surprised if I am back with some other post next week.

An elven king on his throne with a guard on one side and an elven woman on the other
Elven King

Star Trek Adventures Advancement

Character Growth

There are more ways to deal with character advancement in RPGs than I could even attempt to name, never mind describe. A number of them depend on XP, whether it’s in large numbers, like D&D, or in relatively small numbers like Dungeon World or Blades in the Dark. Maybe you use those numbers in a direct, 1:1 ratio to improve abilities or add new powers. Then again, maybe you just add them up until you hit a new level.
Maybe your favourite system eschews XP in favour of improvement rolls, like in Troika, Mörk Borg, or Call of Cthulhu, where your fate might be to not improve at all, or even get worse, despite everything you’ve done. That one can seem cruel sometimes, but, then again, rolling dice is fun, right?
Well, the advancement mechanic in Star Trek Adventures 2E is not like any of the above, and that’s what I’m here to discuss today.

The Character Arc

Player-Facing Advancement: This system of milestones is designed so a main character’s advancement is driven by the player, rather than something which happens passively in the background or at the gamemaster’s discretion. All the decisions made when adding a log entry, reaching a milestone, or completing a character arc are made by you, the player, and they all stem from the decision to use a value. As you begin each session with 1 Determination, you always have the potential to use at least one value or Directive in every mission, so there should always be at least a little potential for growth if the character plays an active part in the mission. The gamemaster can help you along by creating and suggesting opportunities where a value might be useful, but ultimately, the power to guide your character’s growth rests in the hands of one person: you.
Player-Facing
Advancement

We’ve all heard of a character arc in a TV show or movie. We want to see growth and change in our favourite heroes or, for that matter, in our antagonists too. That change we want to see? Is it a matter of them growing tougher, or more powerful? Do we want to see them gain new skills or contacts? I mean, maybe sometimes, but growing in power does not produce a character arc. Not alone at least. Is it more important that Peter Parker gained the proportional speed and strength of a spider, or that he learned that with great power comes great responsibility? Because without internalising that lesson, suddenly, Spiderman is a villain, or, at best like one of those “super heroes” from “the Boys.” Of course that wasn’t the end of Peter’s character arc, though you could argue that it was the end of one of his character arcs.

Commander to Captain, Benjamin Sisko

How about an example from Star Trek, since that’s what we’re talking about. Ben Sisko, Commander of Deep Space 9 arrived on the station, not expecting to be there for more than a few months. He was scarred and bitter from his experience with the Borg when he lost his wife. His only joy in life was his son, Jake. The Bajorans name him the Emissary, a religious figure of great significance. He is uncomfortable with that. Through the course of the show’s seven seasons, he heals the scars caused by the Borg and the loss of his wife, which leads him to accept his new life fully, and eventually, a new love. He becomes devoted to Deep Space 9, its crew and everything it represents and goes to any lengths to defend it. He embraces his position as Emissary and even prioritises it above all other concerns on several occasions. Through all of this, he is promoted, left in charge of the defence of the Alpha Quadrant against the Dominion, gets a cool new ship and enjoys political influence across two quadrants. But the recognisable gains in temporal power are all reflections of his emotional and personal breakthroughs.

This is what Start Trek Adventures is trying to do, and I think I might love it? I am reserving judgement until my PCs get to the point where they can actually achieve a full character arc themselves.

Milestones

A variety of TOS era Star Fleet officers on the surface of a planet.
A variety of TOS era Star Fleet officers on the surface of a planet.

This is not an unknown term in the area of levelling up characters, but in the context of this game, Milestones are handled somewhat differently than in D&D 5E. In D&D, Milestone Levelling is simply an alternative to doling out XP. The DM decides at which points of their adventures the adventuring party deserve to level up. It rarely has anything to do with what the players want, although, if timed correctly, it has the potential to be narratively pleasing.

In Star Trek Adventures, each PC makes a note about each adventure in their own personal log. They can write as much or as little about it as they like, but, at the very least, they should note the name of the adventure. I think it could be helpful to also write down the major events of the adventure and the Values they used during them, as that will be relevant to the advancement process.

All PCs have Values. They are important to this process. You can take a look at my character creation post for a bit more on Values, but I can also save you a little time by quoting myself here:

Values – a few brief sentences that describe what your character believes, treasures, and thinks. They should guide roleplaying more than any other aspect of the character

A PC uses their Values to either spend or gain Determination, one of the several currencies you use in this game to improve your chances of succeeding at tasks. After a PC either Challenges or Complies with a Value, they gain Determination. If they chose to Challenge it, they get the opportunity to change their Value to something new, reflecting the lesson they learned in the situation.

If you used a Value during an adventure, you can take the chance at the end to make an adjustment to your PC:

  • Improve an Attribute by 1 point to a maximum of 11 and at the expense of a point from a different Attribute, which cannot be reduced below 7
  • Improve a Department by 1 point to a max of 4 and at the expense of a point from a different Department, which cannot be reduced below 1
  • Replace an existing Focus with a new one
  • Gain an existing Talent with a new one
  • Change a Supporting Character in a similar way

Later, you need to reach a point in another adventure when you want to use one of your Values, and when you do that, link it to a previous adventure when you used that same Value. You have to show how the current situation is influenced by that first one. If you can, you gain a point of Determination. You can only use each log entry once like this, so you mark it to show it has been used. Then, at the end of the latest adventure, you write down in your log that you gained a Milestone and the log entry you used to get it. When you do that, you can make an improvement to your character!

You can do one of the following:

  • Improve an Attribute by 1 point to a maximum of 11
  • Improve a Department by 1 point to a max of 4
  • Gain a new Focus
  • Gain a new Talent
  • Improve a Supporting Character in a similar way
  • Improve one of the Ship’s Systems at the expense of another System
  • Improve one of the Ship’s Departments at the expense of another one
  • Swap a Ship’s Talent

Now, finally, if you can link the use of that Value to the Milestone you achieved previously? Paydirt. You have yourself a Character Arc. And if you can do that, you can improve even more:

  • Improve an Attribute by 1 point to a maximum of 12
  • Improve a Department by 1 point to a max of 5
  • Gain a new Value
  • Improve one of the Ship’s Systems
  • Improve one of the Ship’s Departments
  • Add a new Ship’s Talent

Every time to you complete a character arc, the next one must involve an additional Milestone, so, that means, another adventure too. I like that this represents the concept of becoming stuck in your ways.

I think this system is a little cumbersome, if I’m honest. At least on paper, it involves a lot of admin from the players in linking their Values and Milestones, not to mention remembering all of this in play. But I love the idea of this guided change in characters’ personalities and Values bringing about significant mechanical changes. This is what I was trying to convey in the summary of Sisko’s arcs above.

Repututation

This is an entirely separate advancement track for your Star Trek Adventures character. It can lead to promotion or demotion, awards or reprimands and it adds another layer to how you might play when you know your PC’s reputation might be on the line.

Your Main Character in Star Trek Adventures starts off with a Reputation score of 3. This represents the score of a reliable Star Fleet officer. Someone their superiors can count on. But you are barely distinguished from the rest of the crew. Of course, reputations change. They can be made or broken by your own actions and how they’re perceived.

To determine how your Reputation might be affected by your actions and words during the course of an adventure you have to make a roll. The Reputation Roll is much like any other task roll except that the target number is your current Reputation score + 7, and the size of your dice pool and the Difficulty of the task are determined by how you answered a series of questions about the adventure you just finished. These questions can be tailored for the specific adventure but the Core Book provides a set of standard ones:

POSITIVE INFLUENCES
Answering yes to the following questions are considered positive influences:

  • Was your mission successful?
  • Did you positively use one or more of the mission’s Directives? Did you obey the orders given to you by your superiors? Did you prevent combat from occurring, or avoid escalating hostilities? Did you establish common ground or peaceful cooperation with those who were newly encountered or who were previously hostile to you?
  • Did you directly contribute to saving the lives of innocent people or your fellow crew?
  • Did you take all reasonable action to render aid to those in urgent need or distress?

NEGATIVE INFLUENCES
Answering yes to the following questions is considered negative influence on the character’s Reputation:

  • Was your mission a failure?
  • Did you challenge one of the mission’s Directives?
  • Were you disobedient to your superiors?
  • Were personnel under your command killed during the mission?
  • Did you employ force to any ends other than the defense of self, ship, crew, or innocent life?
  • Did you employ lethal force during the mission?
  • Did you take any unnecessary risks during the mission?
  • Did you cause, or allow through inaction, innocent lives to be lost during the mission?
  • Did you lie, cheat, threaten, or coerce others to achieve objectives during the mission?
  • Did you permit a colleague or subordinate to act unethically or illegally during the performance of their duties?

The number of Positive Influence questions you can truthfully answer “yes” to, is the number of d20s you roll for the Reputation Roll. The number of Negative Influence questions you truthfully answer “yes” is your Difficulty for the Reputation Roll.

After our first adventure we ran through all of these questions. Most of the answers were straight-forward but some elicited lively debates on what might be considered “unethical” or what is meant by “coercion.” In the end, the players enjoyed a pretty high number of successes as they had Difficulty ratings of no more than 1 or 2 but were rolling 6 or 7 dice! For each success above the Difficulty, they gained a point of Acclaim. It is possible to roll lower than the Difficulty. In this case, you get Reprimand points instead.

You can use Acclaim for the following:

  • Awards – claim Awards like the “Christopher Pike Medal of Valor” or the “Star Cross.” Each Award comes with a beneficial mechanical effect
  • Commend Another – add dice to a colleague’s Reputation Roll
  • Elevation – boost a non-commissioned officer to officer status
  • Gain Favour – Ask an NPC for a favour
  • Increase Reputation – Spend Acclaim equal to the new Reputation to get an increase
  • Promotion – Go up one rank unless the commanding officer refuses
  • Status – gain a new trait for your PC that reflects the experiences they have lived through

On the other hand, Reprimands can lead to detention, being stripped of an award, demotion or even Court Martial! So, best to try and avoid those unless you want a bit of drama.

Conclusion

I think the Reputation system is a fun way to facilitate a very different type of advancement for a Star Trek Adventures character. The Milestone system linked to Values is very personality focused and linked to the PC’s own personal narrative, but Reputation is more like career development and the benefits from that are too. It is, perhaps a little over-designed, in my opinion. Do we really need to have both Reputation Points and Acclaim Points? Couldn’t we find a way to achieve the same ends with one or the other?

