Billy Goes to Mordor

Well, a month has passed and we finally picked up where last session's cliffhanger left off. Would the party survive? What kind of vampire would be be turned into?! Sparkly or shiny?

The answer, my dear friends, was "None of the above."

Clubbing Amongst the Clouds

WARNING: this GIF may cause blindness,
nausea, and whooping cough

The vampire's thralls that confronted Weiwei were a bit pissy, but they weren't looking for a fight. They refused to commit to anything, even biting the dark elf, without permission from their master, who was taking a beauty sleep. So the party decided to piss-off and look for somewhere more "happening".

On a side-note: the party's composition was a bit different from last time, due to some misplaced character sheets, so we were joined by a couple anonymous pre-gens. So Drogo and Roarrawrurmph had stand-ins. I was still playing as Rama and Kunab though.

First we headed off to some big old tower being guarded by ogres. Someone(Pam maybe) sweet-talked them into taking us up to the top of "the tomb" to check out the view, where we summarily murdered them(Rama managed to knock one off of the battlements with a DCC Feat of Arms), leaving evidence that "the cultists did it". But, the alarm was raised so we ran-off before we could be identified.

We ran into some caves which led to a tense encounter between the wounded party and an adult white dragon. To keep the peace Rama presented it with his magic golden Ale-producing flagon, since anyway he puts little value on material things, valuing the more subtle things in life like returning things to the primordial chaos.

At that point, the party found a secluded passage and hunkered down for a long healing and rest period.

The Politics of Armageddon

After a mostly undisturbed rest, the party emerged from their cave to find the castle's denizens in utter chaos. You may recall that we spent last session poisoning the castle's food stores and fomenting the already latent tension between the castle's various factions. Now was when all that time spent "murdering nothing and taking none of their stuff" paid-off.

First we saw many dead cultists and a few dead giants. Then we were accosted by a Giant patrol. We managed to maintain a parley, and mentioned that our alchemist had cured us all of the poisoning. They insisted we come cure the cloud giant master of this flying fortress as well, so we went along with them.

Cloud Giant
=
Harlan Ellison in a toga

After much talking and plotting and more talking, we found out that the giants are actually sort of "good" but that they are helping the cultists so that can have a huge Giant-Dragon war when Tiamat rises and all get to go to Valhalla(sort of like those guys from Mad Max). Something along those lines(my mind shuts-off during exposition)...

The tomb, it seems is being run my the spirit of the Cloud Giant's dead wife, so we went to speak to his better half and convinced her(and afterwards him) that we had a less risky way of helping them kick dragon butts. Something to do with collecting the masks of dragon control so they can have their big showdown on a smaller scale.

With all the politicin' out of the way, it was time to clean-up this castle from any cultist allies and that meant one thing-- it was time to go DRAGON HUNTING!

Slayer

The party headed back down to take-on the White Dragon in it's lair, with a couple Ogre meat-shields in tow.

Now the thing about this dragon is he likes to just hang-out on his ceiling roost like some giant pigeon that you can't get rid of. And the DM played him well--every time we dislodged him, he's kick some butts then head back up there.

It was a tough fight, but we got him in the end, with Weiwei landing the final shot as he tried to escape.

My guys didn't do much damage, but Kunab the Wizbarian kept summoning giant eagles which kept him occupied, while Rama, though he couldn't reach the dragon to do any damage, absorbed a lot of the hits(including 3 successive rounds where rocks fell on him, then the dragon fell on him, then more rocks fell on him), so he was a good and dutiful meatshield.

I have to say, this was my first slaying a dragon in DnD(computer games don't count) and I have to say, it was flippin' awesome!

(Rama still took back his flagon, though. For all his high-and-mighty ideals, he's still that much the murderhobo.)

Post your favorite stock-photo of a dragon and a flying castle in the comments.
This was mine...

My kids have finally reached the age where they can play with legos, so for the last couple months I've had the opportunity to build things with them once or twice a week. I was really into legos as a kid, but it's been 15-20 years. Anyway, getting back into it, I'd like to talk about designing castles.

Simple castle construction

As a kid, and even as a teenager, I remember finding lego castles a frustrating challenge. I would get a castle play-set, build the thing according to the instructions, and it would turn out great, but if I tried to build something of my own design, it would end up quite disappointing.

Now, working with my own kids, I've build a few, rather humble castles, each a bit more complex than the previous one, and I'd like to take the opportunity to share my novice thoughts on castle design.

Sorting Pieces

So this is something which is so obvious to me now but which I don't

Corner piece

think I knew as a kid. Before you start building something, take five minutes to sort out the pieces you will likely need. This saves you time looking for specific pieces later, and it also gives you an idea what materials you have on hand. When building a castle, that usually means:

all the various large castle wall pieces
a good supply of the various types of pillar pieces
any grey or black arch
lots of assorted grey bricks
a good number of black bricks

The Walls

Castle with various wall types

Now let's talk about the walls. When I was a kid trying to do this, I would connect several lego wall pieces together and get a very boring castle. So the first thing I would like to point out is that you have many options regarding walls:

Wall/Door Pieces are quick to put up and cover a lot of space.
Arches on Pillars are a great alternative to a filled-in wall pieces since they are quick to put up, don't use a lot of bricks, and give decent access to the inside of the castle, which is important if this castle is for your kids to play with
Open it's also valid to leave rooms artificially open on one or two sides so the kids can play. That said, you still need to keep things structurally strong.
Bricks can be used to fill in between wall pieces or even to build entire walls, but this is time consuming and uses up a lot of pieces. They're nice and strong, though
Crenelations are good for the top level or can even go under an arch
You can also make a drawbridge, portcullis--I'm not there yet, though. It requires hinge pieces, string...

