 February 23, 2010 - 9:16pm | Was working up some background for a player in one of my games and next thing ya know I had a mining ship schematic and deck plan for a HS 14 ship. With a little work I think I can bang out the actual decks in a few days time. It suddenly occured to me that doing the ship and presenting it as a serial set of adventures for the SFman might work nicely. short adventures/ encounters like in the original Warriors of White Light module. a KHs encounter here and there. quite a few AD style. If you're interested in the ship there's a 3 page PDF here: http://starfrontiers.us/node/4023 Look for Rock Hound right now I'm compiling a list of encounter ideas plus I'd like to know what you think of the idea overall. EDIT: 1.these encounters should be setting generic (adaptable to almost anywhere) 2. a couple hours play time. 3. flexible to play in almost any order as support for a campaign or as a loosely linked campaign themselves. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
February 23, 2010 - 9:43pm | Adventure Ideas I've brainstormed myself: 1. claim jumpers: another wild cat miner (shady) has claim jumped an asteroid that the Rock Hound prospected and left a claim beacon on. (KH) scenario. 2. Pirates, naturally, because they're pirates and they have to do piratically things. KH scenario 3. Mysterious, alien installation on an asteriod and something dangerous too. AD scenario 4. derelict ship- salvage operation. AD scenario and possible KHs too 5. Shore leave- obligatory bar brawl (possibly with claim jumper crew in item 1) and some intrigue AD scenario 6. Loan Due: Bagga the Nut, a notorious gangster has bought the debt on your ship and is calling in the loan. Pay in full or loose the ship OR you can do this little job for me...... 7. Corporate Muscle. Space is never big enough with mega corps around and the corp is flexing its muscle and wants you to move off KHs and AD scenarios. 8. Lucky strike/ Gold rush- no real idea just something that came during brainstorming. please do comment with feedback on my ideas or stuff you came up with. thankx EDIT: 9. Stow-away- no real idea here just listing a staple plot hook. NOTE: Bugs In the System module could easily be played with this ship as a platform. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
 February 23, 2010 - 10:03pm | I love the ship. I think this is a great idea to work up a bunch of small scenarios. If we get the online (OpenRPG) games going again it would be a great way to playtest them. Ad Astra Per Ardua! My blog - Expanding Frontier Webmaster - The Star Frontiers Network & this site Founding Editor - The Frontier Explorer Magazine Managing Editor - The Star Frontiersman Magazine |
February 24, 2010 - 12:37pm | Here the deal the ship latching onto an asteroid has no benefit according to the rules in KHs any old ship can pull up to a rock and send out hvy duty mining bots that will mine 4 tons/ hour of ore. Plus some asteroids will be too big to grab in this fashion. So here my proposed rule modifications to make this work: if the Rock Hound prospects for minable resources and finds them then make a second roll and if 25% or less the rock is too big to be effectively grabbed (I'm imagining that much of an 'roid belt is fairly small- anyone know for sure?) If she finds a rock with minable resources that can be grabbed then her two umbiblica attached hvy duty mining bot are 50% more effective at mining and produce 6 tons / hour. The downside is that they are attached to the ship and cant be deployed if the rock is too big to grab onto. In the case of the really big 'roids the digger shuttle and the standard mining bots can be sent over and they will just porduce 4 tons per hour. The standard mining bots could also work the small rock the hound grabs but still only produce 4 tons per hour. The digger shuttel cannot do this for safety reasons. I'm also redoing the cargo container idea to cylindrical holds that attach either side of the long central axis. Thanks Woot for the excellent critique: the PDF is updated with cleaner images that are easier to use. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
February 25, 2010 - 9:55pm | bit of background here: <!--[if !mso]> <![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]> In or near many asteroid belts a Pay Dirt Station eventually will spring up. Either in a hollowed out asteroid, on a near by moon or on a largish ship that has been modified for the purpose. The bare minimum elements of a Pay Dirt Station are a bar, a trading post, an ore refinery, and usually an essayer’s office. Large stations sport much more than the minimum. Law & Order. Most of these stations are rough and tumble and some are down right dangerous. Space Fleet wont expend assets to regulate them since they are closely tied to a planet’s economy and there by fall under the legitimate interest of the planet Most militias are too under funded and over stretched to effectively police them. It has fallen to Star Law to send marshals to keep the peace. Star Law’s marshal service is explicitly tasked with policing Pay Dirt Stations and with fugitive recapture. Only the smallest start up station will lack a marshal and or deputies. Entertainment. Most bars have “credit slots” though not all are honest. Starbuckarroos is a very popular card game. Live bands are popular when the can be brought in but dralasite comedians are often banned. Station Traffic. A small station will have d5 ships in port. A medium sized station will have 1d10+3 ships in port. A large station will have 2d10+3 ships in port. They will be a mixture of prospectors, mining ships, bulk freighters, privateers and the occasional militia ship. Space Fleet almost never stops at these stations. Some will be corporate flagged and other will be independents.
I'm thinking to make the pay dirt station in White Light system the hollowed out asteroid called Planaron. Its official name is Planaron Ore Processing Station or POPS for short.