But, as I said at the top of this blog post, I think I need to reserve full judgement until we have had a few more Star Trek Adventures. In the meantime, dear reader, live long and prosper!

Star Trek Adventures 2E, Incursion Point

Starter Campaign

Dear reader, last week, I created a character for Star Trek Adventures 2E. His name was Mesh and he was an Orion Star Fleet Officer on the command track. The lifepath character generation system was satisfying and sufficiently different from other games that I felt it novel and enjoyable. But, the fact is, I’m unlikely to ever get to play a character in a Star Trek Adventures game, since I’m the one running it.

I picked up the Star Trek Adventures 2E Starter Set and Core Rulebook a couple of months ago when Modiphius was having a sale and I haven’t regretted it. Sometimes, when I buy the core rulebook for a game that I’m interested in along with its Starter Set, I wonder why. The starter set can feel like a waste of money. But, the truth is almost always contrary. The general quality of boxed starter sets recently has been really good. Free League are the masters of producing sets of such high quality and with such a wealth of content that I would generally always advise you to pick it up, even if you’re getting the core rules as well. I have played or run starter set adventures of the One Ring, Tales from the Loop and the Bladerunner RPG. All great quality adventures too! The Bladerunner one sticks out as a real highlight for me. The casefile, Electric Dreams was a brilliant intro to the game and the world but was also an engaging and evocative adventure in its own right. That’s a game you could run without ever reading the core rulebook, as long as you have the starter set and you don’t mind pregenerated PCs. We got four sessions out of that game, and I considered that extremely good value for money.

Cover of the Star Trek Adventures 2E Starter Set featuring a group of Star Fleet officers ont he surface of a planet.
Star Trek Adventures 2E Starter Set
Back of the Start Set box
Back of the Start Set box
five d20s - Star Fleet themed
five d20s – Star Fleet themed
Tokens!
Tokens!
Tokens! Other Side
Tokens! Other Side
Reference Sheet - core mechanics
Reference Sheet – core mechanics
Reference Sheet - Major Actions
Reference Sheet – Major Actions
USS Challenger Ship Sheet
USS Challenger Ship Sheet
Reference Sheet - Attempting a Starship Attack
Reference Sheet – Attempting a Starship Attack
Reference Sheet - Starship Damage
Reference Sheet – Starship Damage
Star Trek Adventures Starter Set Rules Booklet Cover. It features a variety of star fleet personnel from different eras on the surface of a desert planet with a star fleet ship looming above them.
Star Trek Adventures Starter Set Rules Booklet
Star Trek Adventures Starter Set Rules Booklet back cover. GM tables like a narrative flowchart and common NPC qualities.
Star Trek Adventures Starter Set Rules Booklet back cover.
Threat and Player Characters section of the Rules Booklet includes an illustration of a TOS era ship bridge in a serious situation.
Threat and Player Characters section
Tasks section of the Rules Booklet. Features an illustration of the USS Challenger in flight.
Tasks section of the Rules Booklet.

And then we have the Star Trek Adventures 2E Starter Set. In the box, you’ve got a set of five Star Fleet themed d20s, a sheet of tokens, a bunch of handouts which include pregens and rules references and, of course, a rules booklet. This booklet provides you with almost everything to run this game. The biggest omission is, of course, character creation rules. But, as I said above, if you don’t mind the pregens, that’s fine. The campaign booklet is just that: a booklet with a campaign in it. Inside the sixty pages are three interconnected adventures and three mission briefs, which act as adventure frameworks. After three sessions, I can confidently say, the Campaign Booklet, if played in full, is likely to bring you fifteen or sixteen sessions of play in the Star Trek universe. Now that’s making your latinum strips go a long way! Quark would be proud of you, Modiphius!

Rules

Star Trek Adventures 2E uses Modiphius’ own 2d20 system. Despite owning multiple Modiphius games, this is the first time I or, indeed, any of my players have had the pleasure of using it. I was expecting this to be a lot more trad than it is. It is actually really narrative-focused.

The core mechanic is simple. Every character has six attributes and six departments (see my last post for more detail on these.) When you are asked to perform a task, the GM will tell you which attribute and which department you need to use. So you might be using your Daring attribute of 9 and your Conn department of 3 to chase an enemy craft through an asteroid belt. You add the two scores to give you you target number. In this example, that would be 12. If you roll equal to or below that, that’s a success. You automatically get to roll at least 2d20, but you have various ways to add dice to that pool. A task’s Difficulty rating tells you how many successes you need to complete the task. So, for a Difficulty 3 task, you better get more dice, pray for a crit (a 1 counts as two success) or reduce the Difficulty somehow.

Momentum is a resource that the PCs share. They build it up by scoring more successes on rolls than they need. So, in the example above, if you managed to roll four successes on the Difficulty 3 task, you get to add 1 point of Momentum to your pool. That Momentum pool can’t go above 6 points so you are incentivised to use it up. They can use a point of Momentum to add a die to a pool, three points to add two dice and six points for three dice. There are other ways to spend this resource too, such as to get the GM to give you more info on a particular scene.

Threat is a resource for the GM to use that mirrors Momentum. The PCs can add a Threat for more dice in the same sort of way as spending Momentum. The GM gets to use threat to increase the likelihood of Complications occurring (this happens on the roll of a 20 usually.) Complications can come in many different forms. They might be a simple and mechanical as causing an injury. But they also might take the form of a massive narrative twist that really sticks spanner on the works of the PCs’ plans. This comes up way more often than I expected.

Those are the basics. There’s other stuff like taking Stress to Avoid Injury, Extended Tasks that use tracks, Resistance on tasks and in conflicts that absorb successes, but we don’t need to go into them here. If you are interested to learn more, check out the free Quickstart guide here.

Part One, Incursion Point

Opening page of the adventure, Incursion Point. Two page spread. One page features and illustration of Kirk and Spock.
Incursion Point

Incursion Point is the first adventure in the campaign contained in the Starter Set. The campaign is entitled “Infinite Combinations,” but the reasons for that are not really obvious from reading or playing this first part of it. It was written by Meric Moir.

Summaries of each part of the campaign, Inifinite Combinations.
Summaries of each part of the campaign, Inifinite Combinations.

This is quite explicitly a teaching adventure. In fact, the whole campaign is there to teach you how to run and play this game. It has lots of callouts to help out the new GM, from suggestions on what each type of character might do in the current situation, to advice on what to do if your players roll real bad. Much of the text itself is also devoted to explaining how to handle each situation as and when it’s likely to come up. For instance, the first scene has a high likelihood of conflict so the text runs you through how to order actions, resolve and attack and what to do if a PC gets injured. Where necessary, it will direct you to the relevant part of the Rules Booklet. In my experience, it was incredibly effective in teaching me what to do in my first few sessions. Of course, my clever and adaptable players got the hang of it without the need for such hand-holding. Before the first session was over they were stacking and spending Momentum like they’d been doing it all their lives. By session two, the risk of adding more Threat points to my pool was outweighed by their ambition and they were using it to do just oh so much cool shit.

Dear reader, if you think you might be lucky enough to play in this adventure, stop reading now. I’ve got loads of other posts, go and read one of them. There’ll be SPOILERS below.

Stardate 3422.1: We have received an urgent distress call from the independent floating city of Cressida, a resource-gathering collective on the gaseous world Kizomic VI. Creatures of unknown origin have attacked, causing casualties as well as compromising the city’s superstructure. We have responded to the distress call and are proceeding to Kizomic VI at high warp.

When we arrive, we will have only a few short hours to evacuate the city’s 600 inhabitants before the structure fails entirely and sinks into the crushing gravitational depths of the planet. With the number of beings to be evacuated, our first order of business will be to set up pattern enhancers and then direct the locals to the beam-out sites.

The Captain or other commanding officer is supposed to read out this log entry to introduce us to the current situation. We didn’t really have such a PC in our group, so I read it, which was fine. I like the conceit of this as it immediately feels trekkie.

Map of the initial beam in point. Also has details on taking a hit, healing and concluding the conflict with the Bryozoans.
Map of the initial beam in point.

The situation is dire and quickly worsening. The PCs are left to come up with ways to evacuate the citizens as quickly as possible. And that’s when the plant-like aliens they will come to know as Bryozoans seem to attack the evacuees. This is the start of Act 1: Operation Evacuate! In our game, the PCs, Lieutenant Commander Burk ven Jaxa, the Tellarite engineer, Lieutenant Junior Grade Rashid Kemal, our hotshot pilot, and Ensign Laniyar Tennan, Betazoid technician, stunned one Bryyozoan and frightened off the other before quickly moving onto ways they could speed up evacuation. Everything from locating more survivors to constructing elaborate containers to transport more people at a time, (the human cattle container was the term, I believe) were put into practice. With each success, they ate away at an Extended Task track which continued for the rest of the adventure.

Cressida Falling apart - illustration shows a shuttle pursuing the plummetting dome that broke away from Cressida.
Cressida Falling

Act 2: The Fall of Cressida started with a huge chunk of city breaking off and falling into the lower atmosphere of the gas giant. The PCs hopped in a shuttle without so much as a call to the bridge of their ship, the USS Challenger. They shot down after the plummeting hunk of city and managed to land almost safely. This is when I started to really spend Threat and introduce Complications. The shuttle door was jammed and they began to be attacked by more Bryzoans. The PCs quickly took steps to uncomplicated matters and save the citizens who had been trapped on the falling district just before it broke up into so much debris. They brought them back to the ship and escorted them to Sick Bay. Here the PCs encountered some NPCs. This was really the first opportunity any of had to do a little roleplaying in this adventure, and this was session two. It’s a high-speed scenario that demands quick action and decisive play.

Anyway, a well-dressed Orion woman, Administrator Demaad wanted use of the transporters to beam up valuable trade goods. Meanwhile, Urotoxa, an older Nausiccan academic, wanted them to help the humanoid inhabitants of the planet’s fluidic layer far below by bringing them a shipment of phasers. She was sure they would be decimated by the Bryozoans, and, as she had been in communication with them, she wanted to help them.

