Mecha - Episode 1 Welcome to Triton

So the first Episode in the game is Welcome to Triton.  The players learn that they are all newly minted Flight Officers fresh out of the Coalition Space Force training Academy which is in L5 orbit around the earth.  They have been posted to Jeanne D'Arc which is one of the two CSF carriers patrolling the outer solar system.  They are here to back fill for pilots who have been reassigned to more challenging posts and are very much the rookies here.   They are 8 pilots  in all, the 5 PCs and three NPCs from their graduating class, Mia Suzara, Honzo Hitari and Chett Whetherspoon.   For the past 2 months they have been cooped up together on the cargo hauler Dostoevsky bound for Neptune and they have just disembarked at the National Coalition's space colony on Neptune's moon Triton.

They are 4.5 lh (light hours) or 4.5 Billion km or 45 days average travel time away from the Earth
They are 4.3 lh from Mars.
They are 3.1 lh from the Saturn ring colonies.

The players are told they have 3 days R&R and then must report to the the space port to meet with Paul Chan, wing second of Gamma Squadron for shuttle transport back to the Jeanne D'Arc.


-Player Scenes-

The players chose to pursue Social Scenes except for one player who chose a Field Ops Scene and narrated a way they were hacking their flight control software to get an edge.  This made sense since there was no need for Repair or Recovery at this time.

So not having any background in the game or expectations of play except for my outlining of the rules this was probably the hardest Episode to get started, however I think that it went well.  Player scenes went from a very specific first person narrative about getting laid through to more abstract and goal directed narratives about hacking flight control software and making an impression with Paul Chan.  What I didn't expect was that the players would almost entirely ignore all the NPCs from the trip and each other.  I thought that by introducing the long voyage, the location and specific NPCs that the players would try to incorporate that into their narrative and create some relationships and backstory, but perhaps by setting the Episode as they disembarked instead of when they were on the ship I encouraged this 'scattering' behaviour.  The players grasped the concept of choosing their Scenes to acquire Overdrive and Tactical Points pretty well however.  It was also at this point that Traits and Goals were understood and we realized that some of the ones chosen were too broad or too specific and might need revision.  I would probably either use pre-generated goals or try to better guide player selection of traits and goals next time.

-Combat-

The players then reported to the Jeanne D'Arc and are assigned quarters and assignments.  The PCs are told that they have been assigned to Delta Squadron and the three NPC recruits they travelled with have been assigned to Gamma Squadron. This makes no sense realistically, but it makes sense as narrative since they are now certainly the underdogs and have been given something to prove.  Right away are asked to suit up and get in their ships for a flight training exercise with Beta Squadron and it's resident Ace, Lon Granger.

Lon Granger was the previous Wing Second of Gamma Squad, now promoted to a Flight Lieutenant and put in charge of Beta Squadron.  He's the resident hot shot and speaks that way, never letting the PCs forget they are the newbies.  Of course Lon and his Squadron are meant to be the immediate opposition and the foils to the true Aces on the ship Alpha Squadron.  The intent here is for Gamma to be the Ally, Beta to play the role of Stick and Alpha the role of Carrot.

Combat is a straight forward affair with each side starting off in opposing Quadrants and the tactical way-point in the centre.  This is battle simulation and the goal is for the players to show how they can hold a tactical advantage position on a simulated CTA warship.  Because it's a simulation damage taken will not be carried over in to the next Episode.

The players fought very well and managed to win the scenario.  I believe it worked as a good introduction to the combat system.

Lots of the things

So yeah, a lot of good stuff happening in August.  Big news on the Mars rover landing - that was some wild engineering there and I am so proud to be species related to the humans that did that.  It was especially interesting that it occurred while the Olympics was on because it was so much in the spirit of the Olympics - oh wait it wasn't at all nationalistic commercial or vain.  It was inclusive and uplifting and an amazing human achievement.  Well it was in the spirit of the spirit of the Olympics then.  The thing they say is represents but really it totally doesn't - like Christmas.
Lots of good science is already trickling back from Mars then and it should be an interesting couple years hearing about it.  There's a great little blog called Mars Weather that reports the daily conditions from the Rover Environmental Monitoring Station (REMS) on Curiosity.  There is always the NASA site and the Planetary Society site and oh so many places to get more in depth info than the crappy sound bites that you get in the mainstream news.

Other things that are pretty nice are the various Kickstarter things I kicked in for, including the Dungeon World kickstart, the Flaming Carrot kickstart.  I'm considering kicking in for the Planetary Annihilation kickstarter because I loved TA and Supreme Commander (not so much SC2 however.)  I picked up a set of GameScience Zocchi dice from Awesome Dice and they arrived quickly even shipped to Canada, so I am ready and eager to paint them up and play some Dungeon Crawl Classics when I'm not running this fall's Beacon campaign.  I'm also getting ready to fire up my mystery SciFi game (I better do a special post on that bit of business).

And I've been playing a bit of Organ Trail on my Android phone.  It's a remux of the Oregon Trail PC game from waaaaay back and has you driving your station wagon across the USA after the zombie apocalypse, taking odd jobs and trading for food and ammo and gas.  It's a pretty fun diversion that makes no attempt to play fair so there will be some satisfaction when I make it to the west coast.

Also here's the Game of Thrones theme sung by a cat:

Go Elon

Elon Musk > Batman because he's real and doesn't totally waste all his money randomly beating up petty criminals. I don't know much about the guy's personal habits actually but really, even if Elon eats a baby every day it's still probably a huge net gain for humanity.


http://www.wired.com/autopia/2012/05/spacex-docking/


Also, I know a pile of dedicated folks are involved in Space X, Tesla and Solar City projects, but really the guy is Batman for getting it all moving.

Moar Kickstarter

This is a Hyabusa pic, not the kickstarter thing.

So some folks out there are kickstarting a satellite.

The project is actually a time-share sensor kind of thing but man it's a satellite and that's one big step for kickstarting.  Or one small step for crowd sourcing maybe.  I essentially participated in the same kind of idea when I contributed (directly and indirectly through membership) to the Planetary Society's Solar Sail projects and although the first two of those didn't make it, I don't resent the money spent and hope they keep trying.  Space exploration is expensive and risky.  It's also totally worth every cent in my opinion because the eventual pay-offs are huge and unexpected.  I don't know how these guys are getting around all the red tape of putting something in orbit - I would imagine that that costs more than the actual hardware.  I know the Planetary Society had a lot of fun dealing with U.S. national security red tape. Anyway I only hope that these guys have success with their project.  Maybe the Planetary Society should kickstart their next project - expand their crowd sourcing base as it were.

I remember the excited chatter on the Internet when Google did their Virgle April Fool's Day* spread.  I wonder what would happen if someone tried to Kickstart something really big - like an asteroid exploration drone or a Europa ballistic test.


*or was it?!