 October 6, 2017 - 4:38am | First admission I have never read this module though I am aware of it. Saw these images from the module and thought they suggested sathar to me, the robots with tentacles and the obviously sathar bio-engineered bunny    Has anyone ever adapted Expedition to the Barrier peaks to Star Frontiers? Would you? Could you? I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
October 6, 2017 - 4:39am | Is this robot worth conversion to SF? I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
October 6, 2017 - 4:42am | It seems to me that there would be an element of "Prime Directive" for the PCs: ship has crashed on planet with primitives and it and all traces of technology must be removed- the primitives running around with laser guns also have to be dealt with. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
 October 6, 2017 - 5:37am | Remembering the iconic SF picture of the PCs encountering a primtive tribe and trading with them with one of the primitives eating the item they were trading with them. This and considering that Megacorps would not care about exploiting primitives I do not think that storyline would work, However: A research ship has crashed and the owning Megacorp sends in the PCs to recover the research. Complications arise because the research involved bioengineered life forms, some of which are sapient. Also rival Megacorp troubleshooter teams and free lance salvage teams are challenging the PCs to recover the research and Star Law is looking into the crash because maybe that research was not exactly legal. Sounds like a great job but where did you say we had to go? |
 October 6, 2017 - 7:05am | Has anyone ever adapted Expedition to the Barrier peaks to Star Frontiers? The irony of this is back when I was a young lad and SF just came out, I used the S3 module as a connection between SF and D&D. Yazirians with Vorpal Swords and Elves with lazer gunz, it was some wholesome munchkin goodness. ;) Looking back, a lot of the tech didn't match up with SF. While the ship was a traditional decks perpendicular/KH deck plan (module was penned long before the KH expansion set or SF for that matter), there was a lot of anti-grave tech, androids, and other things that didn't appear in SF while the weapons were quite low tech by comparison. |
October 6, 2017 - 9:07am | Remembering the iconic SF picture of the PCs encountering a primtive tribe and trading with them with one of the primitives eating the item they were trading with them. This and considering that Megacorps would not care about exploiting primitives I do not think that storyline would work, However: A research ship has crashed and the owning Megacorp sends in the PCs to recover the research. Complications arise because the research involved bioengineered life forms, some of which are sapient. Also rival Megacorp troubleshooter teams and free lance salvage teams are challenging the PCs to recover the research and Star Law is looking into the crash because maybe that research was not exactly legal. I like it, add in a complication of the primitives making off with stuff the the PCs inevitably need to get their hands on. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
October 6, 2017 - 6:22pm | Here's an example of how odd the weaponry was: The blasters were archaic, but the lasers were awkward and unwieldy to the point of ridiculously asinine. That weird contortionist wrist stance coupled with squeeezing the handle would make these the most inaccurate weapons ever designed. |
October 6, 2017 - 9:00pm | BTW if you need a copy it is available as a PDF on Drivethrurpg.com http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/17065/S3-Expedition-to-the-Barrier-Peaks-1e?term=expedition+to+the+&test_epoch=0&it=1
Sounds like a great job but where did you say we had to go? |
October 7, 2017 - 3:23am | Here's an example of how odd the weaponry was:
The blasters were archaic, but the lasers were awkward and unwieldy to the point of ridiculously asinine. That weird contortionist wrist stance coupled with squeeezing the handle would make these the most inaccurate weapons ever designed. That would be true for individuals with human and probably yazirian anatomy. But not so much for Dralasite or Sathar anatomy. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
October 7, 2017 - 4:00am | I've been thinking about this robot. It says in the equipment section that a robot gets 1 unarmed melee attack per arm leg pair which is the same for characters. However, this robot has an "altered movement" mode and in the illustrations it appear he has 4 sets of "altered" legs if you ruled this way he would get 4 melee attacks at 2d10 per "arm" I also remember something someone posted about the wiring of the sathar brain- with two eyes, with two pupils that all work independently the wiring between the hemispheres of the sathar brain must be really something. What if the sathar paterned the robotic processors after their own understanding of their own brains? that in sathar robots there are actually dual or even quad processors working both independently and in tandem in much the same way their eyes work? This would facilitate 4 attacks by a sathar robot with 4 limbs almost irregardless of whether they had four legs. Just call it a special case despite the statement in the rules. Also nature of the way the sathar set up the