During this three-sided interaction, they discovered a lot through the use of Tennant’s Betazoid telepathy. They found out that Demaad had an underhanded ulterior motive and that Urotoxa was probably the cause of the entire disaster befalling the planet and its inhabitants. Despite neither woman coming out of the conversation smelling like roses, the PCs decided to try to convince the Captain of the Challenger to let them help the Kizomans, although, perhaps not by breaking the Prime Directive to furnish them with advanced weapons.

In Act 3: The Fate of Kizomic VI, we saw our heroes contending with the Bryozoan Terror, a massive amalgamation of smaller aliens that they had detected swimming towards the main population centre of the Kizoman people in the fluidic layer. They boarded the shuttle Galileo with a probe ripe for jury-rigging and a trio of EVA suits. While Tennan and Burk worked to modify the probe to emit a high-level of gradonic radiation, (they had figured out earlier that that’s what the Bryozoans fed on, destroying the inanimate objects that contained it in the process) Kemal piloted the shuttle down, down, down until it became a submarine. In modifying the probe, they were too successful, as it turned out. It drew the Terror to them before they had even had a chance to launch the probe towards one of the few remaining rifts that the creatures had emerged through in the first place. The shuttle took corrosive damage that left it immobile and losing structural integrity. They eventually managed to launch the probe to draw the Terror away, but two of them had to exit the craft to effect repairs. They managed it with only moments to spare before their suits ruptured. Kemal got them to the gaseous layer before the hull gave out, just in time to be transported back to the ship. Whew! That was quite the finale! Except there was more.

Here’s where the PCs get one final opportunity to make some headway on that Evacuation Extended Task. They had to each take actions to try to help save some more citizens of Cressida. And they did fine, managing to rescue most of the inhabitants before the city crumbled away to nothing in the atmosphere of Kizomic VI. This felt anticlimactic, though, I won’t lie. I should have taken this part of the adventure and moved it to a point before they went to deal with the Bryozoan Terror.

Conclusion

This was a very well put together adventure. As I mentioned above, the teaching elements worked very well, at least when I got to use them. Actually the most gratifying part of it was that the players avoided doing most things the adventure expected of them. Generally, they avoided violence whenever possible, which felt very Star Trek, and this was great because it got me to engage fully with the mechanics and think on my feet as a GM too.

But also, each Act lasted exactly one session. No overlap, no worries about not getting it finished on the night. Nothing but net. They clearly play-tested the hell out of it.

It could maybe have done with a few more opportunities for role-play, but then again, that’s just not the type of adventure it was. In Act 2, there was that interaction between the PCs, Demaad and Urotoxa, which highlighted social conflict and it worked really well.

Honestly, the only real issue was that ending. The adventure directs you to ask the PCs for more tasks to help complete the evacuation once the finale had already occurred in my opinion. It was an anti-climax and the players agreed. If I had it to do over, I would have taken this and placed it before the Bryozoan Terror encounter.

We are looking forward to continuing the campaign! The players are looking for a bit more of a chance to role-play so I think we’ll have a Starbase episode next!

Star Trek Adventures 2E Character Creation

Boldly Going

Dear reader, if you have been around here for a while, you might be aware that I have an interest in Star Trek. I don’t know if I’m what you would call hardcore, but I am currently in the process of watching every episode of every Star Trek series I can get my hands on. I started more than a year ago on Star Trek The Next Generation and never intended to branch out of the TNG era. I continued watching Deep Space 9 and Voyager. As I approach the end of that series, I have found myself unwilling to give up just yet, so I’ve gone back to the Original Series as well. I’d seen a lot of them before. TOS was required watching in my house when I was a kid and I can vividly remember rushing home to watch TNG after school as a teenager. Anyway, I have more than a passing knowledge of the TV shows and movies, the universe, the tropes and the types of stories that Star Trek tackles. And yet, I had never played a Star Trek RPG! Since I have been on this marathon rewatch recently and because I picked up Modiphius’ Star Trek Adventure 2E in their Summer sale, I thought it was high time I rectified that.

The cover of the Star Trek Adventures 2E Start Set Campaign Book. A variety of TOS era characters are gathered performing investigative tasks on a planet's surface.
Star Trek Adventures 2E Starter Set

A review of the system, the game, and our campaign will follow in the future. We have only had two sessions so far, so I don’t want to jump the gun. Today, instead, I thought I would do a character creation post. Haven’t had one of them in a while, and they always prove quite popular. Also, since we are playing the campaign from the Starter Set, we are using pregenerated characters from that. The pregens are great, but, using them means I have not experienced the joys of character creation in this system. It always teaches me a lot about a game, so I think this will be a worth-while exercise.

Player Characters

Reporting For Duty Chapter two-page spread. Illustration of a number of crewmembers escorting an injured crewmember on a gurney through a shuttle bay.
Reporting for Duty

Chapter 4.1 begins with an explanation of the types of player characters in Star Trek Adventures. These are split between Main Characters and Supporting Characters. Imagine the Main Character as being your regular PC, a member of the Starship’s bridge crew. Someone like Mr Sulu or Commander Riker, Supporting Characters, on the other hand, are created when needed. They might be a relatively random red-shirt who the players need to march off to investigate a suspicious crater on an alien moon or a transporter chief who needs to modify the transporter to beam back the away team full of Main Characters on the planet’s surface.

Next we have a look at the building blocks that go together to construct a character in this game:

  • Traits – a word or phrase that describes the essence of the character. Generally these would be things like Vulcan and Star Fleet Officer
  • Values – a few brief sentences that describe what your character believes, treasures, and thinks. They should guide roleplaying more than any other aspect of the character
  • Attributes – In this game these are:
    • Control
    • Daring
    • Fitness
    • Insight
    • Presence
    • Reason
  • Departments – These represent the general roles that Star Fleet officers might encompass. They are the areas they would be trained in. You add an Attribute value to a Department value to come up with the Target Number for you to roll equal to or under on 2d20 to complete tasks. That’s the core mechanic for this and other Modiphius games, Here’s the list of Departments:
    • Command
    • Conn
    • Engineering
    • Security
    • Medicine
    • Science
  • Stress – Like in Blades in the Dark, this is a Star Trek Adventures character’s super-power. If they ever want to avoid an injury, they can choose to take the equivalent amount of Stress instead and keep going. This is particularly important in a system where gaining an injury leads to the PC being Defeated, and essentially out of play.
  • Focuses – these are your character’s specialisms. A Main character has 6 of these
  • Talents and Special Rules – These are special benefits that are often selectable by members of particular species or by characters with certain departments above a specific rating. They can bestow bonuses of several kinds. Other special abilities are Species or Role specific.

Lifepath or Creation in Play

The first page of the Lifepath Character Creation section
The first page of the Lifepath Character Creation section
First page of the Creation in Play section.
First page of the Creation in Play section.

Star Trek Adventures presents the player with two options for character creation. The first, and most detailed, is the Lifepath method. It’s difficult not to think of the Traveller character creation method as a major influence on the choice of the designers to include this as the default option. It’s highly detailed, provides a wealth of tables to roll on or choose from and allows for the creation of the type of character you didn’t know you always wanted. Traveller, the OG space exploration sci-fi game, was doing doing this decades before anyone else, of course.

The other option is called Creation in Play. This simplifies the character generation system for those who already have a clear idea of the character they want to play and just need to construct them with stats etc.

It’s my habit is to create characters in as random a method as possible. As such, I have no choice but to go Lifepath here.

The Game of Life(path)

This is split handily into seven steps.

The steps of the Lifepath Creation method.
The steps of the Lifepath Creation method.

Step One: Species

You can ostensibly choose any species you can think of from the Star Trek universe, bearing in mind the species who have been contacted by Star Fleet during the era you want to set your game in. So, no Jem’Hadar in the TOS era, for instance. But, they have provided a one-pager on each of the major species from across multiple Star Trek shows, so I think it would be crazy not to choose one of those. Now, since the game I’m currently playing is set in the time of Captain Kirk’s famous five-year mission across the galaxy, I think I will choose to go for a TNG/DS9/Voyager era character. I have a much deeper knowledge of that time anyway. Also, it allows for far more options since many of the species listed are enemies of the Federation during that TOS era. There are 14 species to choose from so I’ll roll my DCC d14 for this:

  1. Andorian
  2. Aenar
  3. Bajoran
  4. Betazoid
  5. Cardassian
  6. Denobulan
  7. Ferengi
  8. Human
  9. Klingon
  10. Orion
  11. Romulan
  12. Tellarite
  13. Trill
  14. Vulcan

I got a 10! That’s Orion. An Orion appeared in the very first pilot of the the Original Star Trek show, but they have had more prominent roles in more recent ones like Discovery and Lower Decks.

They are green-skinned humanoids who are known as traders. The Orion Syndicate is an infamous criminal organisation that spans half the galaxy, also, so they come with some baggage.

Orion Page
Orion Page

Now that I know the Species I can start building my character

Every PC starts with a rating of 7 in each attribute and a rating of 1 in each department. But an Orion character starts with a +1 in Daring, Fitness and Presence. So here are my attributes at this stage:

- Control - 7
- Daring - 8
- Fitness - 8
- Insight - 7
- Presence - 8
- Reason - 7

They also gain the following trait:

Trait: Orion – Orions have similar environmental tolerances to Humans and are physically and culturally well-accustomed to interstellar travel. The Orions’ reputation as thieves, pirates, and illicit traders can make others wary of them, but it can also open doors and create opportunities in more unsavory parts of the Galaxy.

And the following Species Ability:

NEVER AT FACE VALUE (SPECIES ABILITY): Once per scene, you may add 1 Threat to ask the gamemaster a question about the situation, as if you had spent Momentum to Obtain Information.

That’s a handy little ability.

Step Two: Environment

There’s a table for the environment your character grew up in:

D20 ENVIRONMENT
1–3 Another Species’ World
4–6 Busy Colony
7–9 Frontier Colony
10–12 Homeworld
13–15 Isolated Colony
16–18 Starship or Starbase
19–20 Roll Again or Choose

The text of the section provides a short description of each of the options in the table, but it’s fairly self-explanatory, I think.

Anyway, I rolled a 12, which gives me “Homeworld.”

