 September 21, 2009 - 5:30pm | For whatever reason, the Crash on Volturnus module has never really appealed to me. Is there another module designed for starting characters that is set on a populated, high-tech world? I'm simply not good enough with the system (yet) to write such a thing, or I'd do it myself and submit it for community review... but I can't be the only new SFDM to look at Volturnus and think, "Man, I'd really prefer to run something else." Heck, even a lead-in adventure to Volturnus would be a big help. I think it's the whole "everybody starts off on this ship" thing that always bothered me. --Shannon |
 September 21, 2009 - 6:32pm | There is the adventure in the basic rule book, with a little rewrite you could expand that into a full module. Dramune Run is also a really fun module that I have always enjoyed. Im sure one of the community developers here has some good ideas and the Frontiersman magazine is full of great ideas. |
September 21, 2009 - 6:32pm | How do you like to run a game? With a clearly defined adventure with stats, maps, etc? Or from the seat of your pants? (not in any order)
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 September 21, 2009 - 6:36pm | I thought that the short adventure Aramax One from Imagine magazine would make a nice starter adventure and a prelude to Crash on Volturnus. I cant recall how it puts the pc's together, but it has a reason for them to be on a long trip away from the planet. WIth a small amount of work it can lead into the Volturnus modules with ease. Here is where you can find it: http://www.starfrontiers.com/rules/ Time flies when your having rum. Im a government employee, I dont goof-off. I constructively abuse my time. |
 September 21, 2009 - 7:02pm | Heretic!!! Like AZ hinted at, I've re-written the Basic rulebook "Pot Loren Raiders" game into an expanded game setting. If the "everyone starts off on this ship" thing bugs you, you could pen a short pre-quel of events that might occur outside the recruiting office, such as a run in with a group that didn't get the job or a group of thugs on their way to looking for trouble (they could even be on their way to a local Star Devil recruiter). |
 September 21, 2009 - 7:23pm | I did lead in adventures to Volturnus campaign with a group of SF newbies. just small managable little episodes to introduce particulare areas of the rules. 1. was travel to Truane's Star from Port Loren aboard a new refitted Streel owned starliner (streel hired them and the starliner needed a shake down cruise so the allowed company employees (and the PCs) plus some other VIPs with the clout to get on board to be the first to ride a more fully automated starliner as a test run for the robots services on board. The hook being that the The Truane's Star Express was an older liner and the engineered creature called "hull rakers" (a D&D gelatinous cube) were used to clean all the crappy inaccessable parts of the ship but one was left behind. The ship manages to jump to Dixon Star then enters the void for Truanes (I went with the idea that the transit to differents systems being different times because the time in void was 1 day/light year So the transit to Truane's star meant 5 days in void for the passengers. Maybe not what everyone else would say was the right way to handle it but just what I did at that time. So anyway 2 days out of Dixon's Star there is a power outage on the bottum most deck and the engineer disappears while investigating (hull raker/ cube got him and disolved him) biological samples plus acid residue are left behind. Two hours latter there's another power shortage on the next deck and the captain is killed investigating (same deal). The 1st officer was crapping in his pants and knowing the PCs were officially on the pay roll put them to work solving the "Murder on the Truane's Star Express" I wrote out a whole time line of stuff happening (Cube is sweeping each deck- sometimes out in the open and some times just through the plumbing and air vents) but its moving 1 deck/ 2 hours) plus I put in events like passengers trying to storm the life boat in panic which would mean they'd stay in the void forever. plus gun fire (auto pistol illegally smuggled aboard) by the body guard of a big time VIP when the encounterd the hull raker/cube in the dining room. Plus they found a big vat- 55 gal. drum of acid brought aboard by one passenger in the cargo hold- it was a red herring as the guy was and artist and was squirrelled away in his room doing acid etching on glass and the acid was a different sort than the acid in the cube. The ships doc was a drunk and