processor of their robots gives them a special ability that even after the robot is destroyed (we'll assume that one of the processors was destroyed) the second reboots after a breif pause and can act with limited effectiveness: treat the robot as 1/2 its level for skill and attack dice rolls, 1/2 all activities- cut number of attacks in half, cut movement in half, maybe -20 to all attacks? Sort of like the terminator robooting despite the beating he took and still trying to terminate his target despite the damage taken. In this case the robot would be treated as having 1 STA? or 1d10 STA a standard robot body has 100 STA so lets say that you blow away one of these bots with 200 STA it will not reboot. but if you only "destroy" it with say 113 STA of damage then there is a 87% it reboots in 1d5 combat rounds. If it was "destroyed" with 151 points of damage then there is only a 49% chance it will reboot and ect. The difference between damage done and double the starting stamina is the percentage chance for reboot. Once a robot reboots one time and is destroyed a second time its done- no further reboots and we can assume both processors are destroyed. This makes them much more dangerous and gives them a little surprise for the players. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
October 7, 2017 - 7:58am | the lasers were awkward and unwieldy to the point of ridiculously asinine. That weird contortionist wrist stance coupled with squeeezing the handle would make these the most inaccurate weapons ever designed.
That would be true for individuals with human and probably yazirian anatomy. But not so much for Dralasite or Sathar anatomy. Therein lies the problem: the module was written for characters with human (and demi-human) anatomy. Even the skeletal remains from which these guns were plucked had human-ish anatomy.  |
October 7, 2017 - 8:15am | FWIW the module specs for the 'bot in question: Police Robot AC: -1 HD: 10 (60 hit points standard) Movement: anti-grav @ 18" (24" emergency speed) Attack: 1/round Damage: varies Built in language translators & atmospheric analysis sensors Attack methods: > 2 subdual tentacles 6' in length @ 18/00 strength > 2 standard arms that strike at 3d4 damage > cranial mount laser pistol (powered by main power supply) > storage capacity for six grenades (3 sleep gas, 1 poison, 1 explosive, 1 incindiary) > torso mount paralysis pistol (w/power disc) > tractor/pressor beam that can pull or push up to 300 pounds (as a telekinesis spell) |
 October 7, 2017 - 12:38pm | Here's an example of how odd the weaponry was: The blasters were archaic, but the lasers were awkward and unwieldy to the point of ridiculously asinine. That weird contortionist wrist stance coupled with squeeezing the handle would make these the most inaccurate weapons ever designed. Maybe the weapons were designed by Yazarians. They have an extra knuckle, I think. Joe Cabadas |
October 7, 2017 - 2:01pm | An extra knuckle wouldn't make any difference, it's still an awkward tug in conjunction with the resulting forearm muscle movement which the cuff is affixed, all of which serves to throw the aim off. Seriously, put your arm & hand in that position and you'll see what I mean. It's not even comfortable for more than a few seconds. |
 October 8, 2017 - 11:57am | I was fiddling with this did a critter conversion from the ship... and was thinking on ways to adapt the whole ship. There are options... I considered the possability it crashed on the Yazarian HW and that is how they got the tech to get off the planet latter. If you go with Y HW then some assumed HW critters could actually come from other planets and thus lead to issues for the T higharchy latter... or could have been collect from Y HW and are the only surviving living samples as they went extint long before HW destroyed.. Other options it is found drifting in space or on a world with an outpost colony. The life forms are from all over the gallaxy so some could be Sathar origin if you want, plus you could expand the ship and add more rooms of doom. In the background story a couple things it went through a blackhole, after the ship was broken into seperate sections in a vain attempt to stop a plague... the crew died of the plague but not the lifeforms in their contained environments... after years of the automated systems caring for the critters things go wrong, critters escape... this gives you all some other options. Blue Plague could be from this ship live samples of the virus could be in a medical section and PCs or a critter could get exposed and spread it... or you could go with a new disease too. You could completely change the life forms in charge too... so if you want Sathar all androids become Sathar androids for example. Want a race similiar but different to SF but SF race could pass for you could do that too. I do like the idea of the Sathar Robots. The ship is old. It is adaptable... Android options could include PCs being scanned at some point and the ship automatically generating androids that look like their races, but of course these androids will try to kill the PCs. "Never fire a laser at a mirror." |
October 8, 2017 - 2:21pm | the lasers were awkward and unwieldy to the point of ridiculously asinine. That weird contortionist wrist stance coupled with squeeezing the handle would make these the most inaccurate weapons ever designed.