I need to choose a Value at this stage. Since several sample Values were provided in the description of the Orions as a Species, it seems right to take one of those for a personal from the Orion homeworld.

First Value – I thrive because I do not ignore opportunities.

On top of that, I get to add 1 to one of the attributes I improved when I settled on Orion as a species. I’ll add to Presence, making it a 9.

Finally, in the Environment step, I can add 1 to Command, Security or Science departments. I am beginning to see a potential role for this character so I will choose to add it to Command, making that a 2.

Step 3: Upbringing

It is interesting here that you can choose to either accept or rebel against your upbringing, and this will have a material effect on the character.

Here’s the table:

D20 UPBRINGING
1–3 Agriculture or Rural
4–6 Artistic and Creative
7–9 Business or Trade
10–12 Diplomacy and Politics
13–15 Science and Technology
16–18 Starfleet or Military
19–20 Roll Again or Choose

That’s a 1. Agricultural or rural. I think there is no doubt that this character rebelled against the life of a hydroponics farmer in the hinterlands of the Orion homeworld. They fled to the cities and the stars at the first opportunity.

Given that choice, they get to increase their Presence by 1 point again, making it 10. They also get to add 2 to Reason, bringing it to 9.

Next, they can increase one of the following departments by 1: Conn, Security or Medicine. I think they should be a good pilot. So Conn increases to 2.

I get to choose a Focus at this stage as well. They provide several examples that suit the upbringing. I’m going to choose Navigation as my first Focus.

This step also provides access to a talent. But you are given the option to wait until the end of character creation to choose it, so I’m going to do that since many of the talents have strict attribute requirements that this character cannot fulfil at this stage.

Step Four: Career Path

This is the most important step in building a character for Star Trek Adventures.
So, normally, I would make a roll for every aspect of a character I make on the blog, but, I have a clear idea of this PC being a Command track Star Fleet Officer. It is possible to roll for this. Here are the tables, if you’re interested in what else is available:

D20 CAREER PATH
1–4 Starfleet (Officer)
5–8 Starfleet (Enlisted)
9–10 Starfleet (Intelligence)
11–12 Diplomatic Corps
13–14 Civilian (Physician)
15–16 Civilian (Scientist)
17–18 Civilian (Official)
19–20 Civilian (Trader)

D20 TRACK
1–6 Command
7–12 Operations
13–18 Sciences
19–20 Roll Again or Choose

But, as I mentioned, I have already made the choice. Here’s what I get for my Orion character on the Star Fleet Command track Career Path:

  • Trait: Starfleet Officer
  • Value: The Prime Directive is there to remind us we are not gods and should not act like them. (This is one of several examples provided here. I like it as a stepping stone for the PC.)
  • Attributes: 3 points to be split between two or three attributes. I am choosing to add 2 to Control (now 9) and 1 to Daring (now 9.)
  • Departments: +2 to either Command or Conn and +1 to any two others. Can’t have any department over 4 at this stage. I’m going to top out Conn at 4, and I am going to make Command 3 and Security 2.
  • Focuses: These should reflect the Command track. I’m going to choose Inspiration, Persuasion and Helm Operations
  • Talent: another talent. Still saving these up till the end

Step Five: Experience

There is no table to roll on this time. I must choose Novice, Experienced or Veteran. I think my Orion is a brash young go-getter, so I will choose Novice.
Here’s what the Novice gets:

  • Value: I must prove myself (once again, chosen from some examples)
  • Talent: I receive the Talent, Untapped Potential
    • This means I can’t have any attribute above 11 or any department above 4 but when it has the potential to gain you extra Momentum during play whenever you succeed at a task.

Step Six: Career Events

Captain Picard overseas the Command Track.
Captain Picard overseas the Command Track.

You get two major career events that are likely to have shaped the character. There is a table for this that I can roll on twice. Here’s the table:

D20 CAREER EVENT
1 Betrayed Ideals for a Superior
2 Breakthrough or Invention
3 Called Out a Superior
4 Conflict with a Hostile Culture
5 Dealt with a Plague
6 Death of a Friend
7 Discovered an Artifact
8 Encountered a Truly Alien Being
9 First Contact
10 Lauded by Another Culture
11 Learned Unique Language
12 Mentored
13 Negotiated a Treaty
14 New Battle Strategy
15 Required to Take Command
16 Serious Injury
17 Ship Destroyed
18 Solved an Engineering Crisis
19 Special Commendation
20 Transporter Accident

I got a 15 – Required to Take Command for my first one.
In this case, since my PC is a novice, I am imagining a scenario in which their instructor at the academy was gravely injured in a shuttle crash during a training exercise. My PC was the first to get the situation under control and co-ordinate the efforts of the other cadets to repair the ship, call for rescue and stabilise their instructor.

Gains:
Attribute: +1 Daring (now 10)
Department: +1 Command (now 4)
Focus: Composure

Second roll, 10 – Lauded by Another Culture.
On their first mission, my Orion was involved in the rescue of a Ferengi trading vessel. On board the drifting ship, they managed to restore power, save the lives of the Damon and his crew and even brokered a profitable deal between them and the Federation.

Attribute: +1 Presence (Now 11)
Department: +1 Science (Now 2)
Focus: Ferengi Culture
Trait: Ferengi Trading Partner

Step Seven: Finishing Touches

Almost done. This step provides a little bit of everything and the necessary personal details that round out any character.

Value: Your expectations limit you (one of the Orion examples. They are still an Orion at heart, even if they are a Star Fleet Officer now)
Attributes: +1 to Daring (Now 9) and +1 to Fitness (Now 9)
Here are the final attribute scores:
– Control – 9
– Daring – 10
– Fitness – 9
– Insight – 7
– Presence – 11
– Reason – 9
Departments: +1 to Security (now 3) and +1 to Science (Now 3)
Here are the final department scores:
– Command – 4
– Conn – 4
– Engineering – 1
– Security – 3
– Medicine – 1
– Science – 3
Focuses: Got all 6, Navigation, Ferengi Culture, Composure, Inspiration, Persuasion and Helm Operations
Talents: Time to choose these. I should have two more in addition to Untapped Potential

  • Bargain: REQUIREMENT: Command 3+
    When you use Negotiation to make an offer to someone during social conflict, you may re-roll a single d20 on your next Persuade task to convince that person. If the social conflict with that person involves an extended task, your Impact is increased by 1.
  • Follow My Lead: REQUIREMENT: Command 3+
    When you succeed at a task during combat or another perilous situation, you may spend Determination. If you do, choose a single ally who can hear you. The next task that ally attempts counts as having assistance from you, using your Presence + Command. On this task, do not roll your assistance die: it counts as having already rolled a 1.
  • Final Details:
    Mesh is this character’s name and he uses the pronouns he/him.
    He is 22 years old.
    His passtime is Parisi Squares (a dangerous sport.)
    Mesh’s role is that of the Executive Officer. He gets:
  • ROLE BENEFIT: When an allied character in communication
    with you spends Determination, you may spend 3 Momentum (Immediate) to enable that character to regain the spent point of Determination.
    His rank is Lieutenant Junior Grade.
    Equipment is not important to this exercise so I’ll skip it.

Conclusion

This has taken a lot longer than I expected when I set out to make the character. My advice would be to leave a whole session for several players to make their characters, tweak them, decide on their relationships to the other PCs etc.

But it was fun. I enjoyed delving into the Star Trekness of it all and I think I would actually like to play Mesh, my Orion Lieutenant Junior Grade who dreams one day of commanding a ship of his own.

One More Shot to the Heart

Dear Reader, I was away on holidays in the scorched and parched East of England again last week. I enjoyed the break but it has left me with no enough time to write up a new post for this week. I have one in the works but it is far from ready, I’m afraid. Instead, I thought I would share with you again a post from this time last year. Here is my advice for running Heart: The City Beneath as a one-shot. Hope you enjoy it!

One Shot to the Heart

DCC Day 2026 Part 2

A Case of Mistaken Death

Below, you will find some spoilers for DCC adventure #109 Beneath the Isle of Serpents, just so you know, dear reader.

Fun & TPKs ad in the back of the adventure booklet. Shows a lot of black and white covers of other DCC adventures. Reminiscent of old ads in the '80s and '90s era of RPG magazines.
Fun & TPKs

At this point, I don’t think any of us are going into a DCC game thinking, you know what? This is going to be a piece of cake. You expect to be challenged by lethal traps, dangerous surprises, gonzo monsters and a general air of lethality. But there’s one encounter in Beneath the Isle of the Serpents that has the potential to tip the scales so far from balanced that you could be looking at a one or two round TPK. It almost did in our third session of this adventure. There’s a giant, two-headed viper hiding to one side of a door in one room. It’s given a +6 to initiative to account for surprise. Then, once it probably gets the initiative, it’s got two bite attacks at a +8 to hit. That’s not the worst of it, once it inevitably hits, it’s got 3d6 damage for each bite! Now, please bear in mind that this is an adventure for 1st level DCC characters. Few, if any, will have hit points matching even an average roll of those damage dice. But then, there’s a DCC ad in the back of this adventure entitled “Fun & TPKs.” So, that’s what you’re up against, I suppose. Don’t get me wrong; I actually do enjoy knowing that the dungeon is genuinely scary, that characters can and will die, that the stakes are high. That makes their actions to overcome the dangers all the more significant. It creates an aura of tension that is hard to synthesise in any way other than the players knowing that their characters could be walking to their deaths. We had already had 2.5 deaths by the point they got to this encounter after all. But those deaths were a little more acceptable. The PCs had done everything they could to prevent them up to the point they didn’t, up to the point when I got luckier in my rolls than they did. Not only that, each death was poetic and emotional and caused by a hypnotised member of their own party. You couldn’t write a better death.