Castle Walkway/Flooring Example

The Floors

So you've finished a level of walls on your castle. Now you're going to need to put floors and walkways. This isn't just a place for your lego men to hang out. Having a broad and well-supported floor will help you put the next story on your castle.

So you pick out some thin lego pieces for your flooring, but how do you support them? The castle wall pieces have a lip to support a floor, but that usually only gets you 80% of the way to something load-bearing. You'll need to come up with a creative solution to get you the rest of the way. Upward-slanting pieces can help with this.

The Foundation

Foundation needed...

Another challenge is if you have an irregular base plate like ours. Before you can even start your castle, you need to create a surface to build on. That means covering over the pits and expanding the floor with pillars and arches. It's a bit of work, but it results in a more more interesting construction.

Embracing the Subjective

So these are the general ground-rules, but you can take them in a lot of different directions and create some really diverse castle designs. There's no correct design, but there are a few categories one can judge the castle based on:

Complexity of design- how many stories does it have? Are there separate sections?
Structural integrity- how strong/stable is this Tower of Babel you've erected?
Accessibility- I mentioned this before. Can the kids easily access all parts of the castle and put their guys there?
Colors- is the coloring aesthetically pleasing?(This is a hard one--takes a lot of work if you're picky about colors)
Variation- do you just have flat, featureless walls or are their variations? (bonus points for greebling!)
Decorations- are there flags, crenelations, colorful roofs, etc?

A whole lot of castle!

All in all, this is a very deep, complex creative venture and I completely understand the guys who make a full blown hobby out of building gigantic lego castles. A lot of things are like this: coming up with an idea, developing it, modifying it, trying to get everything to fit together just right like a puzzle. DMing your own sandbox can definitely be like this. Even composing a semi-coherent blog post...

I'm not entirely sure what to make of the 2010 short-story collection "Darwin's Bastards: Astounding Tales from Tomorrow". From the subtitle and cover art, one might expect a collection of pulp-inspired yards running the gamut from Gernsbackian wonder stories to tentacled Lovecraftian abominations. Instead one will get a mixed bag whose common thread is that they are written by Canadian(often Vancouver-ite) authors. This bag includes, hands down, some of the best post-cyberpunk that I've read to date. It also has many stories that are more experimental or even allegorical in nature, and these generally didn't resonate well with me. Some of the stories aren't really science fiction or even genre fiction and are written by authors who are working outside their usual genre. I'd like to hear the story behind this collection, but my guess is it went something like this:

Let's make a science fiction short story collection with all Canadian authors
We didn't get enough submissions, let's loosen up our definition of science fiction and ask some local non-genre authors to contribute stories
Oh, Weird Tales and other classic pulps are making a resurgence--let's work that into the marketing

So, for the short version of this review, of the 23 stories contained within, 5 were excellent, and a few more were quite good. The book is divided into 4 sections and all the best stuff is in the first and last section, so my advise would be to just skip the two middle sections. You might also want to read William Gibson's story, though I found it a bit underwhelming.

Anyway, for the long version of this review, we won't dwell on what I didn't like, instead let's talk about the best entries in this collection:

Survivors: This is not the end my friend by Adam Lewis Schroeder

A epic road-trip through post-apocalyptic Canada. An action packed story with some subtle, and not so subtle insights into how Canadians view Americans(and themselves, in contrast). Schroeder's tongue-in-cheek humor is great.

The Aurochs by Lee Henderson

A post-cyberpunk tale of the black market for medical treatments, fossils, and car parts. A really entertaining read and another story with a great, always understated, sense of humor.

Survivor by Douglas Coupland

A tale of reality TV(another very cyberpunkish theme) and the apocalypse, brimming with black humor. The jaded British cameraman was an inspired choice for a narrator, taking a so so premise and making it hugely entertaining.

The Personasts: My Journeys Through Soft Evenings and Famous Secrets by Stephen Marche

This is a fictional ethnography of a fictional subculture based around a sort of roleplaying/acting sort of thing. This story isn't really science fiction, or genre fiction for that matter, but it's so good I just don't care. Especially interesting for readers who are pen-and-paper RPG fans like myself.

Sunshine City by Timothy Taylor

This was my favorite story in the collection. It's a post-cyberpunk tale told as a Hardboiled detective story and it's really well-done.

This story taught be something. The plot is fairly simple, the mystery easily unraveled, the characters all hardboiled archetypes(the hardboiled hero, the femme fatale...) but a good hardboiled tale don't demand complexity in those things. A good hardboiled tale is about the setting, the relationships, and most of all the feelings that these evoke.

In Sunshire City, our Hardboiled Hero, a burned-out detective of sorts, has been called to this decadent place to be duped. Everybody is in on the charade and he himself suspects it, though he stays because his old friend asked for his help. All the characters are sympathetic in some sense, all of them have been hurt by this tragedy in some way, though only our hero is the sort of man-of-honor who is willing to seek out the truth no matter what the cost. This code of honor is why he can't bring himself to live in this sort of place and why he burned out and essentially resigned from Human society.

Dougal Discarnate by William Gibson

A ghost story set in the Kitsilano neighborhood of Vancouver. I got the impression that Gibson is saying something really deep and profound about his old stomping-ground, but I guess it really just went over my head. This saddens me since I was born in Vancouver and I sometimes like to fantasize what life would have been like if my family had decided to stay there and I had grown up a young Vancouverite, rather than a Southern Californian...

