Deck of Fridays 11: LB 1968117-G

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asteroid

Welcome back to DECK OF FRIDAYS, our weekly feature here at FATE SF. We make a draw from the Deck of Fate, RPG Inspiration Cards, or another Aspect-generative randomizer. Then we do something interesting with it, using the Aspect as inspiration for a campaign or scenario seed, a situation, scene, location, NPC, thingie, etc.

This week, we are continuing a planet generation project we began yesterday. We made a series of rolls using the Planet Generator rules in Chapter 26 of Starblazer Adventures.  Then we asked readers to contribute their speculations and help interpret the rolls.

Today, we are putting those comments together, and drawing a card from the Deck of Fate to help further flesh out the world. From the card we drew, we'll be using the Aspect Uninspired.  

*** 

Part of the Linebarger survey series, the dwarf planet LB 1968117-G is the seventh planet in orbit around a red giant star. It is the outermost planet before the large asteroid belt surrounding the system. The planet, ironically known as Deep Gee, only has a gravity of about .35G. It's a metal-rich planetoid covered by a thinning layer of ice.

The planet's three small moons, which are actually ancient terraforming machines of unknown origin, concentrate and augment the distant sun's radiation, focusing it on the planet's ice layer. The ice sublimes and chemically degrades under the radiation lens effect of the moons, releasing a thin layer of oxygen which steadily bleeds into space. Current projections are that the remaining planetary surface ice will be gone within a few decades.

In deep crevices and fissures on the surface of Deep Gee, the oxygen is concentrated enough to be thin-but-breathable - with many impurities, some of which are organic. The planet has a faint ring system with this same water-oxygen-organic mix, albeit once again frozen.  Most settlements on the planet are built in these fissures in order to harvest, filter, and purify the available atmosphere.

While located far coreward of the Empire (and indeed coreward of the R.U.R.), the planet has a fairly sizable human population of 6,310 miners, prospectors, and scientists. They live in cliffside/subterranean settlements built within the gloomy fissures, which provide protection from the radiation emitted by the moons.

Human settlements are highly functional but entirely uninspired in their design. No one would come here for a holiday, or work here if they had better employment or research prospects. The suicide rate is between 3 and 5% per year in the different settlements; no one is doing anything about this, and bringing the matter up just results in indignant muttering about "Ghost Wolves." The locals are obsessive about never being alone, which has caused some odd variations in privacy norms and resulting "personal" accommodations - double beds only, double restroom stalls, and no one-person vehicles. All private spaces are designed for a minimum of two persons only.

Many of the settlements were built on top of more ancient settlements constructed hundreds of years ago by others - presumably by other species. There are a few variations in the paleo-settlements' designs, which has led xenoarchaeologists at the Nexialist Institute in G-Port (the largest fissure-settlement) to conclude that up to four distinct races may have explored this planetoid in the past.

The planet's only industry is mining, which gives the Deep Gee its Good (0) rating in Resources (industrial). The overall Technology Level of this world is Poor (-1), meaning that trade is a necessity in order to keep mining and life support equipment functioning. Tunnels and mines run below the surface in many directions. Miners extract metals, as well as interesting and sometimes dangerous alien junk from vast subsurface vaults that the locals call "Shrines." Most Shrine locations are jealously guarded secrets held by an individual prospector and a small team of miners. Several stasis boxes have been recovered from these Shrines.

In a few settlements, including G-Port, all subsurface extraction is done by the Autonomous Subsurface Assemblies (ASAs): collectives of ancient R.U.R. mining robots who were on the planet before humans arrived. The ASAs are known to be hostile to intruders mining or prospecting in the deep areas that the collectives claim for themselves. Instead, the robots bring ore to the surface (but only very rarely alien artifacts), and trade allotments of ore for items that either interest them (e.g., data crystals on various subjects including a variety of texts in extinct alien languages) or for replacement parts, tools, and equipment that the collectives require for self-repair and the maintenance/expansion of their own habitats.

Starblazer Adventures: Let's Generate A Planet!