Viper, giant (two-headed): Init +6 (surprise); Atk bite +8 melee (3d6 plus poison; Crit M/d10; AC 16; HD 4d8 (hp 18); MV 30’; Act 2d20; SP poison (1d4 Stamina loss, DC 12 Fortitude save negates); SV Fort +6, Ref +4, Will +2; AL N.
Giant Two-headed Viper stats

But this giant two-headed viper? It had the cards stacked in its favour by the stats, the map, the circumstances. Even then, despite that initiative bonus, it still went after three of the party members. The players got a little bit lucky with that, but it was all fair and square. So they attacked, two hits out of three and the snake was down two thirds of its hit points. But then it had its attacks; two heads = two attacks. It hit one PC with one attack, killed her outright, and then hit the second PC because it had a + frikkin’ 8 to hit, so, of course it did, and killed him outright too. Half the party was dead in a single round. And, you know, I’ll be honest here, I thought 3d6 damage for a single attack on a first level character? That’s insane, so I reduced it to 2d6 and it still killed ‘em both… The players looked upon the ruin of their party. Rember, dear reader, there were only two players in this adventure. One had only one of two PCs left and one had none. That last suriving PC was ready to run, but then remembered that the Wizard’s familiar was supposed to go on her turn. The dice were rolled and that dog ripped out at least one of the viper’s throats! We retconned the deaths and were able to finish out the dungeon.

And look, this was dramatic and all, they scraped through when they probably should have died, but it was so ridiculously overpowered as an encounter that we questioned how well this adventure could have been play-tested. Combine this with a couple of other strangenesses and errors and I am not sure, honestly, if I can recommend it without the Judge spending a fair bit of time preparing things and making a few necessary changes.

Mapping Errors

I love DCC maps. They’re almost always beautiful and functional and genuine pieces of art in their own right. That can be said for the maps in this adventure too, in fact. They are, perhaps, not quite as memorable or gnarly as an Doug Kovacs map from, say, Sailors on the Starless Sea, or the Mark Allen one from Hole in the Sky but they are functional and effective. You can compare for yourself:

The six levels of the dungeon from Beneath the Isle of the Serpents - in plan view. By Aaron Kreeder.
Dungeon Plan-view
The six levels of the dungeon from Beneath the Isle of the Serpents - in cross-section. By Aaron Kreeder.
Dungeon Cross-section
Hole in the Sky map by Mark Allen
Hole in the Sky map by Mark Allen
Doug Kovacs map from Sailors on the Starless Sea
Doug Kovacs map from Sailors on the Starless Sea

But there is a very small problem with the dungeon map/key that left me scratching my head and cursing the adventure for wasting my time at the table. If you look closely, dear reader, you will see that Room 4-2 and Room 4-3 are labelled differently on the plan compared to the cross-section. Now, as the PCs explored Level 4, I was really just looking at the plan map so I didn’t notice this error. The problem is, it’s the plan map that’s wrong. 4-2 is where 4-3 should be and vice versa. This might seem like a small issue, and perhaps I’m making too big a deal of it, but when you only encounter it for the first time at the table? Confusion, frustration, struggle. It’s a waste of time and mental energy that could better be spent on building atmosphere, answering player questions or, like, role-playing.

And if this was the only map problem in the module, I might be a bit more forgiving, but I mentioned in the last DCC Day 2026 post, that the island map should have hexes to allow you to calculate how often to roll on the overland encounter table, but it doesn’t so, once again, the Judge is just left to guess at the table, when they are already juggling a lot.

I will say this is not the only potentially bad labelling in this adventure. On the cover, it defines it as an adventure for Level 1 PCs, but on the inside, it says it’s for Level 2 PCs. This could actually explain the extra lethality. Maybe my party were just too wee?

So

Here’s what happened at the end of the adventure (if you want to catch up, go check out my first post about it here.)

The party, now three-strong since Hilda the Wizard met up with them back on the beach, returned to the point they left off in the dungeon. They picked up some of the weapons and armour belonging to the Serpent-men and continued down the winding, narrow stairway until they discovered a secret door in the wall. Cleverly, they decided to treat it with some care, stepping to either side of it when it opened, thus avoiding the burning oil trap. There is a high probability that this trap was not going to ignite but, ignite it did, to no effect of course. They continued into an uncanny corridor that seemed to have been wrought in a strange way. It was as if the rock had been disintegrated to create this corridor and the pentagonal chamber beyond. In that chamber, by the way, was an Elder Thing. It had come here to observe the Serpent-men and the Cobra-men, apparently, but that does not particularly describe the reason for it to appear in the adventure, if I’m honest. It had a deleterious effect on a couple of the PCs. There’s a table to tell you what happens if you fail a Willpower save upon seeing this Cthulhu-Mythos-ass creature. Anyway, one of the PCs froze and one fled. I’m just glad none of them rolled “fight” because that would have surely been the end of the adventure. The other one found she was able to communicate with it in a rudimentary telepathic way. It was able to tell her there was another exit from its chamber to the surface, and that there was some sort of conflict between the Serpent-men and another sect who worshipped Sett. It then began packing up its things. Now that the PCs had uncovered its ingenious hiding place, it had no choice but to leave, apparently. So they left it to its business.

The Elder Thing: This ancient race has inhabited the earth for many millions of years and may have created life on earth as it appears today. Older creatures prefer water as their habitat, but can also move effortlessly on land and even fly. The appearance resembles a cylindrical shape a good two meters high, the ends of each tapering slightly, so that an Elder Thing resembles almost a barrel. Furrows and ridges cover the body with strange growths, and the wings and strange head, shaped like a five-pointed starfish, give the creature characteristics of both animal and plant life. The Elder Things established at least one major city in Antarctica and created the Shoggoths there who used them as slaves. During the millions of years of their existence on Earth, the Elder Things fought many conflicts, but now seem to have retired. From: https://cthulhueternal.com/creatures/elder-thing/
https://cthulhueternal.com/creatures/elder-thing/

I have several questions about this encounter. The main one is just why? Why is it in this dungeon? It lends nothing to the otherwise decidedly snake-based vibe. If the PCs end up attacking either because the players think its a good idea or because they failed their save and rolled “fight” on the reaction table, they would be killed quicker than you could say “Beyond the Mountains of Madness.” Another why. Why is it watching the Serpent-men? Not really explained. Still whying. Why is is the trap protecting its lair so shitty? This unfathomable monstrosity has the power to disintegrate a lair for itself in the rock, and observe the inhabitants of the dungeon without their knowledge through the walls, but it can’t put a decent security system in? The trap is the kind of thing you might find in an incompetent bandit’s lair. Here’s a what. What use is the other exit? It’s difficult to climb and leads to a part of the island that is much more dangerous than the main entrance. Admittedly, the players did make use of the Elder Thing again later, though.

Once they descended the stairs they came to level 4. This is where I ran into the trouble with the mislabeled rooms and where they ran into decidedly more trouble with the Giant Two-headed Viper. Anyway, once we got past all that, they were able to explore the chamber where the viper was hiding. If you look at the map, you can see that the sluice they discovered beneath the grating on level 1 leads down to that room. There were humanoids manacled and hanging from the ceiling of that sluice. They had been unable to get to them from above. They were able to use the winch here to bring them all down. Some were already dead, but those that could be saved, they brought to the Elder Thing. It agreed to heal them as long as they covered their eyes. With a little healing, one of them even turned out to be an Elf who was happy to join the party and aid them in discovering the evil that imprisoned, enslaved and devoured them. This became our latest PC, replacing Helfgott the Cleric. The rest of the prisoners were sent back to the fishing boat with strict instructions not to let Kamay try to leave again on the off-chance he woke up.

Back to full strength, the party went to investigate the other room on this level. This proved to be the apartment of the leader of this breakaway sect. As at least one of the PCs had the Serpent-man language skill, they were able to discover a plot when they searched through her correspondence. Human and Demi-human adherents of the demonic god, Nehebkau, were worming their way into positions of power and influence across the nations in and bordering Thracia. What their ultimate goal was? Unclear, except that they were to sow chaos and division to leave opportunities open for the Serpent-men. They also found some loot in here, which was nice. Then they opened a hatch in the corridor and went down even deeper.

They skipped Level 5 at first and went down again to Level 6. This level proved to consist only a single tunnel which was collapsed on either end. Slaves were working to dig it out, guarded by a couple of Serpent-man. When the PCs attacked the slaves immediately revolted and with their help, the guards were quickly dispatched. The prisoners are started out in the adventure as a swarm. Only AoE attacks could do any more than a single point of damage, but a single point of damage was also enough to kill one member of the swarm of ten so they were only going to last so long. Still, they were happy to come along and help the PCs in their fight.

They returned to Level 5 and proceeded into the Temple of Nehebkau. This is the finale to this adventure and it didn’t disappoint. The setup coming from the room alone was cool. There are pools of magma dotting the floor and lava domes casting their eerie glow. On top of that, there are drips of acid coming from the roof, ready to burn anyone who goes prone. This happens a lot in the ensuing battle. The PCs entered from the north-west and there is a ritual happening in the southern part of the chamber, which is accessible only through a short passage not he east and west sides. The ritual involves the sect’s leader ritually murdering prisoners by pouring molten magma into their chest cavities. Yup. If she and her three flunkies get to finish it, a demonic Magma viper will be summoned. Added complication? Sure, there are also four Serpent-man guards stationed to stop anyone who tries to interfere.

The PCs ruthlessly sacrificed the prisoner swarm in a full frontal assault on the guards while they attempted to deal with the leader and the cultists. There were some dicey moments, like when one of them got hypnotised again, when they got down to the last sacrifice and just managed to defeat the last remaining cultist before they could kill her and when their swarm was reduced to just two members. But they persisted and played it clever, using the spells and abilities they had to their greatest advantage. Sleep was the best spell in their arsenal to be honest. There were a lot of fun moments provided not only by the rolls on the individual spell tables but also on the mercurial magic tables, grit tables and fumble tables. DCC is all about the tables, isn’t it? It brings new meaning to the word random. You are never quite sure what will happen, especially when you cast a spell. It might work just fine and achieve the goal you intended. It could even result in a far more powerful effect than you could have imagined. But it could also fizzle out and mean you can’t cast it again that day. Or worse…

Conclusion

Three Serpent-folk performing a sacrifice of a human woman chained to an altar.
Three Serpent-folk performing a sacrifice of a human woman chained to an altar.

This is the joy of playing DCC with PCs of more than 0-Level. The funnels are fun and all, but access to magic and other special abilities really elevates this game, if you ask me.

There were a couple of other beats once they defeated the cult leader and prevented the performance of the ritual but they were not worth mentioning, to be honest. They went back to the boat and returned to the mainland with all the freed prisoners that survived. It was a bitter-sweet ending, however, considering how many they lost along the way.

