 September 5, 2011 - 11:45am | First up this looks like a bad way to go: http://jrmalone.deviantart.com/art/Grounding-251499104 I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
 September 5, 2011 - 5:20pm | Dralasite in a decompression chamber. AKA Marshmallow Death! -iggy |
September 5, 2011 - 7:11pm | Dralasite in a decompression chamber. AKA Marshmallow Death! eeewww! I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
 September 5, 2011 - 8:21pm | ----- Death by w00t!----- Rupture in the hull and the last of the Dyscola was drank an hour ago. No way to find that leak now. You just sit there... whimpering until the air is gone. Suddenly you realize your bowls are asking for relief, could it be? Dyscola to the rescue! (Just in another form.) Brings back memories of when my Pappy was asked to pour his friends best whiskey over his grave when he died. Pappy said, "Do you mind if it passes thru me kidneys first?" |
 September 6, 2011 - 5:59am | Thinking opening sequence of Men In Black with the dragonfly getting splatted by the truck. Got the image? Now take it to a gliding Yazirian and a spaceship on lift off. Sounds like a great job but where did you say we had to go? |
September 6, 2011 - 8:43am | Thinking opening sequence of Men In Black with the dragonfly getting splatted by the truck. Got the image? Now take it to a gliding Yazirian and a spaceship on lift off.
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September 6, 2011 - 8:44am | Air supply scrubbers are non-operative. Everyone dons spacesuits hoping the 10 hours of air will be enough for someone to come and rescue them. Ut-oh, eight crew, six spacesuits. |
September 6, 2011 - 9:35am | Ever see the youtube video of the cop doing a lecture to school kids about gun safety and shoots himself in the leg? Imagine if it was a star Law agent doing the same except he left his laser pistol on 10 SEU by mistake. RE: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=am-Qdx6vky0 I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
 September 7, 2011 - 5:41pm | Well, my all time personal fave is when two of my players decided to have a one-on-one shoot out with each other. Old west style, pre-arranged meet and come alone, armed with whatever you want to bring. It ended up being a heavy laser versus rocket launcher and a tie on the initiative roll. Heavy laser missed with a roll of 99 and the rocket hit for more than sufficient damage to end the game for laser-boy. Moral of the story? If you have to fight, don't fight each other. ______________________________ Runner-up goes to another group who decided they could tackle a sathar destroyer with their ion-driven scout ship boasting a single laser battery. On one hand, they never would have outaccelerated it had the worms bothered to take chase, but they really didn't have to goad the worms into a firefight... Moral of the story? Don't play chicken with a Mack truck when you're driving a Yugo. ______________________________ Honorable mention goes to a pirate character who --- having disabled the size-12 civilian freighter he was attempting to board and loot --- just couldn't manage to disable the ship's pair of laser batteries. Having suffered critical damage from said pair of batteries and having expended his rocket salvoes...unable to hit with the cannon or LB from his frigate, he opted to ram. Now I won't get into the what and why behind that logic. But he missed. And the freighter managed to hulk the frigate after that, and had plenty of time to effect repairs to leave the pirates gasping for their final breaths as their vaccsuit LS units expired. Moral of the story? Quit while you're ahead. |
 September 8, 2011 - 7:54am | One of my last college day games involved my characters party being involved in a shoot out at a gas refinery. We were in a forest of pipes taking reckless fire from the enemy as well as giving a little reckless fire of our own. Needless to say the game ended in a bang. |
September 8, 2011 - 9:02am | Think I'll continue the bug theme. A Vrusk is walking down the street and does not realize it has been recently repaved. Suddenly the new extra sticky tar treatment has her trapped and unable to move. Go with either hit by a hover car or exposure. Sounds like a great job but where did you say we had to go? |
September 8, 2011 - 9:10am | A Dralasite is walking down a hallway when he sees another Dralasite standing by a computer (a big one) glowing the most awesome shape of electric blue. It walks over and asks "Where did you get that body paint?". The glowing one does not respond. It tries again and still no response. It gets a little angry and taps the glowing one to get its attention. That is when it discovers there is a short in the computer and the first Dralasite isn't painted but being electrocuted. Sounds like a great job but where did you say we had to go? |
 September 8, 2011 - 8:33pm | One of my favorite character deaths was when "someone" sabotaged one of the ship's rocket packs. It was set in such a way that when a character using it fired the forth burst, all remaining unused bursts in the pack would ignite at once. I forget exactly how fast that Yazirian player character was moving in meters per turn as he bulleted towards the nearby space station, but let's just say that the final score was... Space Station hull 1, Yazirian in spacesuit 0.  My SF website izz: http://ragnarr.webs.com |
September 9, 2011 - 8:21am | One of my favorite character deaths was when "someone" sabotaged one of the ship's rocket packs. It was set in such a way that when a character using it fired the forth burst, all remaining unused bursts in the pack would ignite at once. I forget exactly how fast that Yazirian player character was moving in meters per turn as he bulleted towards the nearby space station, but let's just say that the final score was...