Twilight of the Gods by David Whitton

I enjoyed this little post-cyberpunk story of soldiers entangled in a messy maritime conflict. Quite entertaining, through. Like most Norse mythology, it ends rather disappointingly.

Gladiator by Jay Brown

A post-Cyberpunk story where the Libertarians have won and medical research can legally be performed on any Human subjects who are willing. The protagonist reminded me of The Count, in Gibson's Count Zero, when we first meet him, a poor white kid who grew up in the inner city and harbors unlikely dreams of success. The difference is that, rather than dreaming of being an amazing hacker, our protagonist dreams of being the Guinea Pig in the development of the next big drug. The Existential tragedy that ensues is both predicable and compelling.

"If I lose, If I lose, let me lose!" (Gamblin' Man by Welch and Rawlings)

Due to the heart-wrenching nature of today's topic, dear reader, today's post has musical accompaniment, so click play and read on, my friends.

Another One Bites the Dust

Well, as you may have guessed, I lost another wizard.

You may recall how Battle Mage died, fighting the half-dragon cultist and his electric breath. Well, Kunab the Wizbarian has met a similar fate, but we'll get to that soon...

DCC Wizards

High on Style, Low on Hitpoints

I love playing DCC Wizards. Rather than getting a small number of spell slots, you can just keep casting a spell until you fail a spell check. In practice, I found this means a very different style of play.

Standard DnD wizards need to save those precious few slots for when they really need them, as such they creep around the battlefield looking for an opening to cast something. As a DCC wizard, however, you typically just keep casting magic spells each round. That said, spells tend to fail or succeed weakly, so the DCC wizard feels more engaging, giving the player something to try each turn rather than waiting around for your time to come. And sometimes, you roll big so this repeated casting ability can yield incredible power.

However, he's still a wizard, so unless he has great Stamina(Constitution), they don't get many hit points. The result is a character who chaotically wields amazing power but is, as the same time, very fragile. Kunab, for instance, was maybe 7th level with about 11 hit points.

Speaking of Kunab

Speaking of Kunab, I was about to tell you how he died...

DCC Wizard Problems: "Which loincloth matches my skull mask?"

But first let's recall the good times. Remember when the lad's giant Eagles helped defeat the White Dragon? And what about that time when things got awkward with the Half-Dragon warrior lady? Good old Kunab, always good for a spell or a laugh...

Anyway, most recently, Kunab found himself soaring on the back of a huge Metallic Dragon, along with the rest of the party. Being such a fragile little spark-plug of a guy, he took the conservative position to aftward of the beast. Things went South fast though, when the party encountered a Green Dragon and his wyvern buddies.

On his turn, Kunab summoned up another of his ever-useful Giant Eagles. Then, the Green Dragon got it's turn. He flanked our silvery mount and sprayed acid all over the beast's tail-end, catching Kunab full-on in the spray. When the dust cleared, the party saw only a Wizbarian-shaped crust on the Dragon-hide where Kunab had been.

The Psychological Trauma

Now, I won't lie to you--it's painful losing a much-beloved character, especially one with such personality and a bitchin' loincloth to boot. That said, I think it was a fitting end for the young wizard. He lived the life of an adventurer/murderhobo to the fullest, killing monsters, looting treasure, and getting himself into all sorts of compromising situations. As such, I think that Tyrell's final words to Roy make for a fitting eulogy:

The light that burns twice as bright burns half as long - and you have burned so very, very brightly, Kunab

Wow. That was the darkest book I've read in a long time. It's also one of the better books I've read in a long time.

Robert Sawyer's novel Red Planet Blues is a mashup of the Hardboiled Detective and Science Fiction genres. With regard to the latter, the book draws inspiration from Mars Fiction(Burrough, Heinlein, and probably others), as well as post-humanist Cyberpunk. That said, despite the broad base of inspiration, Sawyer has crafted a story with a character all it's own.

But back to the darkness. Hardboiled Fiction is all about the Hardboiled Hero and Alex Lomax is just such a hero. But there is no Hardboiled Hero without a Hardboiled World, and it is a dark dark world indeed.

Raymond Chandler defines the Hardboiled Hero as a man of honor in a honorless world. Indeed the Hardboiled Hero's heroism is one that springs from the very corrupt world it stands distinct from. It is this very paradox, that Vice can breed Honor, and Corruption Truth, that gives the Hardboiled tale it's redemptive quality.

In everything that can be called art there is a quality of redemption...But down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid. The detective in this kind of story must be such a man...He must be a complete man and a common man and yet an unusual man...He must be the best man in his world and a good enough man for any world. I do not care much about his private life; he is neither a eunuch nor a satyr; I think he might seduce a duchess and I am quite sure he would not spoil a virgin; if he is a man of honor in one thing, he is that in all things. ...He is a common man or he could not go among common people...He is a lonely man and his pride is that you will treat him as a proud man or be very sorry you ever saw him. He talks as the man of his age talks, that is, with rude wit, a lively sense of the grotesque, a disgust for sham, and a contempt for pettiness...He has a range of awareness that startles you, but it belongs to him by right, because it belongs to the world he lives in. ("The Simple Art of Murder", Raymond Chandler)

The world that Alex Lomax lives in is a bleak one indeed, though Sawyer has a way of understating it's bleakness. It is the small world of the Martian Frontier, which draws desperate people, hungry for a new start, certain that they won't get one on Earth. The narrator doesn't shove this point down your throat. Yet everyone we meet seems to be in a state of quiet desperation.

