Friday, February 06, 2009
Starving Artist Needs Gigs
Ed here. I need to look for sources of extra cash, and every little bit counts; illustrating the cover for Thy Vernal Chieftains was helpful and if there is anybody else out there who needs to buy some art, drop me a line. edheil at fastmail dot fm.
Tuesday, January 06, 2009
Arcus Against the Black Druids
The other day, I finally got a chance to run Barbarians of Lemuria with Ed, and what follows is a run-down of the game. First off, I have to say, that it was pretty awesome. Really a breeze to run, and a lot of fun.
Ed made his character, Arcus Thaal, a former noble from Parsool. He had begun dabbling in magic, much to the chagrin of his Tyrus-born mother, who disowned him. For a few years he led a hard life as a thief, eventually turning to a more honorable profession, that of merchant, and settling in Satarla, specializing in the finding and selling of antiquated and magical curios.
The game started with Arcus being hired by a lovely noblewomen, Alastriona. A package had come to her by ship from Urceb, and had been stolen by a group of thugs, the Blood Shadow gang. She desperately wanted the package back, was offered Arcus quite a bit of gold.
He went undercover in a tavern in the seediest part of Satarla, and making use of his carousing trait, made contact with the thieves, pretending to be interested in buying strange and/or mystical items. They set up a a midnight meeting at the gang's hideout.
When he arrived, all the thugs had been beaten and knocked out. In the back room of the hideout, he found out why... a woman, a thief, had beaten him here. She had the package and took off through a window. Arcus realized that he had seen her earlier at the tavern. Had she been there too, trying to find out where the package was? Had she overheard him making a deal to meet with the Blood Shadows? Also, he was able to give a name to her face; Zaydara, a well known thief of both treasures and hearts.
He chased her across the rooftops of Satarla, keeping her in sight, but making sure she did not know he was following. Finally, she entered an inn, and he followed her inside. She was not in the common room, so he assumed she was upstairs. He confirmed this with the landlord while renting a room for himself, right across the hall from her. He planned on waiting until she was asleep, then break into her room and steal the package back.
After some time, he went upstairs to his room, and through her door he heard the crack of a whip and a muffled cry. He kicked the door to her room in! There she was naked and bound and surrounded by... Black Druids! It appeared that were getting ready to torture and kill her. Arcus would not allow such a lovely lady, even a professional rival, to die at the hands of those foul Druids! He waded into the room, cutlass and dagger in hand, cutting them down quite handily, using hero points to turn successes into mighty successes.
After freeing her, Zaydara told him that the leader of the Druids, one that the acolytes had called Adranath Va'al, had taken the package to the docks, where a ship awaited to take them away under the stealth of night. The two of them made their way swiftly to the docks. Along the way she explained that she had been hired by someone else to find and steal the package, but she had no idea that the Black Druids were behind it.
They found the boat in question and snuck aboard. The lead Druid, Adranath, came from below deck to talk to the captain. This was their chance. Arcus summoned up magical fire and set the sails on fire, causing a distraction, while Zaydara, cudgel in hand, started fighting the sailors. Arcus leapt into action, rushing Adranath Va'al with his blades. The Druid was too quick for him and side stepped his attack. The Druid then called upon the foul name of Tharungozoth, and a dozen shadowy tendrils, tipped with obsidian curved claws appeared around Arcus, cutting and gashing him. Things were not looking good for Arcus.
Then he got a brilliant idea. Since the Druid was too quick for him to hit, he decided to take the Druid, at least temporarily, out of the picture. Again calling upon his arcane arts, he caused the mast of the ship to swing at the Druid, hitting him and knocking him from the deck of the ship into the cold water of the bay. With the leader of the Druids gone, Arcus took care of the acolytes and the rest of the sailors. He and Zaydara left one standing and told him if he wanted to leave the burning ship alive, he would get the package that the Druids had brought aboard for them. The man complied and they all got off the ship, which was now completely ablaze.
Arcus thought to tell the city guard that there was a Black Druid in the water and to apprehend him, but when he scanned the dark water for Adranath Va'al, there was no sign of him. Had the Druid drowned, or had he escaped? Arcus had the feeling he had not seen the last of the Druid.
