Strictly (Duke) Springer - Day 067 – March 7th

It takes 2 hours to get to the base. On our way in we meet a patrol who is looking for people without papers. We have them and proceed after losing another hour.

If only U-Suits looked like this. 

We get military u-suits on the first roll, which is great. I buy 12. That suits everyone with 10 extra for 540 secs. On the second roll, we can slip into an unguarded office and search it. It is so not worth it, so the day ends.

1 Antelope starship with TL-5 Guns. I owe nothing.
1 Hopper with boat guns, TL-3.

Cargo:
1 Boat guns, TL-2,
4 CU Status Unit (e103),
2 TL-4 heavy hand weapons with explosive effects,
5 Military U-suits (e044),
7 Side Arms TL-1,
4 Doses of pheromones (e009) in Duke’s pocket,
and the ship is fueled with 4 hypercharges.

1 Alicorn starship with TL-1 Guns. We owe nothing.

Cargo:
1 Ship's boat
1 TL-2 Boat guns (as cargo, not installed)
5 Military U-suits (e044)
10 TL-1 Heavy Hand Weapons,
and the ship is fueled with 4 hypercharges.

I have 50,156 secs. We are wanted in the Palatek system.

Legion of Assassins

Earlier this week, I posted 3 assassins, which I intend to use as Romanesque Legionaries. Why not fighters? Well, with a theoretical background as Citizen Soldiers, legionaries should have some atypical skills for a soldier because they are citizens first. Right within the AD&D description are examples of soft skills: disguise, poisoning, spying, plus a couple of others. In order to do these things, the assassin needs to have people skills. They also need to have other non-combat skills which support this.

Ideally, assassins should always have some sort of secondary professional skill. AD&D assumes that the assassin will take out the wizard, the lord or the high level cleric, but those people are surrounded by eyes. The ability to pass one's self off as a cook, a herald, a guard is paramount. It doesn't mean the assassin can actually do those tasks, they merely need to make someone else think that they can.

This is one of the reasons I wrote Zero to Hero: Uncommon Commoners. The players need a host of reasonable skills to get into the head of their characters so it is beneficial to have NPC's which operate in that mundane capacity. Zero to Hero gives mechanical statistics to these characters, which might not always be necessary, but can be helpful to everyone. The players are acting out the adventures of a fantastic person which is hard enough, the addition of relatively common folk gives them a scaffold to get there. Plus all of the classes in Zero to Hero have relatively few combat abilities which doesn't increase the mechanical risk to players, it levels the playing field so a small handful of heroes can deal with a huge ensemble of characters on a basic level.

Assassins aren't all about assassination. They break into the sausage factory to make extra special sausage.

This was the operational method of the Romans. They could hand anyone their butt on the battlefield, but after that, then what? Soft skills to get the defeated to continue to defeat themselves. Assassins as soldiers make a lot of sense. Someone needs to collect information and do dastardly things. If you think about it, a legionary was probably eyeing up his compatriots and leaders as much as the enemy. Sometimes, they were looking homeward for any news about family or politics which often ingratiated them to the very people they were looking to take advantage of or wipe out. Assassins make a lot of sense as fighting men.

Even if you don't want to introduce the complexity of a class of classes like Zero to Hero, I hope this changes how you consider placement of assassins in your world.

Strictly (Duke) Springer - Day 066 – March 6th.

I’m not armed as well as I wish, but we are off.

On entry into Palatek, we receive a signal to wait to be inspected. We’re wanted here, so we jump away. Next, we receive a distress call, like the one that caused the problem with the pirates. We jump away again without answering. In the Talitar system, we are buzzed by a scoutship with the evil guns that kill the crew on a single hit.

We have every advantage so I’m tempted to go in guns blazing, but there is a 1 in 3 chance it will simply fly off. We take that chance and lose. He opens fire on us and gets the first shot.

The Antelope takes a pair of hits, which would have knocked out defensive ECM if we had them. The magnetic plasma cannon hits The Alicorn in the cargo hold.

Alicorn misses it’s shot, while The Antelope rains down 3 hits and the scout explodes.

That was not a good trade, but it’s probably what a crew PC’s would have done. We are limping down to the planet. We’re on our way to the Military base.

Strictly (Duke) Springer - Day 065 – March 5th

I need stasis units (a roll of 2), a boat (5), hypercharges (7), PS bots (9), and a gunner (10). So, 5 of 11 rolls should help.

I get 11, 8, 7, 12, 5, 4, 7, 6, 11 and 10. That so-so. We buy the ship’s boat for the Alicorn for 900. It’s TL-1. Next we get our hypercharges, all four of them for another 2,000. And finally, we hire our last gunner named Edith for an initial payment of 25.

That’s a cool 2,925 spent today.

I also dole out the weapons and u-suits. Two of the crew need military U-suits, which will come later I am sure. We are going to depart for Talitar. That is a 3 jump flight and we will have to make it one hop at a time.

1 Antelope starship with TL-5 Guns. I owe nothing.
1 Hopper with boat guns, TL-3.

Cargo:
1 Boat guns, TL-2,
4 CU Status Unit (e103),
2 TL-4 heavy hand weapons with explosive effects,
7 Side Arms TL-1,
4 Doses of pheromones (e009) in Duke’s pocket,
and the ship is fueled with 6 hypercharges.

1 Alicorn starship with TL-1 Guns. We owe nothing.

Cargo:
1 Ship's boat
1 TL-2 Boat guns (as cargo, not installed)
10 TL-1 Heavy Hand Weapons,
and the ship is fueled with 6 hypercharges.

I have 50,696 secs. We are wanted in the Palatek system.

Strictly (Duke) Springer - Day 064 – March 4th

At the spaceport, there are 11 possible results. One of which is no more rolls, which is an annoying thing. However, since both ships are paid for and I am cheating the system for crew pay, this one is now meaningless except for the fact that it can burn time.

I need stasis units (a roll of 2), a boat (5), hypercharges (7), PS bots (9), a gunner (10), a pair of pilots (11). So, 6 of 11 rolls should be fruitful but sometimes the dice lie.

I get 11, 9, 8, and 3 which is no more rolls. The 9 is useful, as it the 11. We hire two pilot/navigators, Michael and Jonathon. I didn’t think about this one since the crew is getting a split of the profits, what do I pay these guys? I’ll give them first weeks pay plus the sign on bonus. That is 35 secs. each.

We pick up a couple PS bots for David, Lucy, Michael and Jonathon. The bots are hardcoded to the user, so I can’t purchase them in advance. They cost 120 each. If I had rolled a 9 first, I wouldn’t have been able to get PS bots for Michael and Jonathon, so that worked out well.

1 Antelope starship with TL-5 Guns. I owe nothing.
1 Hopper with boat guns, TL-3.

Cargo:
1 Boat guns, TL-2,
4 CU Status Unit (e103),
1 TL-1 military U-suit,
5 TL-4 heavy hand weapons with explosive effects,
7 Side Arms TL-1,
4 Doses of pheromones (e009) in Duke’s pocket,
and the ship is fueled with 4 hypercharges.

1 Alicorn starship with TL-1 Guns. We owe nothing.

Cargo:
1 TL-2 Boat guns, 
10 TL-1 Heavy Hand Weapons,
and the ship is fueled with 4 hypercharges.

I have 53,621 secs. We are wanted in the Palatek system.