Not only that, but many of Mars' inhabitants Transfer. The post-Humanist angle of the book is that the technology exists to "Transfer", to copy your mind into a cybernetic brain and install it in a robotic body of more than Human ability. This sounds nice, but the law forbids two copies of the same mind to exist, so the final step in the "Transfer" process is to euthanize the original biological copy(though the Marketing types breeze over this point, as the book points out). And many people on Mars do transfer to overcome the harsh environment, so the ultimate implication is that Lomax is living in a society of mass-suicide, with the only caveat being that those suicides are replaced with robotic copies. That said, the narrator doesn't shove this idea in the reader's face. Rather, Lomax finds himself in one situation after another that accentuate this perverse reality. Each time, the the reader's cognitive dissidence is heightened, leaving him, like Lomax himself, wondering why only he seems to be bothered by this state of things.

Anyway, bottom line, really bleak novel, though Sawyer manages to lighten the mood somewhat in the story's denouement. Sawyer is a master craftsman of mood and it's really a wonder to watch him ply his trade...on you, the reader.

Well, I've been itching to run a game in the Star Wars universe, but I don't have any Star Wars RPG products and I can't be arsed with learning an all new system anyway. What shall I do?

You may recall the "All Zombies on the Eastern Front: Polish Resistance" game I ran a few years back. It was Cyberpunk 2020 hacked for a WWII setting. And what is Star Wars if not "Nazis in Space". So Cyberpunk 2020 seems to me like a good fit for running a Star Wars game. Especially with Luke's new cyberhand--you know what I'm talking about! It doesn't get more cyberpunk than that!

That said, I have my work cut out for me:

1. Modify the character generator for Star Wars.

I hacked together a little character generator for Polish Resistance. With a little work, we can make build Star Wars PCs.

Add a force stat
Change the skills list
Change the equipment list
Add different species of characters
Update the character sheet

2. Build a Setting

sample map

Star wars makes this easy due to the huge amount of world-building others have done before me. That said, I need to pick some small piece of the Star Wars Universe to focus on and then apply Border Princes methodology to it.

Map it
Detail some adventure locales
Determine who are the movers and shakers in this place and the politics between them

I'm currently thinking Airam Sector, 30 years after the battle of Endor i.e. right after the events of the latest film. I figure, after the fall of the Empire, Pirates and Rebels no longer needed to hide in such an out-of-the-way system, so the place went through a bit of a decline. The PCs start as scavengers or slaves under some minor Hutt-type character. The adventure begins when they stumble over on a choice piece of salvage, a working starship--their ticket off this rock!

3. Space Rules

While Cyberpunk 2020 is a very general-purpose system, we still need some starship rules. Fortunately, there's a huge amount of material to help us with these:

Wookiepedia has ship specifications
Combine has travel times: http://www.swcombine.com/navcomp/
Forums discuss fuel usage and costs

So I just need to collect the rules we'll be using in one place for easy reference...

4. Stat Things Up

Finally, I need to stat-up a whole bunch a equipment, ships, and creatures for use in the sandbox. Again, Wookiepedia should be quite helpful here.

So that's the plan. Hopefully, a week from now, we'll be ready to begin!

So I have a working version of the character generator for my Star Wars-Cyberpunk 2020 hack. You can try it out by opening the google document HERE.

To generate a character, you need to look for the "Character Generator" menu and click "Generate Character".

If, for some reason, the menu doesn't appear, go to Tools->Script editor... Select the "OnOpen" function and run it. The menu should now appear.

Once you've generated the character's stats, copy them to a blank spreadsheet. Then you can fill them out in the character sheet pictured below.

So, for instance, you might end up with someone like this Mon Calamari badass:

Anyway, comments on how to improve the tool are welcome, or you can email me at billygoestomordor@gmail.com

So Star Wars 2020 is coming along, hopefully we'll be ready for a game session on Thursday. So far I would say I'm about half-way there in terms of DM prep:

Made a character generator
Listed 21 systems in the sector with at least 1 point of interest in each
Started mapping the 21 systems(still needs a bit more work)
Listed 9 "Princes" i.e. factional rulers, the systems they control, and their relationships with one another(maybe needs a bit more detail)
Made an equipment list with some stats(still needs a bit more detail)

And I still have some major tasks to do:

Need to put a bit more detail into the starting scenario
I Listed 11 "minor" persons the party is likely to encounter in the first session, but they need more fleshing out
I Listed 10 types of ship the party is likely to encounter in the first session, but I still need to stat them up
Started researching space travel rules. Still need to organize them into 1 page though
I need to come up with all sorts of combat stats for potential opponents
And I need a to make a table of rumors the party might hear that would lead into adventure hooks

Speaking of that last one, I already have our first rumor.

So the date is 30ABE. The Empire has fallen decades ago and been replaced by a weakened Republic. Now the First Order's Starkiller Fortress has taken out the Republic fleet before itself being destroyed(as per the most recent film). Our PC's are in Airam Sector i.e. a rather remote location on the Outer Rim.

The rumor is that, after the Rebellion victory in this sector, the Surviving Imperial troops, with all their remaining military hardware, took over a remote jungle jungle planet in Nodgra System. They mostly keep to themselves and the locals have never been able to muster the power-base to root them out. In any case, the rumor is that King Ebareebaveebeedee, of the Squib, would pay well for any interesting intelligence as to what they are up to. The last intel photographs from their settlement(see below) are decades old and rather innocuous, but who knows what they may be up to now that the First Order has shown themselves as a power to be reckoned with:

So here it is, the starting scenario for the Star Wars game I'm planning on running soon:

The date is 30ABE(After Battle of Endor). The Empire has fallen decades ago and been replaced by a weakened Republic. Now the First Order's Starkiller Base has taken out the Republic base of power in the Hosnian system before itself being destroyed(as per the most recent film).