He and Zaydara parted ways, and Arcus promised to bring her a portion of his payment for all her help that evening. The next afternoon, Arcus called upon Alastriona at her home, where he discovered that she was an alchemist. She showed him the contents of the package. It was a silvery-green metal tablet; the Tanshazgar Tablet. Actually it was only one part of five. She had another of the tablets. When they were all brought together, and the code they were written in was deciphered, it was said to tell the secret of making the mythical metal, janium. The game ended here, with Arcus and Alastriona sharing a passionate kiss...
Whew. That was the game, basically. I'm sure I skimmed over some minor stuff. Again, nice and easy to run. Of course, I've read over the rule book several times, absorbing the setting. Also in the last three weeks I've read the first three of the Thongor books, as well as the first two collections of the Savage Sword of Conan comics, so I've got the genre crammed into my brain.
Ed made his character, Arcus Thaal, a former noble from Parsool. He had begun dabbling in magic, much to the chagrin of his Tyrus-born mother, who disowned him. For a few years he led a hard life as a thief, eventually turning to a more honorable profession, that of merchant, and settling in Satarla, specializing in the finding and selling of antiquated and magical curios.
The game started with Arcus being hired by a lovely noblewomen, Alastriona. A package had come to her by ship from Urceb, and had been stolen by a group of thugs, the Blood Shadow gang. She desperately wanted the package back, was offered Arcus quite a bit of gold.
He went undercover in a tavern in the seediest part of Satarla, and making use of his carousing trait, made contact with the thieves, pretending to be interested in buying strange and/or mystical items. They set up a a midnight meeting at the gang's hideout.
When he arrived, all the thugs had been beaten and knocked out. In the back room of the hideout, he found out why... a woman, a thief, had beaten him here. She had the package and took off through a window. Arcus realized that he had seen her earlier at the tavern. Had she been there too, trying to find out where the package was? Had she overheard him making a deal to meet with the Blood Shadows? Also, he was able to give a name to her face; Zaydara, a well known thief of both treasures and hearts.
He chased her across the rooftops of Satarla, keeping her in sight, but making sure she did not know he was following. Finally, she entered an inn, and he followed her inside. She was not in the common room, so he assumed she was upstairs. He confirmed this with the landlord while renting a room for himself, right across the hall from her. He planned on waiting until she was asleep, then break into her room and steal the package back.
After some time, he went upstairs to his room, and through her door he heard the crack of a whip and a muffled cry. He kicked the door to her room in! There she was naked and bound and surrounded by... Black Druids! It appeared that were getting ready to torture and kill her. Arcus would not allow such a lovely lady, even a professional rival, to die at the hands of those foul Druids! He waded into the room, cutlass and dagger in hand, cutting them down quite handily, using hero points to turn successes into mighty successes.
After freeing her, Zaydara told him that the leader of the Druids, one that the acolytes had called Adranath Va'al, had taken the package to the docks, where a ship awaited to take them away under the stealth of night. The two of them made their way swiftly to the docks. Along the way she explained that she had been hired by someone else to find and steal the package, but she had no idea that the Black Druids were behind it.
They found the boat in question and snuck aboard. The lead Druid, Adranath, came from below deck to talk to the captain. This was their chance. Arcus summoned up magical fire and set the sails on fire, causing a distraction, while Zaydara, cudgel in hand, started fighting the sailors. Arcus leapt into action, rushing Adranath Va'al with his blades. The Druid was too quick for him and side stepped his attack. The Druid then called upon the foul name of Tharungozoth, and a dozen shadowy tendrils, tipped with obsidian curved claws appeared around Arcus, cutting and gashing him. Things were not looking good for Arcus.
Then he got a brilliant idea. Since the Druid was too quick for him to hit, he decided to take the Druid, at least temporarily, out of the picture. Again calling upon his arcane arts, he caused the mast of the ship to swing at the Druid, hitting him and knocking him from the deck of the ship into the cold water of the bay. With the leader of the Druids gone, Arcus took care of the acolytes and the rest of the sailors. He and Zaydara left one standing and told him if he wanted to leave the burning ship alive, he would get the package that the Druids had brought aboard for them. The man complied and they all got off the ship, which was now completely ablaze.
Arcus thought to tell the city guard that there was a Black Druid in the water and to apprehend him, but when he scanned the dark water for Adranath Va'al, there was no sign of him. Had the Druid drowned, or had he escaped? Arcus had the feeling he had not seen the last of the Druid.