I dont want to explicitly place this serial adventure in White Light system which seems so well explored. So I'm thinking to detail a HS 20 mining ship that has a Ore processing lab and has been converted to be a Pay dirt station. with a few bars, a cargo hold converted to be a flight bay for small craft. Debris from the OPL is used for fuel in its Ion engines (IIRC you can us anything for fuel though hydrogen was best?) It will have an Essayer's office, stores and even a star law marshal. It maintains 1 g accel orbiting the sun just out side of the asteroid belt but once per week it flips over and reverses course. In this way it stays in the same general area but it could even move itself closer to a "gold rush"I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
 February 26, 2010 - 8:02am | If your asking for an opinion I really like the idea. The owner of the HS 20 ship that has been converted into a station might be the authority running it. :-) Hydrogen Scoops Hydrogen scoops are special retractable collectors designed to catch, ionize, bind, clean, separate, and store hydrogen from gas giants and stars. Once a ship is piloted into orbit around a gas giant, the scoops can be engaged. (I have stats for size, collection rate and storage capacity) |
February 26, 2010 - 10:54am | I like the hydrogen scoops- there would be regular runs of a few ships to the gas giant and HS 20 ship (pay dirt station) would maintain its relative position between the asteroid belt and the gas giant to keep the hydrogen flights short. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
February 26, 2010 - 1:13pm | Needed a menace for an encounter: something with the feel of Aliens but not the feel of Alien and not the xenomorph from the movie either to prevent players from yawning and saying, "Not another bug hunt." aliens from the movie seem just to familiar to me so I came up with Void Spiders in the down load section this project. feed back is welcome as I have yet to play test them. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
February 26, 2010 - 2:46pm | I got thinking about creatures (specifically D&D 4e). In 4e they tend to be built around shutting down character powers, slow a pc or immobilize them. In Star Frontiers character level is typically the gear they carry (how effecting in combat, immune to damage, etc). Creatures that effect and/or attack gear in Star Frontiers would be very interesting. I have 47 special abilities for creatures in the Frontier Space (TM) RPG - I should review to make sure there are a few that cause equipment failure. :-) |
February 26, 2010 - 5:11pm | a side effect of having no apparent digestion would be no heat generated so the void spiders wont really show on IR- that nixes some equipment. especially the type of equipment that you'd bring to look for something hiding in ships ductwork I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
January 23, 2021 - 11:50am | Crew Requirements for the Rockhound IV: At least 1 pilot for Rockhound and 1 pilot for the digger shuttle. Treat this as a big ship campaign with a captain/pilot NPC of high level piloting skill in charge like a captian Nemo. 1 astrogator 4 Beam weapons gunners for the 3x laser batteries and the pod lasers 1 rocket battery gunner for the rocket battery at least 1 star ship engineer but 2 would give you two shiftts (GST day) At least one AD rules Environmentalist to analyze samples and run the refinery plant but two would give you two shifts (GST day) 1 roboticist and technician just to manage and maintain the robots wouldn't hurt but engineers could pull double duty Service robot to clean, service robot to feed crew and bartend. 9 minimum to 14 2 service robots plus the mining robots mentioned elsewhere. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
January 23, 2021 - 12:13pm | Digger shuttle: atomic drive as the atomic fuel lasts a long time and the mining ship may not wish to carry chem drive fuel. Atomic fuel allows for a planet or moon landing so no ion engine for this craft. Prospecting: Pilot, astrogator saves them time navigating between asteroids, and environmentalist to analyze samples, and flight engineer to monitor the atomic drive and fix anything that breaks. Having the environmentalist on board saves time so that samples dont have to be brought back to be analyzed. Mining opperations: pilot and flight engineer The Rockhound's Gunners will be hired for the gunnery but they also pull duty as able bodied spacers: lifting hauling pushing cleaning etc. One gunner might be the ships Master at Arms and responsible for the ships armory stocked to repell unauthorized boarding This character can be a higher level NPC. Officers/high level NPCs: Captain with HS17 pilot qualifications, Master at Arms/Security officer: ligh level gunner, trainer, keeper of the armory, Ligher level engineer, everyone else is low level PCs and NPCs "Spacer Skills Revisited" SFman #10 are likely enforce here. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
January 26, 2021 - 8:34am | Kid Kraken on discord did this crew patch for me. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
February 18, 2021 - 5:17pm | RockHound adventure has had a working title upto now Was googling quotes using "hounds of hell" and surprisingly there are not many good ones out there but came up with "While the Hounds of Hell Await" sort of inspired by a quote but not quite. Then googling quotes and hound tunrs up pages of quotes by the Hound from Game of Thrones which required more care with the search parameters Have a few quotes about hounds but what stood out was the "Aint nothin but a Hound dog" lyrics which I morphed into "Nothin but a Rockhound" which feels like a front runner for the introductory adventure. Not that I was planning a second adventure but the title "While the Hounds of Hell Await" feels like too a good title to not use. EDIT: Of course if I ust "Nothing but a Rockhound" I'm going to have to include a dralastie Elvis impersonator NPC in the crew. complete with a white jumpsuit, cape and wig with sideburns. EDIT 2: other quotes twisted from their original- these might be fitted to individual encounters? "hounds to the chase" "the howl of hunting hounds" "curs of low degree" Blood Hound- search for a stowaway? Or something along the blood hound line as its a search for someone trying not to be found Junkyard Dog- for the first encounter taking place at a salvage yard "Mongrel, Mut, Whelp and Hound, All curs of Low degree" I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
