Playtest Campaign Play Report 24th April

The exploding shuttle aft of their ship blew through all 9 Hull Points and inflicted a Critical Hit on a ship system, which would have been the newly installed forward phasic cannon, but that couldn't have worked, so next would have been Cargo, including the thousands of explosive and incendiary arrows they were transporting to the agriplex.  Instead, the now Dryvv Shadowblood Warlock burned blood to change that to Communications / Data / Sensors, which she can repair.

The Warlock, having changed her basic magic premise as well, now is using a deck of crystalline cards to cast magic more powerful than her True Magic (Cantripish) but less than her daily Spells (powerful).  She played the King of Clubs, and summoned a shadow revenant from the Porphyry: World of The Burn world age, and commanded him to stop the battle.  He sunk into shadow and boarded on of the chameleon folk shuttles bound for the planetoid.  I rolled for his success and received a very large success conflicted with a clear failure.  He reported to her, "I am free."  It was then that it became apparent that the tractor beam the planetoid was using to stabilise itself, rather than plunge into Arcend, had ceased.  Further evidence was that the atmosphere of the planetoid looked disrupted, and the agriplex cannon was able to penetrate it, clearing sight of a fiery ring on the planetoid's surface.

Roughly half the distance as Luna from Earth, the planetoid was beginning to near, causing seismic events, endangering everyone on the agriplex.  The chameleons began to bug out and did not send further shuttles.  One chameleon guy had been captured by the resident Haelbean Criminal played by D, and the two were getting on well ('Let me go, Puller of Tongues!').  Meanwhile, it became apparent that the Imperial QinqNol scout was running from something else, beyond the planetoid, as an evil red glow was shining behind the planetoid.  A communication was received, broadcast in the Elemental Fire tongue.  Naturally, the Warlock felt awful about dooming everyone, again, and so she played her best card, appealing to Lord Shadow to intervene in a meaningful fashion, etc., etc.  Lord Shadow answered by eclipsing the planetoid and it disappearing into the Plane of Shadow.  This has repercussions not immediately apparent.  Exposed now, the evil red glare was investigated by the crew.

A world-eating starship which hunts these Wekanrot was bearing down on its prey, and was more than a little surprised to find it had suddenly vanished.  More Fire tongue nonsense.  However, the Imperial QinqNol scout ship was about to disappear into the world-eater's maw when the PCs neared, were caught in the class 100 tractor beam, and were being drawn in as well.   The Haelbean Pswordlock opened a warp portal to the scout ship, and through clever taunting by the party, brought him over.  The Warlock lass pulled her umpth card of five for the day, and plane shifted the PCs' ship into Shadow, allowing them one hour of travel at a little over 3,886 MpH.  The QinqNol Scout demanded that they travel towards the his fleet, and they thought it would be a good idea to have friends with starships at a moment like this.  We ended the session with a boarding party entering their ship.

Playtest Campaign Play Report Update 17th April

The Player, J, who has been running a Glassblood Aelbaan Warlock (/ Astrogator / Scout) from the beginning of the campaign offered two of the character's incarnations up to the Dryvv, in exchange for their help in destroying the L'Mori insectoids which had captured them due to a conflict she had inadvertently created with the planet (Astrogators have the Cosmic Sorcery special ability).  The Dryvv were very clear that they were not going to attempt to do anything more than break the Warlock out in the exchange, and so the party was rescued in that regard.  Meanwhile, Ry's gunslinger (who had been a henchman to a character whose Patron is a Dryvv Litch) calls on her, and she coincides with the rescue such that each group is responsible for their rescue.  The group now are paradoxes, as the two incarnations the Dryvv took from J's character were ancestral, rather than future, and so now she is rewritten in reality as the Dryvv version of a Haelbean (Yirinn / Dryvv).  Everyone's past has been rewritten except for the gunslinger's as he is technically the oldest character, having his origin in late IVth Era Autumn before the flight from Urutsk.