We're feeling a bit restless, so we decided to try we haven't done for a while. Over the next few posts, we're going to randomly generate a planet using the Planet Generator rules in Chapter 26 of Starblazer Adventures. Today we're focusing on the random roles and the most elementary aspects of what those rolls mean. We'll be fleshing out this planet over a couple of posts, and the card from the Deck of Fate that I draw for tomorrow's Deck of Fridays will be part of the project.

You, Dear Reader, are invited to help build this world! Please comment and make suggestions to help flesh out the world we're creating. I've added some questions below each roll/result. Feel free to add your ideas in the Comments right below the post, or in G+ - whichever venue strikes your fancy.

***

TYPE OF PLANET: Our first 1d6-1d6 produces a +3. That means the planet is a Dwarf Planet; the scale is Colossal (class 7). Dwarf planets, according to the book are small - often the same size as moons orbiting other planets. According to the book, people "tend to live in hollowed out areas or in large bases built onto their surface"; they tend not to have much of an atmosphere.

• Question: Is the dwarf planet orbiting close to the sun or further out in the system? Where is it?

ATMOSPHERE: I made four 1d6-1d6 rolls to determine the type of atmosphere; each roll came up 0, which means a breathable atmosphere. The rules say to re-roll results for dwarf planets that come up with a breathable atmosphere as the result, but after four successive rolls we're sticking with this result.

• Question: Why and how does this dwarf planet have a breathable atmosphere?

MOONS AND RING SYSTEMS: Two rolls here; our dwarf planet has a faint ring system, and several moons.

• Questions:
• What are the moons like and what are they made of? Let's assume the moons are smaller than the dwarf planet (otherwise, it would be their moon...)
• What is the faint ring system made of? Is there anything special about it?

POPULATION: Our roll for population size is -3; that indicates a population in the 1,000s. This is consistent with "Larger outposts/research stations, Newly settled worlds (terraformers)."

• Questions: 
• What is the purpose of the settlement?
• Who lives here?

OK! That's probably enough for today! Post any ideas you have and we'll see where this dwarf planet takes us.

Roadside Picnic

Penguin's 1979 edition of "Roadside Picnic"

This cover looks like something we'd see in the Starblazer Adventures comic or RPG, no?

It is perhaps the most bizarre cover done for Arkady and Boris Strugatsky's classic SF novel Roadside Picnic, but it got two things right. Stalkers in the novel do wear suits when they enter the Zone on the Institute's official research business. The suits are called specsuits. I think this poor fellow forgot his gloves. Or he just took them off to inspect the device he just found.

Let's hope that's not a mistake.

The second thing the cover got right is that the landscape inside the Zone has altered from what it once was. Inside the Zone there are a variety of environmental hazards - graviconcentrates, hell slime, and silver cobwebs to name just a few - that have resulted in both the natural environment and the ruins of the built environment inside the Zone becoming otherworldly and dangerous.

That's why it's fenced off.

So what is the Zone?  We know it resulted from an alien Visit. But let's have the Strugatsky Brothers explain it in their own worlds. They do that through a conversation in which the Visit is described as an event which is prosaic for the aliens, but nearly unintelligible for the humans. What's left behind as the Zone are like the leavings from a "roadside picnic":

"A picnic. Imagine a forest, a country road, a meadow. A car pulls off the road into the meadow and unloads young men, bottles, picnic baskets, girls, transistor radios, cameras...A fire is lit, tents are pitched, music is played. And in the morning they leave. The animals, birds, and insects that were watching the whole night in horror crawl out of their shelters. And what do they see? An oil spill, a gasoline puddle, old spark plugs and oil filters strewn about...Scattered rags, burnt-out bulbs, someone has dropped a monkey wrench. The wheels have tracked mud from some godforsaken swamp... and, of course, there are the remains of the campfire, apple cores, candy wrappers, tins, bottles, someone's handkerchief, someone's penknife, old ragged newspapers, coins, wilted flowers from another meadow..."

"I get it" said Noonan. "A roadside picnic."

"Exactly. A picnic by the side of some space road. And you ask me whether they'll come back."  