That would be true for individuals with human and probably yazirian anatomy. But not so much for Dralasite or Sathar anatomy. Therein lies the problem: the module was written for characters with human (and demi-human) anatomy. Even the skeletal remains from which these guns were plucked had human-ish anatomy. That's easy to explain. These are the remains of a Sathar slave race. Like the Bill Logan-created Bora-Kai NPC race from Star Frontiersman magazine. Joe Cabadas |
October 8, 2017 - 4:11pm | Slave race would work... "Never fire a laser at a mirror." |
October 8, 2017 - 5:36pm | The problem isn't how the race came to be, the issue is those laser guns are not appropriate for that anatomy. Everything else works anatomically speaking except for the two laser guns. |
October 8, 2017 - 9:29pm | we are talking adaption so things that dont make sense can be tossed out the air lock I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
October 9, 2017 - 10:40am | I agree you change what does not work... for how you want use the module. I should probably keep converting critters from it and fun gizmos. It really is a cool little section of a much larger ship... which then causes me to muse on what the rest of the ship could be like. This ship I think is another Grand Lady ship which TSR folks tended to invision back then. "Never fire a laser at a mirror." |
October 9, 2017 - 12:00pm | Technically speaking from a D&D standpoint: the lasers would be fired in a similar fashion as a crossbow. The problem, once again, is the crossbow was steadied with the other hand and the crossbow didn't have a wrist cuff that would throw the aim off while squeezing the trigger mechanism...instead the back portion would be steadied against the shoulder or under the arm much like a modern rifle stock. I agree with "changing what you want for how the module is to be used", I just didn't have the inclination to whip up new illustrations for the lasers when I ran the module in my D&D games. Besides, you could never get new power discs for them anyways. ;)  |
October 9, 2017 - 12:23pm | yes the power disk... but I like the idea of old sci fi tech that requires specialty energy sources for example... it is very unlikely Sathar energy sources would work in Federation guns for example. "Never fire a laser at a mirror." |
March 9, 2019 - 9:25am | A research ship has crashed and the owning Megacorp sends in the PCs to recover the research. Complications arise because the research involved bioengineered life forms, some of which are sapient. Also rival Megacorp troubleshooter teams and free lance salvage teams are challenging the PCs to recover the research and Star Law is looking into the crash because maybe that research was not exactly legal. I like this plot hook. PCs have a star law agent to deal with. shoot him or negotiate- lots of consequences possible whatever route they take. what if its a sathar research ship? PCs must interdict sathar teck even that amongst the primitives. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
March 9, 2019 - 9:38am | FWIW the module specs for the 'bot in question: Police Robot AC: -1 HD: 10 (60 hit points standard) Movement: anti-grav @ 18" (24" emergency speed) Attack: 1/round Damage: varies Built in language translators & atmospheric analysis sensors Attack methods: > 2 subdual tentacles 6' in length @ 18/00 strength > 2 standard arms that strike at 3d4 damage > cranial mount laser pistol (powered by main power supply) > storage capacity for six grenades (3 sleep gas, 1 poison, 1 explosive, 1 incindiary) > torso mount paralysis pistol (w/power disc) > tractor/pressor beam that can pull or push up to 300 pounds (as a telekinesis spell) Looking at this I'm going with: inertia screen laser pistol cranial mount a stunner weapon from beam weapons list 6 grenades tentacles can flail for 2d10 damage and other arms do 1d10 damage 4 melee attacks as discussed in another post this thread. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
April 8, 2019 - 7:56pm | I really need to get back on my projects... so much fun in this module. "Never fire a laser at a mirror." |