Next episode, the Strict Machine, AI leader of Ledha, kink-capital city-state, cannot account for a discrepancy in her time stamp, and calls the group to meet her android avatar.  Their ship (roughly the same size as the Millennium Falcon) has had the forward Phasic Emitter replaced with an upgrade (which was why they were there before the L'Mori incident), and an NPC as part of their crew who hadn't been part before (she is the incarnate spirit of the gunslinger's former boss's intelligent sword of wounding, Lancet).  Lancet ('Set) is wondering why some of them are still acting weird, asking about things  that are obvious history from her perspective, etc.  The group is examined by the AI, and it is determined that when the Aelbaan version of J's character had invested a point of True Magic into the AI, that accounted for the added picosecond on the time stamp.  Feeling very generous, the Strict Machine asked the group to fly a shipment of high tech arrows to an agriplex who had ordered them months prior.  Coincidentally, due to atmospheric disturbance, the agriplex was unreachable.

The Dryvv-Yirinn Warlock (etc.) plotted the fastest course to the agriplex, and the cyborg pilot flew to the sagitta of its arc and spotted a planetoid incredibly close to the planet.  Moreover, craft were flying from the planetoid and attacking the agriplex, and then returning to the planetoid in some sort of continuous operation.  Thriceover, a faint, garbled, alien broadcast was detected behind the paletoid, and it was determined to be Imperial QinqNol.  The message was on repeat, and amounted to a scout informing its group that the planetoid had been spotted.  The gunslinger knew of these planetoids, having their origin in a previous World Age, where they formed on the homeworld (then, Porphyry) as small balls of matter, and collected living bits and animals, known as Wekanrot, before they left the planet for space.  With over 14k years between Porphyry and Urutsk, this Wekanrot's presence so far out, let alone so close to the massive desert planet Arcsend, is peculiar to be certain.

The planetoid attacked the ship with a d11 Tractor Beam, and the d15 ship was able to break free in a few rounds of contested rolls.  The crew land the ship, attack two alien shuttles on a landing approach, and disembark to melee the retiloid aliens; the shuttles are destroyed.  Ry's Pswordlock character is pretty powerful at this point, and is PKing aliens about, killing each time.  The aliens are only using stunners, and are clearly absconding with personnel and other life forms from the agriplex and attempting to return to the planetoid.  The Warlock superpowers the agriplex' cannon which is firing at the planetoid, and unlike its own shots, this one penetrates the thick ionising atmosphere, apparently doing the harm the 'plex wanted to achieve.  Doc was only Dazed by a Stunner hit, but wouldn't shake it off for another 4 Minutes game time.

We held it there.

Technological Disobedience

Perfect inspiration for post-apocalypse thinking gaming.

"Hello,

     I was reading on The Grand Tapestry blog that you were working on an Encounter Critical/Urutsk game. As someone who enjoys creation and customization of material, will there be tools or tables to create some of what I've read about in the posts, such as ships, planets, alien races, creatures, pan-dimensional demons, cultures, etc.?

Kind Regards,

James"

I receive these questions regularly enough that I suppose i should address them here.  :)

Tools: There will be tools allowing the GM to create virtually anything, ranging from life forms to star systems to technology.  Players can create custom PC Human ethnicities and Other species as well as playing any of the 20 'races'.  Custom Classes can easily be accomplished by modifying or combining the 30 player classes.  Vehicle (including Starships) construction and Combat are included.

Tables: Most of the above Tools are Table-based, not only creating a high degree of variability in PC 'races' even between individuals of the same group; when combined with classes, the number of variation is too many for me to easily compute.  The GM can, in short order, determine the entire outline of a star system, its major life forms (including sentients), and determine culture, government, and technology.  Furthermore, character generation (procedural, to boot) creates the star system (or generational ship) -origin point for the character, as well as a sketch of 3 important NPCs in each character's background.  Weirdness and off-the-cuff gaming tables help the GM improvise in a way that adds content, not just some throw-away reference.

System: Encounter Critical is a d% system, which means it can be divided by 5 to turn it into a d20 based system with very little effort.  My alternate char-gen procedure speeds up play while adding optional complexity.  I've included combat elabourations, interpretations of more opaque sections of EC text, and have provided counters and terrain pieces for tactical miniatures combat -- as well as an entire mass combat section which integrates with existing EC combat rules.  Weapons expanded.  Many more mutations and other variations.

Format: I cannot give you a date of publication, but I can say that every day gets me closer to finishing the game in a releasable format with at least 45 colour PC-'race' illos and 20 colour PC class illos, among others.

That's all I can say about what actually exists so far.  I don't know about the Lulu PoD edition or the specifics about OneBookshelf pdf and PoD versions, but as I have more to say about them, I will announce them here.

Thank you for your continued interest.

Please address all game related correspondence here or to me on G+

-Kyrinn