not doing his job so the PCs surprised me and relieved him of duty then I had him get drunk in the lounge and show pics of what the cube was doing to the other passengers and start the stamped for the life boat. It amounted to an investigative adventure with not much combat but a bunch of ability and skill checks. It worked well. Then in Truanes star after void transit gee what could happen- pirates showed up in a thruster class ship. Straight forward fight. The best part was one NPC pirate being hit by two full power shots from an laser rifle! We had just been ragging on STar Trek Wrath of Kahn when one phaser shot vaporized a human and the next only melts the bug from Chekov's ear to a puddle of goo. so when both shots connected and the player insisted on rolling all the damage and the NPC had no albedo protection I announce that the victim exploded into a hundreds of tiny little pieces. The player was gratified. In order to keep prevent the players from getting the pirate ship I had by GM fiat, the militia show up before the battle was over and the government claimed the thruster class ship. PCs were paid by standard prise rules which meant that on 1mill for the assessed value of the ship they each got something like 750 cr. Then I ran a bar room brawl scenario before they shipped out for Volturnus - the drunk Dr. showed blaming the PCs for the loss of his job. the Amoral player killed him in an alley just on principle. Zealous Zeros biker gang guys showed and things got out of hand with a high speed vehicle combat. Each of these prequel episodes to Volturnus focused on a different area of the rules to break the players into them. but then my group bogged down at the end of SF-0 so I had wished I had gotten into the Volturnus campaign deeper and not bothered with the prequell stuff or the caverns dungeon crawl and the lake o fire encounter to get things to the more exciting stuff in SF-1 module. But you could try the Bugs in the System module as I dont believe it needs high level players or start with the Dark side of the moon mod as a low level team could do well as the mod is not set up to be a wild west shoot out and teams trying to solve everything with a gun are not likely to do well. if you need good ideas for GMing try mining the GM articles at : http://www.treasuretables.org/ I particularly like the octopus theory of running city campaigns: http://www.treasuretables.org/2006/10/the-octopus-a-model-for-urban-campaigns I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
 September 22, 2009 - 1:28am | I started out with Warriors Of White Light...players were doing good til Tabbe's betrayal and the Sathar boarding party, then a succession of bad rolls killed them all, and I had to reboot the adventure from that point with a different ship and set of characters(pursuing the Osprey). "You're everything that's base in humanity," Cochrane continued. "Drawing up strict, senseless rules for the sole reason of putting you at the top and excluding anyone you say doesn't belong or fit in, for no other reason than just because you say so." —Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stephens, Federation |
September 22, 2009 - 6:11am | I started out with Warriors Of White Light...players were doing good til Tabbe's betrayal and the Sathar boarding party, then a succession of bad rolls killed them all, and I had to reboot the adventure from that point with a different ship and set of characters(pursuing the Osprey). Whoa TPK! was this you first SF module? I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
September 22, 2009 - 4:03pm | Yup. I bought KH(along with the Ref's Screen) before AD, when I was 13, and I liked it immediately. Good thing, since if I'd bought Alpha Dawn first, I probably would've gone off the game then and there; after all, I'm not a science fiction fan, cause I liked taking cruises on the Love Boat.... Why did I buy that first? I saw the box cover when in the toy department of Sears in the Macon Mall(Colonial Mall Macon now), and I knew I had to have it...three weeks' worth of aluminum cans later, I bought first KH, then the Ref's screen, then Dragon #71 at Comix Castle, and I was set. As I said, I wished the dice had been a little better, but restarting the adventure from after Tabbe's betrayal(I'm ashamed to admit I simply let my players erase their names and use the same characters....)proved to play out even better. If you're interested, the short story "The Law And the Justice" from SFMan#8 is a rewrite of said adventure. "You're everything that's base in humanity," Cochrane continued. "Drawing up strict, senseless rules for the sole reason of putting you at the top and excluding anyone you say doesn't belong or fit in, for no other reason than just because you say so." —Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stephens, Federation |