A Warlord's Index To Mars

Warlord of Mars (Dynamite)
Art by Stephen Sadowski

What follows is an index of links for Mars/Barsoom, with an emphasis on the pulp Mars inspired by the works of Edgar Rice Burroughs and others.

FATE SF Mars Resources

Barsoom:

• Barsoom (using Diaspora Cluster mechanics)
• Richard Harris' samurai clan wars Mars
• Notes on the Planetary Romance genre

Green Martians:

• For Disapora
• For Starblazer Adventures
• Green Martian Chieftain (FAE)

Old Martians - H.G. Wells' pulpy, tentacled Martians horrors with a taste for human flesh. A Clever adversary for FAE.

• A few more cruel Stunts for the Old Martians
• Also see the Mucoid (Fighter) entry under Other Useful Mars Resources, below

Red Martians:

• Red Martian Blade - A fighting man or woman of Mars, a Flashy adversary for FAE, as well as Red Martian civilizational Aspects.
• Red Martian Scientist - A cruel, vengeful, and Clever adversary best left to his own devices in the Martian Underworld (FAE).

Technology:

• Psychic Telegraphs

Other Useful Mars Resources

• The Art of Barsoom (lurid)
• A Brief History of Tripods
• Edgar Rice Burroughs' Barsoom Series
• Encyclopedia Barsoomia
• ERBzine's Maps of Mars
• ERBzine's The John Carter Guide to Mars
• Found Objects: The Crystal Age
• Humanspace Mars
• Invading Mars
• Manitrude (this is obviously an Abmucoid)
• Mucoid (Fighter) 
• Postmodern and Apocryphal Barsooms
• Principles of Martian Technology (Some Invasion Ideas...)
• Return to Mars
• The Shikkayi

Screens Up!

FATE Ringworld! I am thinking about running this at Con of the North in 2014! For system, I would use either Starblazer Adventures or FAE.

You are looking at the GM side of the GM screen for Starblazer Adventures. On G+, someone recently posted their GM table arrangement for FATE Core, which included a GM screen, NPCs on large index cards, and an RPG manual from another Chaosium boxed set from the same era, the 1980s.

This led one person to speculate that the GM must be old school, and that they thought GM screens were unnecessary for FATE. To be clear, at least one FATE RPG has a GM screen: the massive Starblazer Adventures RPG. The screen has most or all of the tables likely to be used in play, as well as the sequences for person-to-person and starship combat. It is a quite useful screen, with incredible full color art from the Starblazer Adventures comic on the player-facing side.

That being said, I almost never use GM screens in the "upright" (i.e., standing) position. I keep them folded-up and at my side as a ready reference. I don't like barriers that block my line of sight or that of the players, and FATE games tend to involve a lot of reach and toss actions with Fate Points.

If some FATE gamers express discomfort with a GM screen this may reflect the traditional symbolic role of those screens: they are the primary symbol of GM authority in RPGs.  "The GM is god." The underpinnings of the world which the PCs experience is hidden behind the screen. "Don't look behind the screen", to paraphrase the Wizard of Oz. Moving forward almost 40 years, FATE strives for an affect that is aptly expressed as "the table decides" and "the table builds the world". I think this language was introduced to FATE by Diaspora, but it is certainly a sentiment that has been deepened and reinforced by FATE Core.

As someone who played Whitebox D&D and Blackbox LBB Traveller, I do not recall using screens for either of these games. They may have been available, but my friends and I certainly didn't use GM screens until 1st Edition AD&D was published. So arguably, a screen isn't even necessary for old school RPG play. As far as I am concerned, it is a matter of preference and organizational approach used by the GM.

Screens are a tool.  Some GMs use screens to:

• Assert a degree of authorial control and authority at the table. And mystery/mystique. You have to have a bit of that magic air to GM. Few GMs are purely a facilitator. 
• Hide things: notes, maps, and possibly dice rolls. 
• Stage things (such as miniatures or other props) until they are needed.
• Manage the operational complexity of rules/mechanics (and there is significant variance in level of complexity among the different implementations of FATE). 