He and Zaydara parted ways, and Arcus promised to bring her a portion of his payment for all her help that evening. The next afternoon, Arcus called upon Alastriona at her home, where he discovered that she was an alchemist. She showed him the contents of the package. It was a silvery-green metal tablet; the Tanshazgar Tablet. Actually it was only one part of five. She had another of the tablets. When they were all brought together, and the code they were written in was deciphered, it was said to tell the secret of making the mythical metal, janium. The game ended here, with Arcus and Alastriona sharing a passionate kiss...
Whew. That was the game, basically. I'm sure I skimmed over some minor stuff. Again, nice and easy to run. Of course, I've read over the rule book several times, absorbing the setting. Also in the last three weeks I've read the first three of the Thongor books, as well as the first two collections of the Savage Sword of Conan comics, so I've got the genre crammed into my brain.
Sunday, December 14, 2008
TAW's Blog: The Ancient Art of Stabbing People
A largely programming-centric blog takes a diversion through a long historical look at the practice of stabbing people.
Relevance to gaming goes without saying.
Relevance to gaming goes without saying.
Saturday, December 13, 2008
AI vs TCS: Old School Lispers vs Traveller Grognards
I remember reading about Trillion Credit Squadron in the Journal of the Traveller's Aid Society back when I was a kid, playing Traveller (well, mostly rolling up characters and subsectors and buildng and mapping ships, but still). The idea is: you get a trillion credits to create a naval squadron using the rules in Traveller Book 6: High Guard. Then the squadrons beat on each other till one is left standing, in an apocalyptic battle. People from all over could submit their squadrons. I guess it was play-by-mail or something?
Anyway, Artificial Intelligence researcher Douglas B. Lenat decided to use TCS as a way to work on artificial intelligence in a "real" domain, that is, the computer had to compete with humans. He was working with heuristics, ways to take shortcuts to solutions across the immense and unnavigable search space of possible answers to questions. Humans use heuristics; up until that point computer AI work had mostly focused on brute force travels through search space, but the limitations of that approach had become very apparent. But brute force is conceptually easy and heuristics are hard to understand and optimize.
Anyway, he had the computer run a gazillion simulations of the TCS, starting with ideas about how to win that *he* provided, but with those ideas gradually supplanted by experience in simulated combats. Eventually the computer had evolved its own ideas about how to win, and they were... unorthodox. The computer had learned how to break the system: make a large number of tiny but very heavily armored ships, and count on outlasting the enemy -- be able to lose dozens and dozens of ships and still have enough left, when the last enemy ship is worn to the ground, to win.
He crushed the competition in 1981. In 1982 they changed the rules at the last minute, hoping to throw off the computer, but it still dominated the game. Finally they asked him not to compete in 1983, saying if he did they would shut down the game after that, I suppose because they were frankly sick of watching this highly effective but boring and annoying strategy keep on winning.
The whole story is well worth reading.
Little did I expect to find a story about original edition Traveller on the Programming Reddit. (Note: some of the Redditors find the story dubious, on the grounds that if that shit worked we'd still be using it today, and that hype-filled stories about AI were the order of the day back in the early-to-mid 80s, and the hype seldom panned out. So... grain of salt. But it's still a great story.)
Anyway, Artificial Intelligence researcher Douglas B. Lenat decided to use TCS as a way to work on artificial intelligence in a "real" domain, that is, the computer had to compete with humans. He was working with heuristics, ways to take shortcuts to solutions across the immense and unnavigable search space of possible answers to questions. Humans use heuristics; up until that point computer AI work had mostly focused on brute force travels through search space, but the limitations of that approach had become very apparent. But brute force is conceptually easy and heuristics are hard to understand and optimize.
Anyway, he had the computer run a gazillion simulations of the TCS, starting with ideas about how to win that *he* provided, but with those ideas gradually supplanted by experience in simulated combats. Eventually the computer had evolved its own ideas about how to win, and they were... unorthodox. The computer had learned how to break the system: make a large number of tiny but very heavily armored ships, and count on outlasting the enemy -- be able to lose dozens and dozens of ships and still have enough left, when the last enemy ship is worn to the ground, to win.
He crushed the competition in 1981. In 1982 they changed the rules at the last minute, hoping to throw off the computer, but it still dominated the game. Finally they asked him not to compete in 1983, saying if he did they would shut down the game after that, I suppose because they were frankly sick of watching this highly effective but boring and annoying strategy keep on winning.