What? No RS check for half? LoLSpace Station hull 1, Yazirian in spacesuit 0. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
September 9, 2011 - 8:16pm | Finally got enough credits to buy my own starship. Had it custom made and everything waited months at the space station while they put it together. Finally the day comes and I fly off in my ship. My trusty astrogator plots a course, we speed up and jump. We're just about to jump and the GM announces that the air is getting stuffy. Since I am an Engineer as well as I Pilot I announce I am going back to look at the life support equipment. The GM says something that makes me shirk in horror... "What life support? You never bought a life support system." He let us slow down and fly back in space suits, so we didn't really die, but still... Moral of the story, double check your work when building a ship. Especially if your GM is a @#$%^&* -LZ |
September 9, 2011 - 8:33pm | That's awesome. Never count your O particles before they.... combine with each-other!  |
September 10, 2011 - 11:34am | Honestly, I think the GM should have had an engineer in the setting ask about the LS. They would have. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
September 10, 2011 - 12:23pm | Then again maybe not. If it is a custom built ship the engineers would probably be thinking the designer had another idea for the life support that they we're not doing and let it go at that. Maybe someone would have asked what they were planning for life support just out of curiousity but since the builders are seldom the ones handling the face to face with the customers they might not have had a chance. Remember even in a high tech world it takes dozens if not hundreds of beings to build a starship each working on their section of it. It is possible no one noticed their wasn't any life support going in. Sounds like a great job but where did you say we had to go? |
September 11, 2011 - 9:03pm | I can still see the sales guy of the custom starship design firm asking about it repeatably to get the commission. He wouldn't stop asking until he found out who his competitor was that got that part of the design contract. -iggy |
September 12, 2011 - 6:43am | Sounds like Ellzii had his ship built at a government run shipyard rather than a private or corporate owned yard. The latter would have been sure to have tried to sell you every upgrade possible. |
September 12, 2011 - 1:51pm | That wasn't so much the GM being a (insert derogatory word here), it was just poor GMing. A ship doesn't go directly from the shipyard and into its maiden voyage. There's this thing called a preflight inspection that happens --- the crew boards the ship for the first time and "explores" it so to speak, becoming familiar with the innards and making sure everything that was ordered was included. Even so, assuming a crew simply boards and launches without even the rudimentary pre-flight checks (LS units online, wait...there is no LS guage on my panel...do you have an LS guage? How 'bout you? No? Frag it all, we don't have any LS equipment! Any rules stickler should be familiar with the KH ruling for preflight checks...), I would think someone might notice in the timeframe after first entering the airlock that they wouldn't be able to remove their vacc suit and want to know why there was no atmospheric pressure. After all, the docking bay of every space station is not pressurized. You need a vacc suit to go about any business in the bay, and no doubt folks look forward to shedding that cumbersome outfit when their job is done. It's just like an eight hour day of work, first thing you do when you get home is kick off your shoes...wait, whaddaya mean it's not a good idea to take off my shoes?! Now the only thing I can come back to here is the GM had your ship BERTHED at the station, meaning you were also paying for docking facilities rather than just having the ship casually parked and waiting for a crew. If the ship was actually berthed, it could have an adjoining airlock to the station (as described in SF/KH:1 Dramune Run) and then there's the (very thin) possibility that those docking fees cover the station's ability to pump air, food, and water into the ship. Which, sadly, isn't going to work well without any LS equipment in the ship. No LS equipment = no support nozzles and attachments for the ship to receive such goods fromthe station. After all, if your car has no fuel tank, then it has no fuel nozzle to accept the fuel --- you open the fuel door and see empty space, try to pump gas into that space and it simply sloshes to the ground. Which, in the end, comes right back to poor GMing. He has some serious explaining to do, as in how did that atmosphere inside the ship magically appear prior to take off? |