September 22, 2009 - 6:30pm | Mr. 357 - Do you have any materials for this stuff? Some great ideas in there... I'm still digesting. Thanks!! --Shannon |
 September 26, 2009 - 11:46am | I'm another one who never really liked the Crash on Volturnus module. Like AZ hinted at, I've re-written the Basic rulebook "Pot Loren Raiders" game into an expanded game setting. This sounds exactilly what I'm looking for. Is it possible to get a copy of it? I trust you mean "PORT Loren Raiders".  Sorry! Couldn't resist.  |
September 26, 2009 - 5:14pm | Go to www.starfrontiers.org and look up the forum Port Loren Raiders, pineapple. "You're everything that's base in humanity," Cochrane continued. "Drawing up strict, senseless rules for the sole reason of putting you at the top and excluding anyone you say doesn't belong or fit in, for no other reason than just because you say so." —Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stephens, Federation |
September 26, 2009 - 6:55pm | Go to www.starfrontiers.org and look up the forum Port Loren Raiders, pineapple. Thanks for the link. Interesting reading, but hard to follow without being able to see the map. Also it is very long (lots of posts). Sounds like everyone had fun.  Too bad there is not a PDF download of the GM's material for the adventure. |
September 26, 2009 - 9:56pm | This thread along with SS's thread here Refer to: Live Play (OpenRPG) got me thinking about mini-adventures and posts about "I ran this game that..." and it's not been documented except with a pencil and graph paper. :-)So.... if anyone can think of a neat and clean layout to create adventures that would really be helpful for the community. I posted some layouts in this project by reviewing SF modules and realized we need a cleaner layout. (Not all SF modules appeard to follow the same format). Fistful of Credits |
September 27, 2009 - 4:21am | Like AZ hinted at, I've re-written the Basic rulebook "Pot Loren Raiders" game into an expanded game setting. This sounds exactilly what I'm looking for. Is it possible to get a copy of it? I trust you mean "PORT Loren Raiders". Sorry! Couldn't resist. Yeah, Port LOL Check out the forums at www.starfrontiers.org the ground portion was finished, and all the NPCs are detailed there. I may write this up for the SFman soon. Basically there was triple the bad guys to prevent characters from capturing the data cube, although the game as penned is geared for veteran characters but can be easily tailored to starter characters (revising everyone to the two skill rule). The second portion (quasi-KH) was a new one I'd penned, and was beta-testing it there when things came to a halt. |
September 27, 2009 - 9:57am | Like AZ hinted at, I've re-written the Basic rulebook "Port Loren Raiders" game into an expanded game setting. Check out the forums at www.starfrontiers.org the ground portion was finished, and all the NPCs are detailed there. I may write this up for the SFman soon. Basically there was triple the bad guys to prevent characters from capturing the data cube, although the game as penned is geared for veteran characters but can be easily tailored to starter characters (revising everyone to the two skill rule). The second portion (quasi-KH) was a new one I'd penned, and was beta-testing it there when things came to a halt. Please do write it up for SFMan. I have always liked it and have always wished that there was more to it than was in the Basic Book. |
September 27, 2009 - 10:59am | This thread along with SS's thread here Refer to: Live Play (OpenRPG) got me thinking about mini-adventures and posts about "I ran this game that..." and it's not been documented except with a pencil and graph paper. :-)So.... if anyone can think of a neat and clean layout to create adventures that would really be helpful for the community. I posted some layouts in this project by reviewing SF modules and realized we need a cleaner layout. (Not all SF modules appeard to follow the same format). Fistful of Credits I just joined a Fistful of Credits. I do not have time to look at it right now...children need to be driven somewhere... A neat and clean standard layout is a good idea. It would certainly make things easier. I just finished converting a small Original Top Secret Module (from Dragon # 39), "The Missile Mission" to Savage Worlds. It is very rough and needs to be proof read and play tested. The trouble with most old TSR modules is that they had many different people write them and they do not all follow the same format. The "British" modules are different from the "American" modules. I have often wondered about converting Classic Top Secret modules to Star Frontiers. Both game systems are d100, but slightly different. It should not be a technical problem. But there are copyright issues. You probably could not post them to this site or print them in SFMan. Any thoughts on this? |