Of course, there are other approaches to managing operational complexity of rules and mechanics. For example, Diaspora uses cheat sheets for mechanically involved sequences such as person-to-person combat, platoon combat, space combat and social combat. So, sheet rather than screen. Diaspora also encourages the use of a "caller" (as opposed to GM) to manage these particular rules operations.

In summary, I think people shouldn't read too much into the use or non-use of a GM screen. It's a tool, and each GM puts different tools in their toolbox according to their specific style and needs.

Project Generations - Scenario Writing

Generation Ship art by Fraterchaos
http://shadowness.com/fraterchaos/generation-ship-2

I spent the day today working on the scenario chapter for Project Generations, the FATE-based SF series on generation ships that I am writing for +Chris Birch's Modiphius Entertainment. The first Project Generations product is tri-statted for Starblazer Adventures, Diaspora, and Bulldogs! 

Once I turn in the manuscript for this one, I'll be working on an all-new Project Generations product for FATE Core. I already have some great new ideas for that one. Really over the top!

Chapter Six of the current project is where the scenario lives. The previous chapters build up to the scenario, but also give you TONS of new tools for running games set on generation ships, stats for two sample generation ships , a deck-by-deck treatment of one generation ship, and stats for numerous auxiliary/support ships for use inside and outside the vessel. (These come in helpful because generation ships can be HUGE!)

The scenario chapter broke 31 pages today of single spaced text - it's a monster! The chapter includes background on the generation ship used in the scenario, information on its current state and the rival factions on-board, rules on awakening from cryostasis on a generation ship, drop dice tables for ship locations, and scenes. I think whether you like to use a scenario in its entirety, or you prefer to pick and choose a few elements of a published scenario to use in your own game, you'll get good value out of this product.

My goal is to get most of the scenario finished this weekend. We'll still have some NPCs to statt out during the week, but if I can finish the scene pieces this weekend, we'll be in good shape to finish the writing before April.

Then comes art and layout, which is in great hands with the team Modiphius has together!

Just look at what they are doing for Achtung! Cthulhu over here!

Don't Be Afraid To Make Things Tough For Your Players

The title paraphrases an email that Starblazer Adventures' lead author +Chris Birch sent me a while ago about the FATE scenario I am playtesting for Project Generations. Last night we wrapped up playtesting. Players had great suggestions for finalizing the scenario for publication, which I'll be digging into this weekend.

But today I wanted to talk for a moment about the penultimate combat we had last night. It was brutal. I used the FATE Drop Dice tables I have created for Project Generations to generate a series of zones around a Landing Bay, position allies and adversaries, and quickly statt up the major NPC and their minions.

It was cyberzombies and controller robots against our the three players, with their "allies" standing on the sidelines and watching everything go down. In Starblazer Adventures, weapons provide bonuses to the amount of Stress racked up by a hit. That contributed to a fast and furious battle.

A battle in which our pilot, Lightning, used the just-landed shuttle as a weapon. She fired its beam weapon at the opposition (and I narrated one cool laser-ricochet mishap), and also hover-swung the shuttle around using it to dislodge some cyberzombies who were attempting to board.

Unlike the PCs last encounter with cyberzombies and controller robots, these were fast zombies, controlled by two beffy robots who waded into the fray - quite unlike the cagy stickman controller robots in the last encounter. These robots did some damage.

One PC, Antonio, suffered two Consequences; he lost an arm with one of them! Another PC, Buffalo the Robot Fighter, wracked up three Consequences, one of which was Extreme. He ended up with a horrible gash from mouth to cheek, sort of like this:

The Joker Drawing by Carlos Velasquez

 Not ideal, especially when you are the diplomat and power-negotiator!

The controller robots end up ever worse, KIA, with three Consequences each. One lost an arm. The other lost its head. Both kept on fighting, while the consequences racked up on both side.

Our heroes eventually prevailed, but it was close. And Antonio ended up with something he really wanted: one of the controller robots' crab-claw hands as a prosthetic. Granted it is a 150 lb. prosthetic, and the graft was done by someone with a rather, well... theoretical grasp of human anatomy.