September 12, 2011 - 4:31pm | Shadow makes some excellent points and lets face it even the electrician installing some lights would have said, "Wow, really feeling that coffee now. Where's the head?" Someone was bound to notice that the toilets didn't flush or that there were any. Of course I consider waster water part of the environmental system which means it falls under LS. EDIT: I suspect that the GM noticed it and just decided that he'd have a laugh at your expense but since it wasn't really that funny all that happened was a delay of game while the ship was flown back to the station with the PCs in vac suits. Which is not the end of the world as we all know that the average TTRPG has plenty of delay of games for food, politics and Monty Python/Black Adder discussions. Still it is probably poor GMing since you must have lost at least 20 minutes time on that. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
September 13, 2011 - 7:13am | Of course adding a life support system to a ship is very complicated. Consider the AC in your car. Besides the unit which produces the cold air there is all the duct work to deliver the cold air. In a starship you would have not only air temperature control but also humidity, recycling, purifying and various testing. Add in all the other environmental controls and you have one very complex system built starting from the framework up. Then again when I worked for Cessna (I have had alot of jobs and am starting another new one Monday) we made the parts for the airplanes at the plant in Columbus, Georgia. The wiring was made in Mexico and then the planes were assembled in either Wichita, Kansas or somewhere in Washington state or China BUT they were than partially disassembled and shipped back to Wichita for final testing and flying. So I say again it is possible the original builders might not have been concerned with it having no life support. Sounds like a great job but where did you say we had to go? |
September 13, 2011 - 8:44am | OK! My last post I was wearing my custom engineering hat. Now, assuming that starships are built in the frontier like cars are today then I can see rattraveller's point. I put on my manufacturing hat and I see the starship is built of parts possibly built all over the frontier, then assembled at a ship yard factory. Then Ellzii's ship probably had all the blank spaces for a standard off-the-shelf life support system. The ship yard assembly workers probably wandered why the LS was not there, but it was not on the bill or materials so the production line managers were not going to put it in for free. They would call sales who would call the call the players and ask, "do you want this option". However, if the sales guys know that the bank doesn't have any more money/credit for the players, then it is possible that they would keep quiet seeing as there is no further commission to get. The sales guy was likely as surprised as the players when the ship took off without the LS because he was assuming that there was a future sale coming as soon as the players scrapped up enough money to install it. -iggy |
September 13, 2011 - 9:43am | What about the building contractor that installed sprinklers that were not connected to the water lines? Contractor is building parts at location Y that will ship to location X to be assembled for client Z. Contractor cuts corners and the airduct actually connects to nothing. LS plant is installed but deck six always smells foul and the crew is forced keep the hatches open to it and install a wall mounted rotary air impeller to move some fresh air onto that deck and can only go there with portable air supply, at least until they can return to port but then the law suit with the contractor draws out and they have not the money for the expensive fix themselves and end up working around the problem with jury rigged fixes and Grade A Red Neck Engineering. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
September 13, 2011 - 1:47pm | 102nd way to die horribly in the Frontier: playing under a bad GM |
 September 14, 2011 - 12:49pm | Your spaceship's systems shut down too near a sun. Only the air works, because it's on an independent unit. You slowly bake to death as the ship heats up 15 degrees per hour. View my profile for a list of articles I have written, am writing, will write. "It's yo' mama!" —Wicket W. Warrick, Star Wars Ep. VI: Return of the Jedi "That guy's wise." —Logray, Star Wars Ep.VI: Return of the Jedi Do You Wanna Date My Avatar? - Felicia Day (The Guild) |
September 14, 2011 - 6:05pm | Thinking of more bug ways to die (why did I start this theme?) Humans are scouring the planet for the hidden Sathar base when a giant beam of light from the hidden starship lands and fries them all one at a time. Sounds like a great job but where did you say we had to go? |
September 14, 2011 - 6:25pm | A giant grabs you, throws you in a Zip-Loc bag and seals it. You can't breath. What race are you? How much exposed skin does a dral need to breath?  A giant grabs you, lays you on you're back and places Scotchtape over your abdomen and onto the paper. You can't breath. What race are you? If you dry out a vrusk carapace can you blow air in its mouth and cover the air-holes in its abdomen to make muzak? |
September 14, 2011 - 6:49pm | If you dry out a vrusk carapace can you blow air in its mouth and cover the air-holes in its abdomen to make muzak? No, because they're not mouth breathers. But who am I to say anything if the giant wants to try blowing through the other end... |
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