September 27, 2009 - 2:27pm | So.... if anyone can think of a neat and clean layout to create adventures that would really be helpful for the community. I posted some layouts in this project by reviewing SF modules and realized we need a cleaner layout. (Not all SF modules appeared to follow the same format). Fistful of Credits I have read through Fistful of Credits. The sample adventure format is beautiful (but it has a few typos and is incomplete). The format is very similar to that used in some of the other Star Frontiers modules - What a bear to reproduce - I could not do it. The coding examples are beyond me. This format is very close to what is used in the "Remastered" Books. If you want to stick with the "look" of the originals I am afraid you are stuck with it. I would not want to try to produce an adventure using it. The Mini-Module "Assault on Starship Omicron" (from the GM Screen) is in a simpler format. Maybe that would work for shorter fan made adventures? Playing with the Dice Roller was fun.  I tried to download "Warriors of White Light II". It is in a format my computer does not read. Can you re-post it in RTF format or as a PDF? |
September 27, 2009 - 4:31pm | I have often wondered about converting Classic Top Secret modules to Star Frontiers. Both game systems are d100, but slightly different. It should not be a technical problem. But there are copyright issues. You probably could not post them to this site or print them in SFMan. Any thoughts on this? As long as the material does not make any profit you can post or submit it to SFMan. I look forward to those conversion. :-) |
September 27, 2009 - 4:48pm | Playing with the Dice Roller was fun. I tried to download "Warriors of White Light II". It is in a format my computer does not read. Can you re-post it in RTF format or as a PDF? You can turn on the Dice Roller by editing your profile. It will appear on the left of the site. It's addicting, I know. Link to PDF version. |
September 28, 2009 - 3:44pm | Playing with the Dice Roller was fun. I tried to download "Warriors of White Light II". It is in a format my computer does not read. Can you re-post it in RTF format or as a PDF? You can turn on the Dice Roller by editing your profile. It will appear on the left of the site. It's addicting, I know. Link to PDF version. Thank You |
September 28, 2009 - 5:08pm | No probs. "You're everything that's base in humanity," Cochrane continued. "Drawing up strict, senseless rules for the sole reason of putting you at the top and excluding anyone you say doesn't belong or fit in, for no other reason than just because you say so." —Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stephens, Federation |
October 1, 2009 - 7:10pm | I have often wondered about converting Classic Top Secret modules to Star Frontiers. Both game systems are d100, but slightly different. It should not be a technical problem. But there are copyright issues. You probably could not post them to this site or print them in SFMan. Any thoughts on this? As long as the material does not make any profit you can post or submit it to SFMan. I look forward to those conversion. :-) The tempo of my "real life" has picked up again, so this project has to be put on the shelf. Perhaps another time.  |
October 2, 2009 - 2:10am | I don't recall the TS module name (I have it out in my garage somewhere) but the adventure where the agents parachute onto the hijacked cruise ship would translate well into an SF game. |
October 2, 2009 - 2:19pm | I don't recall the TS module name (I have it out in my garage somewhere) but the adventure where the agents parachute onto the hijacked cruise ship would translate well into an SF game. The one which sticks out in my mind is "Operation:Whiteout" from Dragon #74, featuring a doomsday cult(the Children of Neptune) in a very neat Antarctic habitat. "You're everything that's base in humanity," Cochrane continued. "Drawing up strict, senseless rules for the sole reason of putting you at the top and excluding anyone you say doesn't belong or fit in, for no other reason than just because you say so." —Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stephens, Federation |