The whole story is well worth reading.
Little did I expect to find a story about original edition Traveller on the Programming Reddit. (Note: some of the Redditors find the story dubious, on the grounds that if that shit worked we'd still be using it today, and that hype-filled stories about AI were the order of the day back in the early-to-mid 80s, and the hype seldom panned out. So... grain of salt. But it's still a great story.)
Wednesday, December 10, 2008
Old School Art: Curmudgeons and Dragons
I don't remember on which of the three or four retro-RPG blogs I saw this on, but you have to check out Curmudgeons & Dragons, which is a sketchblog of art in the glorious style of '70s-era D&D.
The art has a particular kind of quasi-amateurish (but in fact very well done) style that captures both the imagination and the wistful memories of games gone by.... Steve Zieser goes on my Favorite Artists list now.
Sweet St. Cuthbert, he even illustrated the Limed-Over Skeleton of the Abbot. Now there's a phrase I've not heard in a long time. A long time.
The art has a particular kind of quasi-amateurish (but in fact very well done) style that captures both the imagination and the wistful memories of games gone by.... Steve Zieser goes on my Favorite Artists list now.
Sweet St. Cuthbert, he even illustrated the Limed-Over Skeleton of the Abbot. Now there's a phrase I've not heard in a long time. A long time.
Monday, October 27, 2008
Acts of Evil
Me: If I keep thinking about the Acts of Evil game I played on Saturday, thinking it was really cool, wishing I could play more -- cause I really enjoyed playing a sociopathic occultist bent on chthonic godhood -- should I be worried?
My wife: Uh.. maybe?
Friday, October 10, 2008
From the Tweet and Rein*Hagen Academy of Latin
"Bios Ex Nihilum, latin for 'Life From Nothing'"
No, it isn't. Bios isn't even Latin, and the Latin phrase for "from nothing" -- a fairly common phrase because it comes up in theological discussions of creation -- is ex nihilo.
Game designers: the fact that you have a dictionary of a language doesn't mean you can construct actual meaningful phrases in that language, especially if it's a highly inflected language.
Googling around I find that there's a World of Warcraft guild called "Ex Nihilum," and the phrase occurs in the lyrics of a song by noted Latin scholars Gorguts, who also seem to have studied at the Tweet and Rein*Hagen Academy of Latin...
Nihil appears in Latin in two forms, the indeclinable, and a second declension neuter form nihilum. The latter can only appear in the ablative case (nihilo) after the preposition ex.
You want to put Latin in your game and all you've got is a dictionary, or vague, half-remembered High School Latin? Give me a call, I'll do my best to help.
Wednesday, October 01, 2008
Saturday, September 06, 2008
Tunnels, Trolls, and Stars
Haha! I got me my 4th edition T&T, which I shall revere even as the neogrognard D&D'ers revere their little brown D&D books. And Starfaring! 1977 and 1976 respectively. Huzzah!
To come: fun facts about T&T 4th edition.
To come: fun facts about T&T 4th edition.
Wednesday, September 03, 2008
Plunder!
I just did a small logo design project for a friend fool enough to trust it to me, and picked up a few dollars on Paypal. Rather than ale and whores, this time I spent it on classic T&T-related material from Outlaw Press.
Specifically, Starfaring and the 4th edition of Tunnels & Trolls.
There is an amazing amount of cool stuff for sale at Outlaw Press! Wow! T&T variants for superheroes and post-apocalypse gaming, tons of adventures, fiction, all kinds of crazy things.
Good stuff.
Specifically, Starfaring and the 4th edition of Tunnels & Trolls.
There is an amazing amount of cool stuff for sale at Outlaw Press! Wow! T&T variants for superheroes and post-apocalypse gaming, tons of adventures, fiction, all kinds of crazy things.
Good stuff.
Saturday, August 30, 2008
My Craft Project
Terra- F*ck Yeah!!!
Ran a second game of three sixteen last night. (First game was a one-player with Joe a couple weeks ago, which I haven't written up yet.) There were a group of five people at Dave's house that night; when the time actually came -- after a couple boardgames were done -- two were willing to play; the other three had gotten deep into playing video games. Of the two willing to play, one left right after character generation because that was when his video-game-playing ride was leaving, so we were down to one, while two remaining people played video games.