I think, if I were to run it again, I would prepare a few things. I’d pop some hexes on the map of the island to make the random encounter table useful. I’d probably remove the Elder Thing encounter and replace the Giant Two-headed Viper encounter with something a little less lethal. I’d also seed some more information about what’s going on in the dungeon, throughout the actual dungeon, because, as it stands, there’s no way the PCs could know that the finale ritual is actually going on. They just happen to stumble across it whenever they decide to show up at the Temple chamber.

In the end, though, we all enjoyed the adventure, despite its flaws. I would definitely consider running the main Caverns of Thracia campaign at some point too. Probably once this whole Editioning Business is behind us.

The Editioning, AD&D 2nd Edition, Part 4

Investigations

I wrote a post a couple of years ago comparing a D&D mystery/investigation-based scenario to one for the Blade Runner RPG. D&D didn’t come out of that head-to-head too well. It was unsatisfying to create powerful, combat oriented characters only to be stuck questioning party-goers and looking for clues when your abilities were not really suited for that.

Sigil Skyline in sepia tones
Sigil Skyline in sepia tones

So, I suppose it’s a wonder that I chose an adventure like The Eternal Boundary for the AD&D 2nd Edition portion of the Editioning. But let me tell you the difference: the Eternal Boundary has a little bit of everything you could want as an introductory module to a Planescape campaign. Yes, the theme of the adventure is one of clues, schmoozing and sleuthing, at least in the first couple of acts. But, underneath all that, the players are discovering the dark of Sigil, its razor vine-choked alleyways, its legendary landmarks, its numberless portals and its ineffable nature. They’re hearing the chant on the streets of the Hive, from the barmies and the bubbers, out of the mouths of dour Dustmen, hopeless Bleakers and frenetic Chaosmen. As they try to find out what happened to poor Eliath, they visit the Mortuary, where they learn about the morbid philosophy of the Dead, they come into conflict with the Xaositects and discover they have no respect even for the order of sentences, never mind the universe. They hear that they should never cross the Lady of Pain and that even the gods have no direct influence on the City of Doors. They hear a lot and, as they get more involved and feel more like they belong to this bizarre place, they start to contribute their own two coppers to the philosophical undercurrent of the city’s discourse. Every session, our Dustman and our Sensate get into a blazing row about whose thinking is right. What a genuine joy.

The Lady of Pain - line drawing. The masked woman stands on her own in long robes with blades ringing her face.
The Lady of Pain – line drawing. Tony di Terlizzi.

Even though most of the adventure has taken place only in the Hive Ward, the PCs have been exposed to the bones of this city, and the major themes of the setting. The investigation is incidental.

Also, the investigation can be handled in any one of a dozen ways. So far the PCs have utilised deception, bribery, intimidation, local knowledge, ambush, kidnapping, false imprisonment, and they’ve done a “Weekend at Bernie’s.” And many of these instances could have been fights but they wisely avoided violence in most cases. The point is, they were presented with a mystery and were asked to solve it. They were never told they couldn’t do it the way they wanted to. That’s proper old school. And that’s where it differs most from An Unexpected Wedding Invitation (from that Investigations post,) which went out of its way to proscribe certain actions, avenues of investigation and even the freedom of PCs to go to certain places at certain times.

So, although their investigations are meeting with varying levels of success I think I can say with some confidence that the players are having fun anyway.

A meeting on the streets of Sigil
A meeting on the streets of Sigil

Finding Eliath

Class-based XP awards table
Class-based XP awards table

Before getting into our latest session, I had some admin to do. I realised that I had not been handing out XP at all. The poor PCs were not getting their rewards for all their clever little actions. I had to really stretch my memory muscles on this one, as we were talking about two sessions over the course of six weeks. The AD&D 2nd Edition Dungeon Master’s Guide recommends that you award XP at the end of every session, because, otherwise, you’re likely to forget what happened. The XP system in this game is extremely granular, with warriors, wizards, priests and rogues all getting XP for doing different things. For instance, warriors (fighters, paladins and rangers) get an extra 10XP per hit dice of creature defeated per warrior level. However, priests (clerics and druids) don’t get that. Instead they get an extra 100XP per spell cast to further their ethos and even more if they use one of their granted powers like Turn Undead. Rogues (bards and thieves) have it pretty easy since they get 2XP for every gold piece worth of treasure they obtain. But Wizards (Magic Users and Specialists) have it toughest in my opinion, they get a mere 50XP per spell cast or 500XP per spell researched. Now, sure, they can cast spells but only when the occasion arises, and as for researching spells, that is a time-consuming and expensive activity that there is not much space for in a short adventure. Anyway, they all also got some common awards for their investigations and a combat encounter. The combat XP is calculated in a fairly logical way using these tables from the DMG:

Special Ability adjustments to HD for monsters.
Special Ability adjustments to HD for monsters.
XP Award per HD of monster defeated table.
XP Award per HD of monster defeated table.

Dear reader, if you can’t remember what went before, frankly, I don’t blame you, so here are a few links to the other posts in this series:
AD&D 2nd Ed Part 1
AD&D 2nd Ed Part 2
AD&D 2nd Ed Part 3

Last we left our intrepid heroes, they were staking out the pub in the hopes they would run into their target, Eliath. They had rented a room and even stayed there for the night without the man in question showing his face. The second day, they decided to split up. Trance and Aurora would return to the Butcher’s Block, the Hive’s diviest dive, where Trundfeld Three-teeth, its stinking Ogre proprietor would hopefully have some information for them. Meanwhile, Devansh, the Cleric and Glaermond, the Paladin continued the riveting stakeout.

After only moments back in the Hive, the first group heard sounds of a yet another attack in yet another alleyway. Aurora sent her goat familiar to scope it out. He is a very sneaky goat, ok? Kid spotted a group of men standing over another after, seemingly, killing him. They talked about leaving the poor bubber for the Collectors to find before scarpering. The goat got a good look at the ring-leader, a half-elf in a dark leather hood. Aurora, our Witch, examined the body and even cast Detect Magic on it. The man seemed completely dead, but was also emanating magic. They decided to take him to the Mortuary, where Aurora’s Dustmen buddies were sure to know what to do with him. So, she and Trance slung the body between them and pretended he was dead drunk, and not just dead, as they “escorted” him through the Hive. Unfortunately, their ruse was not sufficient to fool the Bleak Cabal gang that turned up. Turns out they were out looking for the berks who were putting their barmies in the dead book, and it looked like they’d just found their suspects. Some fast talking from Trance convinced the Bleakers that they were not the bashers they were looking for, by telling them almost the whole truth. Still, Derioch Ysarl, the mage in charge, demanded that, if anyone was going to take the body anywhere, it would be them. Derioch also used detect magic, and, at a higher level was able to figure out that the spell cast on the man was necromantic in nature.

Back to the Black Sail Tavern. Devansh and Glaermond ordered some cranberry juice and watered down wine and a couple of bowls of forever stew from Salja, the tiefling serving maid. They also purchased a hot bowl of information. She was able to tell them that, not only was Eliath in the bar right at that moment at another table, but also, that he had a room in the Black Sail. Rather than confront Eliath in the pub while he sat with a group of his fellow Doomguard, they decided to keep an eye on him and wait for the others to come back, when they would corner him on his own.

Meanwhile, Trance and Aurora were talking to Trundfeld. He gave them a bit of a run around, more-or-less telling them only things that they already knew. They didn’t trust him but they had little choice but to accept what he told them. So they went back to the Black Sail to meet up with the other party members.

That night, Trance took it upon herself to use the skeleton key Salja had kindly provided for the low low price of 1GP and enter Eliath’s room. She hid there under the bed for an hour or so before he returned. When he did, she leapt up and threatened to kill him if he didn’t co-operate. The others then helped her to kidnap him and take him back to their own room. Finally! They had found the barmy they were looking for! But he wasn’t barmy no more. He tried to tell them that he was a Clueless prime, only recently arrived from Toril when he was immediately recruited by the Doomguard. But when they pushed him he confessed that he had been in Sigil for fifteen years, most of which he spent insane on the streets of the Hive. He said that he had died there, a raving loon, but rather than being brought into he arms of his loving god, Lathander instead returned him to life, claiming that for Eliath to join the Doomguard would be all he would need to do to fulfil his god’s wishes. He had no memory of a key to the portal they were looking for, though he did direct them to a wizard’s tower in the Lady’s Ward, which might contain the Rhaunades Collection, a library that may house the information they’re looking for.

The PCs felt they had run into a major roadblock in their investigations. Despite finding the man they were looking for, they were no closer to the information they needed, the key to the portal to the Isle of Black Trees was still a mystery and the Rhaunades Collection seemed like a long shot since there were a thousand towers in the Lady’s Ward and they didn’t know where to start. So they returned to their patron in the Society of Sensation, Bendon Mawl, for advice. On the way to the Civic Festhall to see him, they ran into another familiar figure, the Dancing Man who Aurora had encountered in the Hive. Another barmy turned sane. This time, they questioned him and when he tried out his cover story, one very similar to Eliath’s they found out that he remembered dying and being greeted Saint Cuthbert, who sent him back with the divine command to seek out and join the Society of Sensation to fulfil his wishes. The party began to make some connections. And when they went to see Bendon Mawl, he was very concerned about the possibility of some conspiracy between the Dustmen and the Doomguard, possibly at the expense of the Senates. He promised them some help if they would go and investigate this new threat. Even the Dustman on the team, Aurora found herself wondering if her own higher ups might have some nefarious plans she was unaware of.

They went back to their decrepit church to rest for the night and think about what they were going to do next but were rudely awoken by armed men busting down the door and attacking them!

Conclusion

The mystery has been preserved even after they discovered Eliath. They have unwound a part of it, of course, in finding him and the Dancing Man alive, but they don’t know the purpose of these “resurrections” or who is really behind it. Meanwhile, there are several factions in play and list of NPCs with their own agendas as well. It’s been low on action, but high on intrigue and that is suiting us just fine after the highly lethal, combat heavy OD&D and Basic.

Can’t wait to get further down this rabbit hole but I’m going to have to. I have holiday coming up so our next session won’t happen for a month! I’ll be back in the meantime with musings on other RPG-related things dear reader.