April 8, 2019 - 8:37pm | Yes, you have some good insights into things. I wrote a story about all the Sathar robots from the various modules... most of the ones from Starspawn of Volturnus were pretty vague... so I wrote a description for one of the combat robots based off of the tin can picture at the top... but I gave it treads. Joe Cabadas |
April 8, 2019 - 9:48pm | Yeah Sathar love those treads... lol I love my Sathar, but as I am rebooting as I will be teaching the kids how to play RPGs they only know video games... so I am seriously thinking over what I am go to do. I might take a stab at using FS rules for SF setting. But I must have crazy wacky weird science Sathar. I love the Space Worms! As to this project I need to get working on it again... If we consider the possibility of crashing space ships wrecking havoc on planets, creating colonies of people who no longer know their origin... What if one of these crashed on the Sathar Homeworld... making them into xenophobic genocidal paranoid race... or maybe they are what survived! Or maybe this lurks on some world were the population is primitive version of one of the major races, maybe that’s how they got there as crew that survived or escaped specimens from another section that crashed elsewhere. Of course a human like race or slave race to Sathar might work as already discussed. Early TSR games are human centered, sort of like Star Trek humans and very human humanoids everywhere, with humans doing crazy stuff... Star Fleet ships always go off the rails... lol just human built stuff flying all over, zipping through black holes, worm holes, slingshotting around suns through time... yep it’s that sort of universe... so humans could have colonies of folks on distant worlds they know nothing about... these descendants ultimately find ship per module and cause it’s beacon to reactivate... someone in space hears it and comes to investigate the signal. Or maybe the humans have left a messy trail of crashed ships across space from a golden age of technology. Maybe a game where humans are mythic critters at first? Imagine Vrusk, Dralasites, Ss'sessu and Yazarians being the Core Races with no humans but plenty of human artifacts left behind. They find this crashed ship after a colony calls for help... humans are or were real and had some crazy technology... and some of the ship’s lifeforms are found on other worlds and associated with an unseen aggressor. Or heck you could really expand the ship and run it as a survival game, plague on ship, escaped critters, black hole, the crash, a strange new world... humans versus the alien world. Just so many directions you can spin this... "Never fire a laser at a mirror." |
April 9, 2019 - 10:13am | Revisiting this...one could always twist Erol Otus' artwork style into the equation. Otus has a unique way of rendering people, as such these skeletal remains have an off-human stance with curved forearm bones and long spindly fingers. Perhaps these two laser weapons with their awkward triggers and wrist cuffs were specifically designed for Erol Otus humans and don't work as ergonomically for, let's say...Larry Elmore or Jeff Dee humans. Yep, that's it: these are Erol Otus aliens and not regular humans. the lasers were awkward and unwieldy to the point of ridiculously asinine. That weird contortionist wrist stance coupled with squeeezing the handle would make these the most inaccurate weapons ever designed.
That would be true for individuals with human and probably yazirian anatomy. But not so much for Dralasite or Sathar anatomy. Therein lies the problem: the module was written for characters with human (and demi-human) anatomy. Even the skeletal remains from which these guns were plucked had human-ish anatomy. |
April 10, 2019 - 5:20am | I like that explanation. -20 for using alien equipment and -5 for awkward design or -20 for using alien equipment but once you know how to use it the penalty only drops to -10 or -5 for the awkward design. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