This sort of thing is why I don't get to run a lot of games with this group, eh? RPGs, especially weird RPGs such as I might bring over, are absolutely the lowest possible priority.
But that's OK, I know that one-player games work fine, and Dave was into it. Dave's character Cutthroat became Sergeant Cutthroat (FA 5, NFA 5).
The game started a bit slow, because I didn't have a lot of interesting ideas for what was special about this mission (good or bad). It was Silicon beings in an Asteroid Belt. (Random roll after I rejected a couple previous rolls as being inappropriate for a first planet.) The gist of it was that you can't blow up an asteroid belt, nuke it from orbit, or whatever else, cause it's already an asteroid belt. You just have to go rock by rock by rock, killing the silicon lifeforms. So they'd deployed every damn trooper they had, rock by rock, spreading out around the whole belt.
Cutthroat's squad was dropped on a large asteroid, a few km wide, highly crystalline, like a geode turned inside out. No aliens apparent at first; they made their way into a cave and the first attack began.
The aliens were crystalline humanoids with "wings" consisting of fans of curved crystal shards, which they could use to fly in the solar wind. They could attack with the crystals, they were ridiculously strong and could throw troopers against the hard crystal walls, and there was one more attack that was revealed at the end.
One-player games, despite the fact that there are only five threat tokens, have proved to be hard as hell, the two times I ran them. I think part of it is that neither time did the one player take a really high FA. And if you don't have a really high FA, and you start out with a few failed rolls, or low successes, you get wounded FAST. And if your opponents have Armor, as these did, and your first success is wiped out...
Things went really badly in that first fight. REALLY badly. Wounds: A mess. Wounds: crippled. Armor: ticked.
The last round of this encounter the troopers had fallen back into space using the small ion jets on the Mandelbrite, regrouped, and made a full forward assault, guns blazing, straight against the Crystal Angels. Complete fucking failure. Combat drugs! Another fracking failure. All this over one threat token! ONE threat token had brought Sgt. Cutthroat to the brink of death! There were four to go!
To survive, Dave called on is weakness: "Feels Nothing." He described a situation in training where another trooper had freaked out and attacked some fellow troopers, and Cutthroat had gunned him down... and kept shooting... and kept shooting. OK. So the weakness seemed to be he doesn't necessarily give a damn about his fellow humans. Much like the "psychopath" thing in the example.
We decided that because he Felt Nothing he did not call off the attack when it went horribly wrong, and his entire squad got picked off one by one by slicing angel-feathers, he just kept on going and going until in one assault he was grabbed and thrown against a sharp crystal structure, causing his onboard computers to freak the hell out, desperately kicking in internal repair procedures trying to protect atmospheric integrity, and flooded him with painkillers, causing him to pass out. (Wound level back up to: A Mess.)
He woke up on a slab inside the asteroid, with arcs of crystal over him. His guns were in a case on the far side of the cave. There were several of the entities apparently "talking" amongst themselves somehow, discussing him. He was still in his armor, and therefore, alive. And alone.
He wanted to bust out and surprise attack them. Dominance roll didn't permit that, but he did get mutual surprise. He managed to crack off one of the arcs holding him down and improvise it into a piercing weapon. The dice were finally kind to him and he managed to take one down by piercing its "heart center" with the crystal shard... He hurled it at another and the creature (using its Armor to ignore the kill) absorbed the shard onto its body and went on the attack against Cutthroat with it, like a giant claw! I think maybe he got down to Crippled again at this point...
He managed an NFA roll to get past them and free his guns, and finished them off, filling the interior space of that cave with floating crystal fragments that were once aliens. As they died, the light went out in the cave -- it had been illuminated by their own bodies. (2 threat tokens down)
End of encounter. Now he was on his own inside the tunnel system of the asteroid. (Medikit time! Up to A Mess.)
He was going to hunt down the rest of these diamond bugs, dammit. He made his way through the caves... and found them deserted and dark, or as dark as silica in the sunlight gets. Like they'd all abandoned it. But we wanted another encounter... we rolled for dominance and got an Alien Ambush.
So he made his way to the surface again, through another tunnel... lookin for the damn bugs. And as he crawled out of the tunnel, he was enveloped in pure burning blinding light. The armor went into full panic mode as its heat compensators failed one by one and Sgt. Cutthroat started to cook inside his own armor... The remaining aliens from the rock were hovering in formation between the rock and the sun, and had formed a giant Fresnel lens with their wings and focused sunlight on him, like a magnifying glass on an ant.