Stay Frosty, Forneus Research Base Review

Zero Prep

It’s the dream, wouldn’t you say, dear reader? Pick up and play. Many claim it, few deliver. One thing I’ll say about this Stay Frosty adventure, and, to be fair, any Stay Frosty adventure I’ve read (which isn’t many,) is that you can pick it up and play it with pretty much no preparation. I mean, that goes for Stay Frosty to a certain extent too. I discovered that when I reviewed the game itself last October.

The cover of Stay Frosty Remastered by Casey Garske. Space Marines fighting aliens/demons
Stay Frosty Remastered

But, of course, zero prep is not all you might want from an adventure. In fact, for some GMs, prep is as much fun as play. So what else has Andrew Walter’s Forneus Research Base got going for it?

Well, Tom, Isaac and I played it over the space of three sessions recently. In fact, we just finished it the other night. I have thoughts.

Action

There’s no fucking around with Stay Frosty, no long opening scene to allow for introductions of our characters, just a short summary for the PCs, of what they’re doing out there in space and an immediate crash landing at the eponymous Research Base. Oh, the crash landing was caused by black ooze exploding from the controls of their shuttle btw.

As I stated, there is a short read-aloud piece of text at the start. It explains that the PCs are private marines, employed by the United Universal Corporation to check in on its research colonies. As they are doing this, they are forced to crash land.

As I said, Stay Frosty is not really interested in your PCs feelings, unless they involve terror or going apeshit. At no point is anyone encouraged to take a moment to express their concern for their fellow marines or, for that matter, the colonists they were supposedly there to protect. This is a DOOM simulator. The PCs are there to shoot shotguns and blow up demons. And Forneus Research Base is all action from the get-go.

The Frostiness Tracker goes from Warm to Ice Cold
Frostiness Tracker

As soon as they emerged from the wreckage, the PCs realised they were not going to be able to take off again without significant work on the shuttle, so they decided to make their way to the base. Meanwhile, I’m rolling the Danger Die every time they move from one location to another, take a look around or stop to think, as intended by the rules. The Danger Die works a bit like a random encounter table. You roll a d6 and the result will give you one of the following:

  1. Encounter and Stress – i.e. roll on the relevant encounter table. Forneus has one table for the moon’s surface and one for inside the base. Stress is added to the PCs to build Tension. Tension also equals Frostiness. They higher the Frostiness level the better as it gives PCs bonuses like advantage on initiative and even extra attacks. But Tension can also explode. See below for more on that.
  2. In dangerous areas, Encounter, otherwise, Environment – Forneus has its own Environment table also. But this didn’t come up too often, to be honest.
  3. Environment – as above
  4. Stress – see point 1
  5. Entropy – for some reason, I rolled this one a lot and it had no effect. It’s only relevant if the PCs are using a thing constantly that has its own Supply die. For instance, if they are using Combat Drugs or Fuel when they’re driving a vehicle. The idea is that when Entropy is rolled, the Supply Die for that thing goes down to the next lowest die size. But whenever this was rolled, they had nothing to decrease.
  6. TENSION EXPLODES! – Only rolled this once. The idea here is that when this comes up, the PCs make a Willpower Save. If they succeed, they get to reduce their Tension by one. If they fail though, they take Tension x level damage and reduce their Tension to 1. Then they roll on the Going Apeshit table if their HP are reduced to 0 by the damage. The effects of this can be anything from getting Advantage on damage rolls but constantly rolling your Ammo Die (like a Supply Die for your weapons,) to Last Stand: going down mano-a-mano with your enemies. I actually adjudicated this mechanic incorrectly at the table. I didn’t allow them the Willpower Save, I just rolled the Tension damage and gave it to every PC. Also, this damage is not supposed to be applied to attribute scores when all HP are gone, as normal damage is. Only one PC had to roll on the Going Apeshit table. She ran for her goddamn life and they had to manacle her to the ATV to stop her.

(I only just realised I was calling this the Doom Die the whole way through our game. Oops.)

The Danger Die is the mechanic that really keeps things interesting in Stay Frosty. Many of the locations in the Forneus Research Base, for instance, have no pre-written encounters or much of interest at all, so the random encounters, environmental hazards and ratcheting Tension from the Danger Die are doing a lot of the work. This works fairly successfully but I found I was rolling up Encounters a lot, since a third of the possible Danger Die results give you one most of the time, and after a certain event in Forneus, you actually get Encounters on a roll of 1 to 3. So the marines were drifting from one Encounter to another with only cursory exploration in between.

At least the variety of enemies is suitably gristly, demonic and fun. You have the obvious demons, like the Black Leathery Imps, that used poison to make their enemies fire on each other. Then you have the basic cultists who just have guns, the mutated cultists who have been transformed to allow them to fly with their fiendish lord Xithrabla through the cosmos, sucking from his hellish teats and the Centiservitor who is a cultist combined with a centipede with a plasma cannon in its chest. On top of that you have the real horrors like the Cadaverous Persecutor, a giant cyborg corpse with a rocket launcher, and the Fledgeling Pest (The Final Boss,) a sickening, enormous baby’s head with a partially exposed brain and a vicious bite.

The Mutated Cultist has an eye where his torso should be
Mutant Cultist
The Centiservitor is a mashup of a human and a giant centipede with a plasma cannon in its chest.
The Centiservitor
The Cadaverous Persecutor - cyborg corpse with a ricket launcher hand.
The Cadaverous Persecutor
The Fledgeling Pest/Parasite - massivve round head with a porthole to see its brain. Gaping maw, long, spindly arms.
The Fledgeling Pest/Parasite

We found the lower level encounters were essentially just target practice. Since we only had two players, I gave them each three marines and decided to treat it a bit like a funnel. I think this was too many for this adventure. Four would have been a bit more balanced. The main reason I think this is because of the initiative roll in Stay Frosty. Whoever makes a successful Dexterity check gets to go before the enemy in this game. This generally meant that a significant portion of the six characters got to act before the demons and cultists. There were enough weapons between the marines that could do blast damage (flamers, grenades etc.) that they could wipe out the opposition before they ever got a shot off. It felt too easy at times. But, it also seemed to accurately emulate the feeling of playing a video game like Doom. At one point they were crossing a bridge over a chasm and being swarmed by imps and cultists. There were 26 opponents and the party defeated them in two rounds, just mowing them down in waves of gunfire and explosions. In only the second encounter, they came up against a group of six foaming cultists, one of whom was holding a grenade in each hand and standing near a leaky fuel tank. One well-placed shot from the grenade launcher took out the whole bunch with a mushroom cloud left in their wake. These moments felt hilarious, exhilarating and hilarious.

But when it comes to the more challenging opponents like the Centiservitor, the Cadaverous Persecutor and the Fledgeling Pest, I can’t stress how important it is to use the Powerful Opponents mechanic in Stay Frosty. That rule states that when there is a disparity on either side of a fight, the side with fewer Hit Dice, should subtract the difference between their HD and their Opponents’s HD from their attack rolls. For example, when my PCs were facing the Fledgeling Pest at the end of the adventure, the 1 HD/Level 1 marines had to subtract 3 from every one of their attacks against it because it had 4 HD. This meant that they were not able to overwhelm it by sheer numbers in the first round or two. Many shots that might have hit, did not, because of this nicely scaling rule. However, when they were up against the Centiservitor, I forgot to apply the Powerful Opponents rule and they slaughtered it before it ever got a chance to fire off its cool weapon.

My main complaint when it comes to the action in this adventure is that the Fledgeling Pest, labelled as the Final Boss, is quite avoidable. It is described as being attached to a wall by its very flesh in one of the Hangars, which have been converted to perform devilish rituals. But there is no reason for them to go to the Hangars in the adventure. I made one up, of course, to try and get them there. One of the NPCs they met told them there could be a working shuttle in one of them. This did lead them to the Hangars, but as soon as they got there, Tension Exploded and one of their number went running off across the moon’s surface so they hopped in the ATVs they had just found and booked it after her. After that, they decided to egg it as well. Since they had the ATVs, they were better able to make it back to their own shuttle. I had to think on my feet here or they were going to miss out on the best couple of encounters of the whole adventure. So, first, I had the Demon Arms (also restricted to the hangars) appear out of a hellish portal in the ground ahead of one of the ATVs, grabbing the driver and causing he vehicle to flip over. The mouth in the hand of one of the arms devoured one of the party but they won out. Then they moved on again and just as they were about to reach their shuttle the giant demonic archway (also found in the hangars) appeared in the air before them, with the Fledgeling Pest emerging out of it to attack them along with a few of its cultists. This was a genuinely tough fight and resulted in the death of a couple more party members. I might have just let them make it to the shuttle, I suppose, but I didn’t want to deprive the players of the Final Boss.

Non-action

Of course, it wasn’t all action. There was some exploration. This is done in a point-crawl style as you can see by the map here.

The Forneus Research base point-crawl map.
Point-crawl Map

The descriptions of the locations in the adventure are pretty bare-bones. At times, I found I wanted a bit more. For instance, the Systems, Generator & Atmosphere area is supposed to be enormous and encapsulates everything from winding, labyrinthine machine rooms to massive bridges spanning deep chasms. To be honest, these feel like they should be separate, individual locations. Another point about this area in particular is that we’re told that the communications can be turned back on and full computer bank access can be gained here, but not what that might achieve. I had no idea what the computer banks might tell them and I had no idea who they might communicate with off-world. That’s a lot to leave in the lap of a GM, especially when the rest of this adventure is pretty much zero-prep, as I mentioned before.

Apollo, in stasis - a chimp in profile, lying on a table with tubes going into his mouth and nose.
Apollo

Actually, it is really hard for the PCs to get much information about what has happened here. Even the few living, rational NPCs they meet had no way of knowing what happened on the base, since one was a prisoner and had been kept out of the loop the whole time, one was in a coma and one was a talking chimp, named Apollo, who was in stasis the whole time. It would have been more interesting if at least one of these guys had the full story for the marines. I should have improvised that, in hindsight. Of course, the PCs did recruit both Apollo, the chimp, and Jamal, the prisoner, gave them guns and got them shooting, so that was fun.