A Salvage site on Nocto II

Our PC's find themselves on in a remote corner of the Galaxy(the Airam sector), on the planet Nocto II(in the Nocto system). Before the Empire fell, there was a good deal of fighting going on in this system, the heaviest being here on Nocto II. Now, the Ugor Cartel rules the planet, running a planet-wide salvage operation on the aftermath of the battle.

Ugor

Some scavengers came here seeking their fortune, others were left here against their will. In any case, the Ugors take full advantage of the scavengers, providing them with minimum services, and paying them a subsistence-level bounty for the valuable salvage they do find. The only exception to this rule is if scavengers find a working space craft. All such finds are forfeit to High Priest Zorkblag the Infallible, governor of this planet, by Divine Fiat! The penalty for failing to turn-over such fines, a painful death!

You few scavengers get caught in a huge sand-storm on the way back from the site. You retreat to a cave in the rocky foothill to wait out the storm. Investigating an area that has caved in, you can't believe your eyes--a skeleton in Imperial uniform under the rubble!

Lambda class Shuttle

Walking deeper into the caves you find it! An old Lambda-class Imperial shuttle, in what looks to be fairly good condition. You glance at your companions. Can they help you get it out of the caves? Do they have the skills to fly the thing? Can they be trusted? Here lies more credits than you could hope to earn in a whole lifetime of scavenging! Better yet, this is your ticket off this rock! But will this be the making of your fortune or will it be your death!? Only the fates can tell...

A few other details:

Examining it, you see the Hyperdrives have been removed, apparently years ago. If you want to get away from the Ugor, you'll need jump capability!
It only has about 2 cells worth of fuel left. That just isn't going to cut it! Can you obtain more without attracting the wrong sort of attention?
It has some hull damage, but not too bad(about 25%)
Computer's data banks have been wiped(Standard procedure for an Imperial officer making an emergency landing in unfriendly territory). The nav computer is going to need something to go on in order to calculate jumps.

So, I made the following changes to the character generator:

When you generate a new character, it automatically creates a new sheet. This way, different users won't over-write one another's character
Besides generating a completely new character you can now regenerate skills and equipment for an existing character. This allows the player to make manual tweaks to Ability Scores then regenerate the later stuff automatically.
You can also just regenerate starting equipment for an existing character. This allows the player to make manual tweaks to Skills then regenerate the equipment automatically.

Try it out at this THIS LINK

Well, here it is. Rules for getting around outer space in Star Wars 2020.

Fuel Cells

(Taken from this forum) Spaceports are equipped with fusion generators that recharge fuel cells. At the slowest rate of charge, this costs next to nothing, but if called upon to recharge quickly, the costs increase rapidly:

Charging Rate - Typical cost per cell

Trickle (1 cell/day) - 5 credits
Standard (1 cell/hour) - 10 credits
Fast (4 cells/hour) - 50 credits
Emergency (20 cells/hour) - 500 credits

Most stock light freighters are equipped with 50 fuel cells. Additional Fuel Cells: 500 credits each. One cell of fuel is used for:

Entering Hyperspace
Six hours in Hyperspace
One month realspace operation
One hour combat maneuvers
One hour atmospheric flight

Hyperspace Travel Times

Here is a tool for long-distance travel: http://www.swcombine.com/navcomp/

For short distances, I've mapped out most of Airam sector. I'll share parts of that map with the party as it becomes relevant.

Ship Stats

Updated list of ship stats are available here: Equipment List

Ship Combat

This is a work in progress. In general:

Attack:

Attacks are made as a CP2020 skill check i.e. gunnery, etc.

Pilot check can try and evade on a hit though
If ship you're attacking is of bigger class, hit is automatic

Guided missiles don't require a check

But gunner can try and shoot the missile
Pilot can try and evade it

Damage:

Ships have points for shields. Once those are gone, we go to hull damage
Ships have points for hull. Once those are gone, the ship is no longer air-tight.
Each hit that puts hull points at 0 or less damages some critical system(at random)

source

Thanks to donjon's wonderful planet generator, we now have a map of Nocto II, Nocto System, Airam Sector.

It's mostly a desert planet, but thanks to the Battle of Nocto in 3ABY, the second planet in the system has seen quite a surge of activity. In that battle, the Super Star Destroyer Vengeance was destroyed, breaking up in space and eventually crashing down on the surface of Nocto II. In following years, there was a protracted dispute between Ugor and Squib salvage operations, with the Ugors eventually winning control of Nocto II.