His options exhausted and again Crippled, Dave called on Sgt. Cutthroat's Strength. Flashback: previous mission. They're on a jungle planet, and ambushed by arachnoid aliens who shoot webs down out of the trees and yank troopers up to their deaths faster than they can figure out what's going on. Sgt. Cutthroat is Cool Under Pressure and leads the way in incinerating the web structures in the trees and frying them like so many tent caterpillars. Flash Forward. Ignoring the heat, even as it builds to near lethal levels, he grips the crystal surface with the mandelbrite's boots and calmly draws a bead on the hostiles, one... by one.. by one.. by one.. by one... till instead of a point of horrible heat and light in the sky where they were, there's a bright stardust of fragments...
And he calls in with confirmed kills for the rock, and signals to the deployment ship that his squadron is ready for return. He manages to collect a few victims of that first horrible assault who were merely comatose and floating in their armor in space... and heads back to the ship.
He increased his HTH to 1d6 reflecting the brutal combat where he broke out of captivity.
He tried for an increase on his long range slug rifle to reflect the last attack, no luck.
He did not try for promotion. Because he used a weakness he would have been eligible for demotion if another PC had targeted him for it, but there were no other PCs. (I understand how this works now -- using a Weakness is kind of a dick move because it saves your ass and leaves the rest of the squad in danger. That's why your fellow PCs would target you for demotion over it.)
He got a respectable handful of medals. Increased his FA. And that was that.
Wow! Good little game. Single player games seem to be brutal, and drawn out if you don't have the FA to reliably take down aliens quickly. Note to self: if I get in any more single player games, recommend a high FA. :)
Nice to notice also that he used EVERY resource he had in this situation and barely made it out. Every wound level short of death, on every encounter, even after the use of medikits; his armor was ticked; he used Combat Drugs, a Weakness, and a Strength. Makes me feel like I did my job as GM. :)
UPDATE: he didn't use every resource -- he didn't use the E-Vac. But that's mainly cause I forgot it existed and so didn't tell him it was an option.
This sort of thing is why I don't get to run a lot of games with this group, eh? RPGs, especially weird RPGs such as I might bring over, are absolutely the lowest possible priority.
But that's OK, I know that one-player games work fine, and Dave was into it. Dave's character Cutthroat became Sergeant Cutthroat (FA 5, NFA 5).
The game started a bit slow, because I didn't have a lot of interesting ideas for what was special about this mission (good or bad). It was Silicon beings in an Asteroid Belt. (Random roll after I rejected a couple previous rolls as being inappropriate for a first planet.) The gist of it was that you can't blow up an asteroid belt, nuke it from orbit, or whatever else, cause it's already an asteroid belt. You just have to go rock by rock by rock, killing the silicon lifeforms. So they'd deployed every damn trooper they had, rock by rock, spreading out around the whole belt.
Cutthroat's squad was dropped on a large asteroid, a few km wide, highly crystalline, like a geode turned inside out. No aliens apparent at first; they made their way into a cave and the first attack began.
The aliens were crystalline humanoids with "wings" consisting of fans of curved crystal shards, which they could use to fly in the solar wind. They could attack with the crystals, they were ridiculously strong and could throw troopers against the hard crystal walls, and there was one more attack that was revealed at the end.
One-player games, despite the fact that there are only five threat tokens, have proved to be hard as hell, the two times I ran them. I think part of it is that neither time did the one player take a really high FA. And if you don't have a really high FA, and you start out with a few failed rolls, or low successes, you get wounded FAST. And if your opponents have Armor, as these did, and your first success is wiped out...
Things went really badly in that first fight. REALLY badly. Wounds: A mess. Wounds: crippled. Armor: ticked.
The last round of this encounter the troopers had fallen back into space using the small ion jets on the Mandelbrite, regrouped, and made a full forward assault, guns blazing, straight against the Crystal Angels. Complete fucking failure. Combat drugs! Another fracking failure. All this over one threat token! ONE threat token had brought Sgt. Cutthroat to the brink of death! There were four to go!