Conclusion

I ran this, as I mentioned above, for two players with three PCs each. I think this was a mistake. I mean, once they had recruited the NPCs, they had a squad of eight and they were just mulching the hostiles at every turn, until the very end. Four PCs would have been about right to make it a challenge. Also, I thought I might be able to run it as a one-shot, but that was highly unrealistic. It took three sessions in all, and they did not explore any more than about half the locations.

If I had to do it over again, I might have seeded some of the locations or NPCs with a bit more information on the background of the adventure, but I would still keep preparation time to near zero.

All in all, it was fun, exploding demon sort of romp as an adventure and a system that we all enjoyed, although I expected Tension to Explode more often.

DCC Day 2026

Collections

It’s been a long time since I collected anything. I used to collect comics, although it wasn’t a conscious choice to build a collection. I just bought 2000AD every week and didn’t throw it out as that seemed rude. Those comics went the way of all things for one reason or another, and any comics I bought after that were digital. I even gave up on that when Amazon bought Comixology and ruined it as a service. I used to have a small collection of DVDs and Blurays. Still have a lot of them in the attic, actually. But with the advent of streaming services, I don’t purchase too many of those anymore.

RPGs, though… When I got back into playing them around 2014/2015, I was only playing 4E because I had the books. Then I decided to see what this whole 5E thing was about. That quickly ballooned out of all sense. Frustration with that brought me to discover indie RPGs starting with Spire and then everything that Rowan, Rook and Decard ever produced. That’s when things started to really get out of hand. Now I seem to never have quite enough shelf space. Every time I buy a new set of book shelves, I fill them immediately and then a new kickstarter fulfilment or three arrives.

DCC has been a major contributor to my collection woes. I have backed a number of Goodman Games crowd-funders in the last couple of years, including the recently arrived Dungeon Denizens II, Terror from the Underdeep (a 5E set, but still Goodman Games) and Caverns of Thracia. Also, there are just so many adventures, taken on their own, mere booklets, a few pages. But its hard to buy just one…

The cover of Dungeon Crawl Classics Caverns of Thracia. :arge face of a savage fighter in a bronze helm, lizard man in the background, Minotaur with axe and shield in the foreground.
DCC Caverns of Thracia
The cover of DCC # 109 Beneath the Isle of the Serpents by Bob Brinkman. The cover is very red and depicts a winged and crowned serpent person with a skull staff standing before a throne
Beneath the Isle of the Serpents
Map of the Starry Archipelago. A number of green islands dotted acorss a blue sea.
Starry Archipelago: its fun to say. Try it!
The cover of Lost Lore of Thracia, a purple five-headed hydra with glowing blue stones adorning each head is in profile before a white, grecian temple. The specre of death looms behind, while a gnolll-like warrior appears to emerge from a tear in the ground.
Lost Lore of Thracia
The cover of Monsters & Magic of Thracia. it is very brown and depicts a number of monsters including a minotaur, a couple of skeletons, a lizard man and what I think are kobolds.
Monsters & Magic of Thracia
The Caverns of Thracia GM Screen. The left hand side shows a number of adventurers getting ready to attack the horde of monsters depicted on the right hand side. In the middle, there are two illustrations, one of a fire-breathing gargoyle frying some poor adventurers and another of a montaur attack.
Caverns of Thracia GM Screen
The original cover of the Judges' Guild Adventure
Judges’ Guild Cover

Anyway, back to the Caverns of Thracia. The kickstarter was to produce a book that included both the original Judges’ Guild mega-dungeon adventure by Jennell Jaquays and the newly realised version for DCC (or 5E.) It came with a bunch of add-ons like fold-out maps, a handout booklet, a GM screen and a few side adventures that were set in the same general area as the main one. So, I have been thinking recently, especially as I retread old ground in the Editioning, that I should be using some of these books! I thoroughly enjoy DCC but I have only ever run two funnel adventures and a 1st level one. So, I decided to take one of those side adventures from my Caverns of Thracia haul and run it for DCC Day 2026, which just passed on July 18th.

Beneath the Isle of the Serpents

Beneath the Isle of Serpents inside cover illustration shows a band of adventurers filing down a narrow corridor with a warrior in front, a Wizard in the middle and a hypnotised Dwarf in the rear, attacking the Wizard. They are being attacked by a Serpent man who looks a lot like a Lizard man if I'm being honest about it.
Hypnotise!

I settled on DCC # 109 Beneath the Isle of the Serpents by Bob Brinkman as a suitably evocative scenario that would showcase a pretty cool dungeon and could easily be finished in two sessions. I have already learned that, no matter how short a DCC adventure is, you are not likely to finish it in one session without severely editing it or via TPK. Turns out I had more lessons to learn.

We started the adventure in montage. My players, just two for this DCC Day, had a couple of PCs each. One of these was a Wizard, and one of the adventure hooks is that the Wizard’s patron calls in one of the many favours owed them. Hilda’s patron Ydd’grrl, demanded that she and her friends deal with the burgeoning evil beneath the Isle of the Serpents on the Starry Archipelago. So they trekked across the continent, traveling largely by map. They got to a fishing village on the mainland closest to the Isle of the Serpents and then a fisherman, named Kamay, offered to take them where they wanted to go. No-one else would…

Map of the Starry Archipelago. A number of green islands dotted acorss a blue sea.
Starry Archipelago: its fun to say. Try it!

Kamay dropped them off at the black sand beach on the south of the island. Here they faced the terror that was a Giant Devil Crab. They largely had the measure of this thing, but when it hit, it hit hard. After a couple of rounds where they battered away at its devilish shell, one of its claw attacks impaled Hilda, killing her instantly. Kinda, I mean, we fucked up here. It has been about ten months since we last played with these characters so we forgot how they worked. It looked like our Hilda had 15 HP, but we all thought that must be some mistake for a level 1 Wizard, right? Wrong, it was only after the session, when Hilda’s player, Tom, was trying to figure out where the 15 came from that they realised it was one of the benefits she got from her familiar! So, when I ruled that she couldn’t have had so many HP, and must have been killed by the 8 devil claw damage, I killed her without due process or any real legal basis. Some Judge! Anyway, once we knew what had happened, we ret-conned the death. Instead, she awoke amidst the devastation of the devil crab, stripped of all her belongings by her fellows, and badly injured. “Fuck this,” she thought, and went back to the boat.

While she was “dead/unconscious” however, I asked Tom to roll up a new PC using purplesorceror.com as I was worried about the ability of the party to survive the dungeon when there were just three of them. Tom rolled up Glagrill, a Dwarf who they’d all forgotten was asleep in the hold of Kamay’s fishing boat the whole time.

The Island

The map of the isle of Serpents. It is vaguely oblong with a volcano with a face in the middle. No hexes.
No hexes here.

The adventure provides a really great random encounter table for those parties that decide to explore the island’s surface. Now, there’s a perfectly good, relatively recently forged path through the jungle that leads directly to the main dungeon entrance. If they take that path, they get to move full speed and forgo having to roll for any random encounters at all! so those PCs who avoid that are probably just paranoid. No good reason to do that, surely!

Now, I will say that while the encounter table is great, if a bit over the top for what is probably going to be a very minor aspect of the adventure, the text tells the Judge to roll for a random encounter every two hexes traveled by the party, but the island map ain’t got no hexes so you would need to kind of guess how far two hexes might be, I suppose.

The Dungeon

Anyway, my clever party took the safe option and went straight down the path and straight down the ancient, root-choked chimney to the buried temple to some chaos God. Here they discovered some indecipherable wall art, a room filled with rust-midges and a grate in the floor, below which those blessed with infravision could see barely living bodies of humans hanging by manacles from the sloping ceiling of what looked like a sluice. And that was the end of session 1.

Session 2 saw them descend the winding staircase out of that first chamber. They found it ill-suited to them, too narrow, with steps too long and too low, as though built for a very different type of body. Before long, they encountered an opening in the wall on one side. Our Dwarf, Glagrill, checked it over but made some noise in the process. So, when he made his way into the chamber beyond, he found two Serpent Men and one Cobra Sub-commander on their way to attack. Unfortunately, the narrowness of the doorway meant only one PC could stand in the front. The Sub-commander attempted to hypnotize the PC right behind the Dwarf, but Glagrill did his best to defend, and Helfgott, our Cleric, cast darkness to prevent any more hypnosis attacks. Three against four, this turned into a war of attrition, which is bad news for a band of 1st level characters. Eventually, the darkness failed and Magnolia, our Halfling, was hypnotized by the Cobra Sub-commander. She had no choice but to attack Helfgott. She critted and did an extra 2d6 damage on top of her normal weapon damage. Helfgott only had 3 HP. He was one of the longer lived PCs. Isaac had had him since Sailors on the Starless Sea. It was a tough way to go but the others looted his corpse and moved on after they killed the two guards. The Sub-commander had locked himself in his room in the back of these guard quarters. On their way through they found a pair of lucky dice, some coin and a barrel of human hands, feet and other bits.

Eventually, they decided to open the door and deal with their opponent. This time, Melmoth, Isaac’s Elf character was the one to suffer the hypnosis of the Cobra Sub-commander. He was forced to turn on his new associate, Glagrill. He critted… Glagrill, so new to the world, was sent out of it again in but a moment. The two remaining adventurers, taking no chances, fire-bombed the trapped Cobra Sub-commander to death and found a bunch of treasure in the ruin of his chamber.

Not even half way through this adventure and technically, three PCs down. This was the dice telling a story. I was rolling so well, I felt bad about it. Tom and Isaac had never rolled worse, except when they were under the Cobra Sub-commander’s sway and they critted. There was shock, sorrow and outrage on display at the table. Everyone was questioning their choices. We laughed and cried. This is why I play these games to be honest. Not to kill characters but to experience the extremes of those moments.

Conclusion

The Cover of the Special Edition of DCC RPG. it has a gold embossed demon skull complete with horns on the faux-leather black cover.
DCC RPG Demon Skull

Eventually they trudged back towards the beach, thinking to retreat. Meanwhile, Kamay the fisherman started lifting the anchor. Hilda asked where he thought he was going. He told her his business was done here. She sent him into a deep and magical sleep and made for shore where she reunited with her former companions. They decided one more try was in order.

DCC Day 2026 may be done, but the expedition Beneath the Isle of the Serpents is far from over, dear reader. Join me again soon, when I will complete my review of this deadly module.