So Antonio ended up looking rather like poor old Vina from the original Star Trek pilot, "The Menagerie":

He was nevertheless pretty happy with his new crab-claw prosthesis.

My experience with both Starblazer and Diaspora has been different from Spirit of the Century, where PCs rarely took Consequences. Combat in these two games manages to be both fun and risky.

It will be interesting to playtest FATE Core in Tekumel in a few weeks and see how combat works with the refined and streamlined FATE engine.

Below Decks With Project Generations

http://paulinespiratesandprivateers.blogspot.com/
2010/10/tools-of-trade-load-sight-fire.html

Today I created two huge Drop Dice Tables for Project Generations!  They allow a GM running the scenario included with Modiphius Entertainment's first Project Generations product to create random encounters for both the Habitat (i.e., green space) areas, as well as the Below Decks levels of the vast generation ship in the scenario.

The tables should be useful for any SF game set on a vast space ship.

I also created keys for each of the two drop tables so that GMs have ideas about what to do with each encounter/location. There are also encounter mechanics that make it easier to build out each encounter.

Awakening From Cryostasis In Project Generations

http://www.zengardner.com/
the-cryogenic-false-hope-escape-hatch-caper/

In the scenario I am writing for Project Generations, the PCs play the Reserve Crew of a generation ship who are awakened from cryostasis. Today, I completed the character generation rules for the awakening and character generation process. All of the details for using Project Generations chargen with the Diaspora and Starblazer Adventures rulesets are now set. I still have some specific details to work through for Bulldogs!, but the overall framework is there now and seems to hang together well.

The overall approach is character generation on the fly. That is a feature of a number of FATE games, and has the benefit of bringing people into play rather quickly. Character generation is grounded in the space ark and cryostasis experience through the use of two tables, while also leaving room for some up-front player creativity and intentionality in character design before play begins.

I think the system strikes the right balance between narrativist and sandbox approaches to PC generation. If you don't like to know everything about your character before play begins, I think you will be happy with this. You have room to explore and grow your character, which is exactly what I saw happen in the playtest.

I am happy to have the rules in a more or less final form that feels right to me.

The Anapa

Anubis by ~mribby 294

The jackal-headed Anapa are one of the most hated and feared alien races in the galaxy - especially so for a race that is so shrouded in mystery. Nicknamed "Skulkers" and  "Barkers" by some within the Empire, the sorcerer-scientists of the Anapa are masters of unlife and of the transformation of the recently dead. One of their number is said to attend each successive Imperial Sovereign upon their death, preparing them for the afterlife.

Aside from this solemn task, the Anapa are rarely seen. Even more rarely are they detected by other means, as their bodies are highly modified with all sorts of stealth technologies. Some speculate that the Anapa are properly transbiological: that what we see is more of a cybershell for self-aware or ascended software rather than the body of an organic intelligence.

Most Anapa live a solitary existence on cemetery worlds, in catacombs, in lonely and long-abandoned orbitals circling dead worlds, or sheltered within their laboratories within pocket universes of their own making.

In ancient times, the Anapa fought a great, no-quarter-given war against an enigmatic, transplanar species of felids. The felids were fierce rivals, each being able to live simultaneously on entirely different worlds and planes. The Anapans' own numbers were devastated by this great war. They survived by going even deeper underground.

Ultimately, the Anapa and their armies of cyberartificia, flesh golems, and the nanomortified were succeessful in defeating their ancient enemies and in banishing them from this plane. A few brave or foolhardy explorers today search dead worlds to uncover the abandoned laboratories and weapons of the Anapa. The few who return from these expeditions seldom live long. Strange diseases claim them, and their bodies shuffle away of their own accord.

The Anapa below was built using the Legends of Anglerre RPG, a complete fantasy RPG using the Starblazer Adventures implementation of FATE.