October 2, 2009 - 2:21pm | I don't recall the TS module name (I have it out in my garage somewhere) but the adventure where the agents parachute onto the hijacked cruise ship would translate well into an SF game. TS 003 Lady in Distress. I've been through it twice. It is very difficult. It was originally a Tournament Module and has a time limit. If I recall correctly, there are five decks and over sixty "spaces" to be cleared. You have only sixty minutes to do it. The first time we played it, the Team had very bad luck right from the beginning. Surprise was lost on the first turn and the microorganism was released. When we reported this, the US Air Force nuked the ship and all aboard. This really depressed everyone. It had been a hard week in the real world and the group really wanted to blow off some steam. The Administrator re-ran it as a "shoot'em up". The ship was a floating Terrorists Convention. We were to shoot everyone and sink the ship in deep water. Silly, but lots of fun. The second time it was run as it was written. We did not make the time limit and failed the mission. Very difficult. How would you convert it to Star Frontiers? 1. Move it to the SF universe and convert the all human cast to the Core Four? Which planet would you choose? 2. Leave it in the Top Secret Universe (1980's Earth, just Humans) and just convert the game system from TS to SF? |
October 2, 2009 - 2:36pm | I think he wants to use a starliner instead. "You're everything that's base in humanity," Cochrane continued. "Drawing up strict, senseless rules for the sole reason of putting you at the top and excluding anyone you say doesn't belong or fit in, for no other reason than just because you say so." —Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stephens, Federation |
October 2, 2009 - 3:16pm | I remember it being difficult, with or without a time limit, but it was brilliantly written. Time limits in TS are an unfair disadvantage to players, after all it takes 5 minutes to resolve the effect of one bullet... How would you convert it to Star Frontiers? 1. Move it to the SF universe and convert the all human cast to the Core Four? Which planet would you choose? That one. Naturally any conversion would mandate some starliner deck plans, but I would probably place the adventure somewhere remote...like Scree Fron. Come to think of it, the location would be a moot point. The terrorists have control of a ship and are threatening to release a dangerous biological weapon if anyone comes too close. So it could happen between Gran Quivera and Morgaine's World on that premise, with all of Task Force Prenglar on alert but unable to act directly, at least not without affecting the hundreds of civilians onboard. But remote would be preferred, away from the lime-light (and more importantly, SpaceFleet). And (now knowing the module name) I would dub the ship "Glorious Lady" or something-Lady as an homage to the module title... |
October 2, 2009 - 9:23pm | TS 003 Lady in Distress. How would you convert it to Star Frontiers? 1. leave it be as a ocean liner and have the PCs insert by gli-jet; they're on the equipment list so use them. Steal a page from the most recent Star Trek movie and do orbital sky diving- they can insert from the cargo/engineering deck of an assault scout. Talk about HALO! 2. One word: Sathar agents and or mega corporations. Shoot use both it'll be like double mint. 3. the engine room has to have a nuclear reactor- fussion or fission and all the implications that go with either one. 4. VIP guest- mega corp EVP's or similar or Council of Worlds rep. 5. Might as well rip off a famous movie for inspiration: Posiden Adventure (original) or Titanic come to mind 6. Look up some names from the Love Boat TV series and use those for NPCs 7. PCs go in knowing that failure means a nuke from orbit? 8. Secret Cargo: egg from a xenomorph, or the original computer log from a colony ship sent out from earth, or evidence that the Blue Plague was the brain-child of a mega corp and the terrorist want to expose that and are threatening to release a variant of the blue plague if the mega corp doesn't own up. 9. Moon Pool (a feature in some naval archetecture) I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
 October 3, 2009 - 1:40pm | An opening in the bottom of a ship that you can operate submersibles from or operate a crane through to salvage something from the seabed. Look up the Glomar Explorer for an example. "Rome didn't build an empire by having meetings. They did it by killing those who stood in their way." |