The map shows the major sites of interest on Nocto II:

Foretown- scavenger town near the Fore section of SSD Vengeance
Aftown- scavenger town near the Aft section of SSD Vengeance(adventure begins near here)
Nocto II Spaceport- spaceport and general hive of scum and villainy
The Great Debris Belt- 3000km of debris from the battle
The Twins- Polar salvage operation around crash site of two heavy cruisers

Since Star Wars 2020 is Cyberpunk 2020 based, this is the perfect opportunity to include Fight Club, the custom martial arts rules I came up with:

As such, any character taking points in the Martial Arts skill will need to:

Assign 3x the number of points between the 11 techniques
Calculate his BDM(Body Damage Modifier). See the chart below
Calculate his SDM(Skill Damage Modifier). Skill level in the given technique/2

Body	Body Type Modifier	Body Damage Modifier
1	0	0
2	-1	+1
3	-1	+1
4	-2	+2
5	-2	+2
6	-3	+3
7	-3	+3
8	-4	+4
9	-4	+4
10	-5	+5

Finally, here's the printable character sheet with Fight Club additions:

So we got together and played a few hours of Star Wars 2020. The party was:

Pigman- a Gammorian beater/scavenger/heavy machine user/turret gunner(Avraham)
Art- Ithorian tech Rock gardener, healing(Avi)
Aazilbaki- a Green Twi'lek fighter pilot/untrained force user/insterstellar navigation(Avram)
Meemu- Ewok super martial artist, hoverbike riding loner, wamprat hunter, hyperdrive-tech(Mati)
Lucky- a Gran with many natural talents, good at dodging, explosives, stock market, interstellar navigation, leadership, pharmaceuticals(Lauren)

As mentioned previously, the setup is on Nocto II. The party are scavengers who stumble onto the motherload: a working Imperial Shuttle, undiscovered these 20 years. The only problem is they'll need to get it some sort of hyperdrive, maps for the nav computer, and some fuel cells if they're going to escape Ugor space. And they need to do it all discreetly.

The party were smart enough to search the shuttle thoroughly, lucking out by finding 17 pristine suits of Stormtrooper armor on board, which helped them with the funds they needed to pull off their caper.

Back to Town

Meemu used his underworld connections to determine that Kryygh, an Ithorian Bounty Hunter stationed nearby, would be willing to sell them his backup hyperdrive for an extravagant amount. They sold him 8 of the armors in exchange for dropping the backup hyperdrive at a pre-determined location later that night. They also wanted another fuel cell and a sector map.

Map of Airam Sector

As they were leaving the bounty hunter's ship, they noticed someone with hairy legs and a long cloak outside, but he didn't seem to be spying on them. Aazilbaki followed him anyway but lost him in the crowd.

Art traded his artwork to Snorblob the Ugor Cartel representative in town for another fuel cell, but then ditched it when he realized that it probably had a tracking device on it(DM Aside: he was right!)

They then heard a rumor that Roy, a Human Scavenger, had a stash for when he would one day make it off the planet. They spoke to him and made a deal. They would let him come along for his 7 fuel cells.

A Gammorian guard pulled Meemu aside and tried interrogating him, but the wily Ewok managed to escape.

The party now knew for sure that they were being watched so they made a plan.

In the Scavenging Fields

While Pigman, Art, and Aazilbaki snuck-off to the rendezvous point, Meemu and Lucky were very conspicuous about going with Roy to his stash. They did a good job and were followed by a couple tough bounty hunters, under Ugor employ.

There was a very close fight. I really didn't think Meemu, Lucky, and Roy could win. After a good deal of crawling around, hiding, shooting and kicking:

Meemu's hoverbike was fried by a laser rifle
One bounty hunter failed a stun check the second time he was hit by an axe, taking him out of the fight
The other bounty hunter was tricked out of cover with an unarmed thermal detonator, then had his leg shot off with his captured buddy's laser rifle
But, unfortunately Meemu, after shooting a bounty hunter full in the helmet with his own blaster pistol, was hit with three rounds from an automatic blaster rifle, killing the brave little Ewok outright! (and he was their only hyperdrive tech- evil DM laugh!)

Lucky and Roy took the bounty hunters' hoverbikes and hauled the fuel cells and loot to rejoin the rest of the party's night time rendezvous. Now the party was reunited and dragging their new hyperdrive to the shuttle. At the same time, they saw they were being followed.

Flyboys and Explosions

They made it to the caves, with three hovercars close on their tail. Art attempted to install the hyperdrive and Pigman to clear the rubble from the cave-in that was blocking their escape route. The rest of the party lay in wait, setting off a couple thermal detonators and blowing up 6 Gammorian guards and much of the cave entrance.

Finally the shuttle was ready, and the party piled in and took off, with Aazilbaki in the pilot seat and Pigman blasting away with the tail gun. The party made it up the gravity well, avoided an Ugor corvette, and made the jump to Klaatu system, escaping Ugor space! (using 4 of their 11 fuel cells in the process and knocking that hull damage up to 27% on the way out of the cave.)

In our first session, the party succeeded in escaping the Ugor-run Airam sector in their stolen Lambda-class T-4a shuttle. Let's take a closer look at this fine piece of Imperial-Age machinery:

Crew/Passengers: 6-26
Speed: 50 MGLT
Hyperdrive: class 4 backup hyperdrive
Hull: 48/66RU
Shields: 100SBD (split between fore and aft shields)
Fuel Cells: 7/53 charged
Armament:

Steerable forward twin laser cannons(2d8) x2
Twin laser cannons (2d8) x2
Aft twin blaster cannon (2d6)

The Bureaucratic Reality is My Reality

So at the very least the shuttle could use some repairs and a new hyperdrive and some new fuel. The other issue, however, is registration.

The shuttle's registration currently is to the(now defunct) Navy of the Galactic Empire. Whenever another ship scans it, it will self-identify as such. This functionality can be turned off, but that's just as suspicious. The Ugor, a major force in Airam system, and in fact throughout the Galaxy, are looking for this shuttle. If the party wants to avoid pursuit, they need to get their shuttle a "clean" registration or swap it for another ship.