OGL MECHANICS

Anapa (neutral)

Scale 2 (Small)
Physical Stress: 5
Composure Stress: 6 
Fate Points: 3

ASPECTS:

• Masters of death - and unlife
• Dwellers in the dark spaces 
• Our vision extends into the Planes Beyond
• Bleeds circuitry not blood
• The cats are our ancient enemies

SKILLS:

• 1 Great (+4): Power of Death
• 2 Good (+3): Academics, Power of Dimensions
• 3 Fair (+2): Alertness, Intimidate, Science 
• 4 Average (+1): Fists, Endurance, Guns, Resolve

STUNTS:

• Control Undead (Power of Death skill, LoA p. 124)
• Create Portal (Power of Dimensions skill, LoA p. 126)
• Destroy Undead (Power of Death skill, LoA p. 124)
• Dimensional Casting (Power of Dimensions skill, LoA p. 126)
• Dimensional Sanctuary (Power of Dimensions skill, LoA p. 125)
• Raise Lesser Undead (Power of Death skill, LoA p. 125)
• Raise Greater Undead (Power of Death skill, LoA p. 125)

EQUIPMENT:

• Staff Weapon: The Anapa often have staff weapons that are capable of delivering a directed nanomortification cloud blast at their enemies. Treat as a Gas Grenade (LoA p. 50) except that the weapon releases the nanocloud in a cone reaching into the next Zone. 

FATE Core Has Issues (but not in the way you think...)

Plasma Jets From Radio Galaxy Hercules A

I have read about half of the draft FATE Core rules now, and for the most part really like what I see. The FATE system has been simplified in ways that are helpful. Some of these reductions in complexity - such as reducing the number of PC aspects to 5, and describing a High Concept and Trouble aspect before moving to the collaborative phase of creating a triplet of shared-story aspects - can easily be ported over to other games like Diaspora and Starblazer Adventures.

I also like the very simple starting point of collaborative game/campaign design as presented in FATE Core. This precedes PC generation. You engage players in creating game/campaign aspects by engaging them in specifying a Current Issue and an Impending Issue for the game/campaign.

In this way, the PCs are telling you the kind of game they'd like to play. This can also be easily integrated with Diaspora and Starblazer Adventures' campaign-building systems.

In our recent Diaspora campaign, the Current Issue might have been written up as:

•  The newly unified planet Juche receives the gift of an alien starship, and seeks to find its place in the Cobweb Cluster 

The Impending Issue might be:

• The aliens are themselves divided, and the ship is stolen property 

Each of these then becomes a game/campaign aspect with further implications for play. The two issues also present "ways into the game" - ideas that help players come up with their own PCs aspects - and something new players often struggle with when they create characters. 

In Diaspora, this Issues step could take place right after Cluster generation, and right before PC generation. 

I can also think of a way to use this in Starblazer Adventures. If a GM is going to use the Collaborative Campaign Creation rules (Chapter 23) in Starblazer Adventures (rules which focus on creating and specifying some details of a sector of space), you could do a sequence like this:

• Players/GM collaborate to create the sector (using the rules in Chapter 23)
• Players/GM collaborate to create a Current Issue and an Impending Issue for the sector that could involve the PCs
• Players create the PCs, developing PC aspects that inspired by the Issues where that sounds fun and makes sense
• The GM then creates Plot Stress tracks tied to the Sector, the Issues, and the PCs (Chapter 24)

This could be a LOT of fun!  

Project Generations - More Details On The Publication

Over the weekend, the product page went live for Project Generations, my forthcoming FATE-based supplement on generation ships for Modiphius Entertainment.

It has a lot more details on the contents of the publication!

Once we iron out a few more details, Modiphius Entertainment should be putting up timeline information for the release as well.

Stay tuned to FATE SF this week! On Wednesday, we'll post our FATE Library review of Starblazer Adventures!

Project Generations

Project Generations is the working title for the generation ships supplement I am writing for Modiphius Entertainment. 

I have been wanting to do a generation ships RPG for two decades. Back in the mid-90s I took my first shot at it creating a space ark RPG called NOAH. Now after all these years I am finishing the writing for a generation ships supplement using my favorite game system, FATE!