To survive, Dave called on is weakness: "Feels Nothing." He described a situation in training where another trooper had freaked out and attacked some fellow troopers, and Cutthroat had gunned him down... and kept shooting... and kept shooting. OK. So the weakness seemed to be he doesn't necessarily give a damn about his fellow humans. Much like the "psychopath" thing in the example.
We decided that because he Felt Nothing he did not call off the attack when it went horribly wrong, and his entire squad got picked off one by one by slicing angel-feathers, he just kept on going and going until in one assault he was grabbed and thrown against a sharp crystal structure, causing his onboard computers to freak the hell out, desperately kicking in internal repair procedures trying to protect atmospheric integrity, and flooded him with painkillers, causing him to pass out. (Wound level back up to: A Mess.)
He woke up on a slab inside the asteroid, with arcs of crystal over him. His guns were in a case on the far side of the cave. There were several of the entities apparently "talking" amongst themselves somehow, discussing him. He was still in his armor, and therefore, alive. And alone.
He wanted to bust out and surprise attack them. Dominance roll didn't permit that, but he did get mutual surprise. He managed to crack off one of the arcs holding him down and improvise it into a piercing weapon. The dice were finally kind to him and he managed to take one down by piercing its "heart center" with the crystal shard... He hurled it at another and the creature (using its Armor to ignore the kill) absorbed the shard onto its body and went on the attack against Cutthroat with it, like a giant claw! I think maybe he got down to Crippled again at this point...
He managed an NFA roll to get past them and free his guns, and finished them off, filling the interior space of that cave with floating crystal fragments that were once aliens. As they died, the light went out in the cave -- it had been illuminated by their own bodies. (2 threat tokens down)
End of encounter. Now he was on his own inside the tunnel system of the asteroid. (Medikit time! Up to A Mess.)
He was going to hunt down the rest of these diamond bugs, dammit. He made his way through the caves... and found them deserted and dark, or as dark as silica in the sunlight gets. Like they'd all abandoned it. But we wanted another encounter... we rolled for dominance and got an Alien Ambush.
So he made his way to the surface again, through another tunnel... lookin for the damn bugs. And as he crawled out of the tunnel, he was enveloped in pure burning blinding light. The armor went into full panic mode as its heat compensators failed one by one and Sgt. Cutthroat started to cook inside his own armor... The remaining aliens from the rock were hovering in formation between the rock and the sun, and had formed a giant Fresnel lens with their wings and focused sunlight on him, like a magnifying glass on an ant.
His options exhausted and again Crippled, Dave called on Sgt. Cutthroat's Strength. Flashback: previous mission. They're on a jungle planet, and ambushed by arachnoid aliens who shoot webs down out of the trees and yank troopers up to their deaths faster than they can figure out what's going on. Sgt. Cutthroat is Cool Under Pressure and leads the way in incinerating the web structures in the trees and frying them like so many tent caterpillars. Flash Forward. Ignoring the heat, even as it builds to near lethal levels, he grips the crystal surface with the mandelbrite's boots and calmly draws a bead on the hostiles, one... by one.. by one.. by one.. by one... till instead of a point of horrible heat and light in the sky where they were, there's a bright stardust of fragments...
And he calls in with confirmed kills for the rock, and signals to the deployment ship that his squadron is ready for return. He manages to collect a few victims of that first horrible assault who were merely comatose and floating in their armor in space... and heads back to the ship.
He increased his HTH to 1d6 reflecting the brutal combat where he broke out of captivity.
He tried for an increase on his long range slug rifle to reflect the last attack, no luck.
He did not try for promotion. Because he used a weakness he would have been eligible for demotion if another PC had targeted him for it, but there were no other PCs. (I understand how this works now -- using a Weakness is kind of a dick move because it saves your ass and leaves the rest of the squad in danger. That's why your fellow PCs would target you for demotion over it.)
He got a respectable handful of medals. Increased his FA. And that was that.
Wow! Good little game. Single player games seem to be brutal, and drawn out if you don't have the FA to reliably take down aliens quickly. Note to self: if I get in any more single player games, recommend a high FA. :)
Nice to notice also that he used EVERY resource he had in this situation and barely made it out. Every wound level short of death, on every encounter, even after the use of medikits; his armor was ticked; he used Combat Drugs, a Weakness, and a Strength. Makes me feel like I did my job as GM. :)
UPDATE: he didn't use every resource -- he didn't use the E-Vac. But that's mainly cause I forgot it existed and so didn't tell him it was an option.
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