As to getting a clean registration, there are many systems that can provide this, but only those who don't fear the wrath of the Ugor. These are generally organized criminals or those who are anyway on bad terms with the Ugor.

As to swapping it for a new ship, one can sell a ship with invalid registration and an Ugor bounty on it, but not to just anyone and certainly not for top dollar.

Ann Leckie's 2013 science fiction novel Ancillary Justice is categorized as Space Opera. That's fair enough, I suppose. It has aliens, interstellar travel via jump gates, and intergalactic Empires vying for power. That said, tonally and thematically, it is closer to Post-Cyberpunk.

Cyberpunks

The main theme of the book is it's exploration of new paradigms of conscious experience, such as AI and technologically modified humans. This is a very cyberpunk theme, but while William Gibson tries to alienate us with uncomfortable marriages of technology and biology, Leckie humanizes this new paradigm, offering us an intimate view into these characters' lives. Ancillary Justice introduces us to three types of technological character:

AIs and their Ancillaries- the protagonist, Justice of Toren/Breq is such a being, with modified human bodies networked with one another and slaved to a ship AI. All of the parts share a single collective experience and think of themselves as a single person, albeit one comprised of many bodies and many brains.
Networked Clones- Anaander Mianaai, ruler of the Radch empire, continuously produces clones of herself. The clones are networked to one another(while within the same star system) and they all think of themselves as a single person. Her many clones travel the Galaxy, allowing her to rule over a highly-diffuse realm(basically James Patrick Kelly's Solstice, cranked up to 11).
Post-Humans- the backwater system Breq describes in chapter 17 is populated with "heavily modified people--not human, by Radchaai standards, people with six or eight limbs(and no guarantee any of them would be legs), vacuum-adapted skin and lungs, brains so meshed and crosshatched with implants and wiring it was an open question whether they were anything but conscious machines with a biological interface." We just get a sketch of them and their brand of utilitarian altruism "I found out later that a four-meter, tentacled eel of a person had paid the balance of my fare without telling me, because, she had told the captain, I didn't belong there and would be healthier elsewhere." pp.255-6

Cyberpunks in Crisis

Leckie explores each of these characters' sense of self, to various degrees.

She gives us a first person view of Breq's existential crises, first when her individual units lose their network connection, then when she is ordered to kill her favorite captain, then once again when Justice of Toren is destroyed leaving only a single surviving Ancillary.

"I spent six months trying to understand how to do anything--not just how to get my message to the Lord of the Radch, but how to walk and breathe and sleep and eat as myself." p.256

We are also offered a second person view of Anaander Mianaai's own long-running crisis as her clones develop differences of opinion. This rift within herself results in subtle intrigues and ultimately in armed conflict between the various factions of self.

We're also offered Breq's third-person view of the Post-Humans and their more individualistic culture, which nevertheless includes an ethic of helping others to find their own place in the system.

All Things Shining

This is sort of the opposite of the other book I'm reading, Hubert Dreyfus and Sean Dorrance Kelly's All Things Shining. A major theme of All Things Shining is the vast, untranslatable cultural gap between previous epochs and our own Modern Age. The authors explore many examples of this, but one such case is their claim that our existential crises today are utterly alien to our forbears. That, without the broad array of choices that our modern situation offers us, these questions of self-definition simply don't arise.

"It is not just that in earlier epochs one knew on what basis one's most fundamental existential choices were made: it is that the existential questions didn't even make sense." p.13.

In the same vein, Dreyfus and Kelly also explore examples of past practices that seem utterly alien to us Moderns, yet which made complete made sense according to the world view of people at the time. For example, Helen recounts her affair with Paris in front of her Husband and polite company and is praised for "An excellent tale, my dear, and most becoming."(Homer's Odyssey) The authors argue that this lack of embarrassment can best be understood by the Greek belief that a person's ultimate fulfillment is to become attuned to the gods(in this case Aphrodite).

This is what Leckie is doing in Ancillary Justice--presenting us with a glimpse into a future society, whose own existential questions are be inherently alien to our own experience. What is it like to be a collective self? What sort of unique crises of identity does such a person face? Intellectually, we can only imagine the answers in terms of metaphors, but Leckie does better, taking a more impressionistic approach in her descriptions. Ancillary Justice is a book whose tones of stoic melancholy and irreparable loss stimulate our imagination to fill in the blanks where rational reflection hits a wall of inscrutability.

To sum up, Ancillary Justice is high-concept Science Fiction at it's best and is sure to become, itself, a Modern Classic.

My Mother passed away a few weeks ago. She'd had one of the nastier brands of cancer for a while, the type you don't get better from. The type where every treatment raises the question of whether the effects of the treatment are better or worse than those of the disease.

My sister was going through some of her things and found this, an old scratchboard drawing I did back in high school. A DnD scene with an White Dragon, an adventuring party entering it's cave in the background. Reminded me I used to be halfway decent at drawing.

Mom was always very supportive of her kids' artistic endeavors, sending us to all the after-school classes we wanted. I should probably draw more. Maybe once life gets a little less crazy...

After the first session of Star Wars 2020, a Cyberpunk 2020 Star Wars mod, I wanted to add an improved combat skill to the list of force skills. The existing list of skills(below) reflect common force abilities, but there wasn't anything that paralleled Luke's use of the force in combat.

Force Jump
Mind Trick
Phase
Telekinesis
Read Mind
Force Healing

I wanted something that gives a significant bonus, yet doesn't make force users too overpowered. Since Cyberpunk 2020 combat relies mostly on the Reflex ability score, I decided to create an ability that boost's that attribute. Here is the result:

Force Reflex Boost

The force-user concentrates, connecting to the Force. This gives them a boosted reflex ability score.