 My love of space arks began as a result of Fall road trips to New England with my parents. I read my first two science fiction novels in the back of my Dad's Galaxie 500 on those trips: James Blish's Spock Must Die! and Robert A. Heinlein's Orphans of the Stars. The later novel is perhaps the classical generation ship story, with its humans and mutants struggling to survive on an out-of-control generation ship.

And I wasn't alone in claiming Heinlein as an influence. His book almost certainly influenced Jim Ward's classic generation ship RPG, Metamorphosis Alpha.

The Starlost was another major influence in my youth. Although the series was much derided by Harlan Ellison, who wrote the original screenplay and served as the science adviser to the show, the design of the Earthship Ark was elegant and beautiful.

I lived on that ship in the early 1970s.

http://www.snowcrest.net/fox/props/index.html

So why Modiphius? That's the new gaming company led by Chris Birch, the lead author of the first FATE SF RPG, Starblazer Adventure! They have already made a big splash in roleplaying with the release of Sarah Newton's Zero Point adventures for Modiphius' WW II Call of Cthulhu series Achtung! Cthulhu. 

Project Generations is the first in a series of FATE-based SF products that we are planning.Whether you want to create generation ships, want off the shelf examples, or are looking for a scenario to run set on a space ark, we will have you covered.

The draft is currently dual statted for Starblazer Adventures and Diaspora, and makes the two game systems work together in some very interesting ways! Once I complete my current draft of the manuscript, I am going to go back in and do stats and conversion notes for Bulldogs! as well! There will be some particularly fun and interesting implications for the scenario included with the project for players of Bulldogs!

The most important journey for generations is about to begin!

Be sure to come aboard when we launch!

The manuscript is 90% completed, and I hope to wrap most things up this weekend. Stay tuned for more details on this exciting project!

SHADO 2 Mobile

SHADO 2 Mobile Dinky toy
Photo c. 2012 by John Everett Till

Moonbase Central's post today on the SHADO Mobile 2 Dinky toy inspired me to do another Starblazer Adventures post. (Mine is green wheels and black treads, guys!) And that's the Starblazer Adventures storyteller's screen you see in the background of my photos!

The SHADO 2 Mobile was an armored ATV used by the Supreme Headquarters Alien Defense Organization (SHADO). There were different models of the vehicle used by SHADO to intercept UFOs that had breached Earth's Moon-based and airborne defenses. This version of the vehicle could be quickly deployed in an area near a UFO landing/close encounter site to scout for the alien vehicle and destroy it.

This SHADO 2 is armed with a missile launcher that is hidden under a rotating roof hatch. Below you can see the SHADO 2 Mobile's missile and launch rack deployed.

SHADO 2 Mobile: Missile Deployed!
Photo c. 2012 by John Everett Till

The vehicle has a machine gun over the driver's compartment. I am also making the assumption that the vehicle is amphibious - it can operate submerged for short periods of time, and cross streams and small bodies of water - as long as the treads have traction on a submerged surface such as a creek bottom.

OGL MECHANICS

Armored Missile ATV

Scale: Medium (2) Assault Platform
Speed: Fair (+2)
Structural Stress: 5
Systems Stress: 5
Fate Points/Refresh: 7

ASPECTS: 3

• Not every movie studio has these!
• Missile launcher ready!
• Earth's last line of defense

SKILLS: 

• 1 Good (+3): Armor  
• 2 Fair (+2): Manoeuvre, Projectile Weapons (Missiles)*
• 3 Average (+1): Projectile Weapons (Machine Guns), Troop Carrier Facilities**, Ship Systems

STUNTS:

• Guided Missiles - Projectile Weapon skill (p.328)
• Anti-Fighter Barrage - Projectile Weapon skill (p.328)
• Amphibious - Manoeuvre skill (NEW STUNT) - Vehicle may perform on land or in water.

*Vehicle has Out-of-Ammo temporary aspect after firing two missiles

**A crew of two in the driver and passenger seat, and up to 10 soldiers in back.