Skill Check

The force-user must make a skill check to concentrate and connect to the force. The target number depends on how distracted they are.

standard CP2020 difficulties

Effect

The ability is boosted by the character's force ability score, for a maximum of 11. (The player is allowed to make one Spinal Tap joke per session. Additional jokes cause the ability to fail.)

Concentration

If the character is injured or otherwise distracted, they must again make a skill check to maintain concentration. This doesn't use up their action for the turn.

Duration

The effect lasts as long as the character is busy with the current task. Once they start doing something else, the effect is lost. If they want to maintain the effect, they must make a concentration skill check.

As per request, here is how to create your star wars 2020 character via point-buy rather than random generator.

1. Ability Scores

Distribute 48 points between the ability scores Int, Ref, Tech, Cool, Emp, Luck, Body, Force (maximum 10, minimum 2)
MA=8
Run=MA*3
Leap=Run/4
Lift(Kg)=40*BODY
Save=Body
BTM=IF(BODY<=2,0,IF(BODY<=4,-1,IF(BODY<=7,-2,IF(BODY<=9,-3,-4))))

2. Species

Pick a species
Apply the ability modifiers for your species

Races	INT	BODY	REF	EMP	MA
Human
Wookie	-1	1		1	-1
Ewok	-1	-2	1	1	-2
Gammorian	-2	2		-1
Twi'lek			-1	1
Ithorian	1		-1		-1
Mon Calamari
Gran

3. Skills

You get 40+INT+REF skill points
Assign them to skills(max 10)

BODY	COOL	EMP	INT	REF	TECH	FORCE
Endurance	Interrogate	Sentient Perception	Accounting	Archery	Hover Tech	Force Jump
Strength Feat	Intimidate	Interview	Xenoanthropology	Athletics	Basic Tech	Mind Trick
Swimming	Oratory	Leadership	Awareness/Notice	Brawling	Computer Tech	Phase
	Resist Torture/Drugs	Perform	Biology	Dance	Demolitions	Telekinesis
	Streetwise	Persuasion/Fast Talk	Botany	Dodge/Escape	Disguise	Read Mind
		Riding(Bantha)	Chemistry	Fencing	Droid Tech	Force Healing
		Riding(Bolotaur)	Composition	Handgun	Electronics	Reflex Boost
		Riding(Keffi)	Diagnose Illness	Heavy Weapons	First Aid/Medical
		Riding(Tauntaun)	Education & Gen. Knowlege	Martial Arts	Hacking
		Riding(Eopie)	Gamble	Melee	Paint/Draw
		Riding(Dewback)	Geology	Operate Heavy Machinery	Pharmaceuticals
		Seduction	Hide/Evade	Pilot(StarFighter)	Photography
		Social	History	Drive(Hoverbike)	Pick Lock
			Language(by species/native world)	Drive(Hovercar)	Pick Pocket
			Language(Basic)	Pilot(Starship)	Play Instrument(pick one)
			Library Search	Rifle	Hyperdrive Tech
			Mathematics	Stealth	Weaponsmith
			Navigation(Interstellar)	Turret Gunner	Starship Engine Tech
			Physics	Climbing	Energy Weapon Tech
			Shadow/Track	Diving	Communications Tech
			Stock Market
			Teaching
			Wilderness Survival
			Zoology

4. Equipment

You get 1d10 Galactic Credits
cloth shoes(worn out), dusty poncho, sand mask
4 items from this list

Anti-Grav Sledge

Bantha

Blaster pistol

Blaster rifle

Bolotaur

Brass bracelets

Camera

Cutting torch

Dancing shoes

Dewback

Diving aparatus

Eopie

Hand weapon(choose)

Heavy Plasteel Knife 1d6

Hip Flask

Infrared binoculars

Keffi

Light spear gun 1d6+1

Lockpicks

Longbow 50m, 12 Arrows 2d6+1

Medikitx5

Metal Detector

Motorized climbing rig

Musical Instrument(as per skill)

Old Hoverbike

Old Hovercar

Pack of Sabacc Cards

Pain killers

pick item of Native dress

Plasteel Sword 2d6+2, sheath

Portable Chemical Analyzer

Portable excavator

Portable Gene Sequencer

Sketchpad, Pencils

Small computer terminal

Small Electronics Kit

Small hacker's terminal

Small tool kit

Salvaged Droid(choose Astromech, Medical, or Protocol)

Tatoo

Tauntaun

Thermal Detonator 7/9d6

Uppers

Water Bottle

Wearable light

Here's another system description for Star Wars 2020.

Klaatu is a star system in Airam Sector. Most of the planet's activity is around Klaatu III and it's moon.

Klaatu III's moon is the location of a Nharwaak mining colony. The primary locations in this system are:

Customs Platform- a platform orbiting Klaatu III. Visiting ships must check in at the customs office.
Low-Grav Refinery- a space station orbiting Klaatu III. It's a low-gravity metal refinery where mined ores are processed.
Deep Core Bore- a deep bore mine near the moon's core. Mines heavy metals.
The Rift- metal mine in seismic crack in the moon's surface
Nharwaak Colony- small space port, residential, commercial area
Garrison Camp- Nharwaak garrison's camp

A mining colony of the Nharwaaks. The Nharwaaks are from the Myloc system, also in Airam Sector, but are of Zygerrian ancestry.