Lone Horizons

Here's a recent video I made about the Blackoath Entertainment game Salvage & Sorcery: Scraphounds of Cygnus. In a new format for this kind of video I first give an overview of the rules, then show you an animated mission report from my campaign, and finally do some gameplay on camera.

  Introduction Having failed to repair Ezri Tungertok's robot sloth pet Mateo needs to find another way to get an audience with one of the two gang bosses. Scene 3 The Common Area, Aurum 80, The Iron Ring, Tenebris System Local time: 12:45 (3 hours 15 minutes until Thorn's shuttle arrives) Chaos Factor: 5 Threads:  Deal with the debt / Repair the Kulakov / Refuel the Kulakov Characters:  Salvage crew, Mira Lamassu (Old friend of Mateo), Ezri Tungertok (Union worker), The Passel Gang, Parliament Gang Expected Scene:  Try to make contact with one of the two gangs. Testing the Expected Scene:   D10: 1. Altered scene. D10: 2. Add a character. Who is this character? Checking on the NPC generator. Ichiro Lock (Male) Background: Gas farmer First Impressions: Just overall creepy. Long nails, teeth and hair. Looks: Similar clothes as one of the PCs. Oracle question: What is Ichiro doing? (Character actions, general) //Communicate creepy It's crazy sometimes how Mythic...

  Introduction Mateo Rover has just begun his mission to pay off his 500 holo docking fee debt, repair and refuel his ship the Kulakov. Death in Space with Mythic GME 2E. Scene 2 The Common Area, Aurum 80, The Iron Ring, Tenebris System Local time: 12:10 (3 hours 50 minutes until shuttle arrival) Chaos Factor:  4 Threads:  Deal with the debt / Repair the Kulakov / Refuel the Kulakov / Repair Ezri's prototype Characters:  Salvage crew, Mira Lamassu (Old friend of Mateo), Ezri Tungertok (Union worker who needs something repaired), The Passel Gang, Parliament Gang Expected Scene:  Meet with Ezri Tungertok and repair a "gadget" for her. Testing the Expected Scene:   D10: 1. Altered scene. Two possibilities: Either Ezri finds Mateo herself, or she's not there. Fate question: Is Ezri missing? (Unlikely). If the answer's no she'll find him. //68: No. Mateo walks through the docking connector, a rickety old tube connecting the docking bay with Aurum 80's common ar...

Introduction Last time we created Mateo Rover, a tow trucker who just bought a used ship. Next we need to work out the details of that ship. Hub Creation Rover's hub (player base) will be a ship, The Kulakov. Defence Rating (DR):  11 Max Condition:  5 Frame Integrity:  100% Max Fuel:  6 Power Source:  Standard chemical engine (slow) Output Power:  3 Core Functions:  Bridge, mess, crew quarters, life support Modules:  None Background:  Unknown. No serial number. Fragmented log hidden deep in computer system. Quirks: Interior painted in luminous colours charged by UV light. The Kulakov has no weapons and only the most basic functions, not even a cargo bay. What's more, it needs repairs and fuel. Welcome to the Ring After reading the rulebook I realised the starter adventure, Welcome to the Ring , would be a perfect first adventure for Rover. It's very open ended and doesn't railroad players or push them to complete it in a certain way, so it wo...

Introduction I felt like starting a short-ish game of something totally different to DCC and BFRPG, the two games I've been playing recently. About two years ago I was in Forbidden Planet (London's geek megastore) with my wife and found they had Death in Space. I wasn't expecting to see it in physical form in a shop that only has a tiny section of RPG books, most of them D&D, and I showed her how nice the graphic design and layout was. Later that year I opened a surprise birthday present from her... Death in Space! I read through it but haven't play it yet. The rules are quite simple as characters have only a few attributes and for skill checks you just roll a D20 plus your appropriate attribute and aim for 12+ (sometimes you get advantage so can roll an extra die and take the best result). I also want to make use of Mythic GME 2nd Edition which I have in PDF form, so I'll be using that with it. Briefly then, Death in Space is set in the far future. The universe...

  The derelict ship Introduction In our playthrough of Alien in Hostile RPG, Dallas, Kane and Lambert have found the crashed alien ship on the planetoid LV426. The Adventure "Let's get out of here." Lambert says as Dallas leads the team towards the huge ring shape looming out of the fog. "We've got this far, we must go on." Kane replies, "We have to go on!". Back on the nostromo Ash watches their video feeds on screens which are becoming more and more distorted. "Will you say that again?" He asks Dallas after receiving some garbled speech from him. Let's see if Ash can do anything about the poor signal. This will be a Comms roll for which Ash isn't trained. I realised the Hostile rulebook treats every check as needing an 8 to succeed, applying positive or negative DMs to adjust the difficulty, rather than the way Cepheus Engine does it which is to change the target number from 8 to higher or lower. I'll switch to doing it Host...

  The surface of planetoid LV426 Introduction We're continuing the adaptation of Alien. Dallas, Kane and Lambert have stepped into the airlock, ready to traverse the forbidding dead landscape of planetoid LV426 in order to find the source of the mystery transmission they detected. Let's create LV426 using Hostile's world generation system, which is based on that of Traveller. I don't know if any of it will come into play on the journey but it's fun to do anyway. Universal World Profile LV426 X111000-C Asteroid G Starport X: No starport. Size 1: The closest size category which is 1600km in diameter. In the film the planetoid is only 1200km. Ash says the gravity is "0.86 - You can walk on it". This implies that it's 86% the strength of Earth's gravity. In Hostile a size 1 planet has 0.05 gravity, but we'll go with the film. Atmosphere 1: Trace. This is a very thin layer of gases surrounding the planet, obviously enough to cause the horrible wind ...

  The stasis pods open Introduction I've created the crew of the Nostromo from Alien in the RPG Hostile by Zozer Games and I'm playing through the story solo to see how it turns out. Just one more quick bit of character creation: Hostile has rules for characters suffering stress, but it involves doing an Intelligence roll. I find this a bit odd since it would mean a character like Lambert who can't handle the situation at all and freaks out repeatedly during the film, would have to have a low Intelligence score and therefore fail a lot of her job-related rolls. I'll assign each character a Stress characteristic which they'll use to do their "panic roll". This is based on their behaviour in the film. Dallas (Captain): 7 He stays very calm throughout the film but does panic and go the wrong way in the air vent when the alien's coming for him. Kane (Executive Officer): 9 (+1) Admittedly Kane doesn't get to experience being hunted by the fully grown al...

Introduction I'm doing a solo Hostile RPG campaign based on Alien. We made the crew, so the last thing we need to do before starting is plan out the ship. The Hostile setting book gives details of the USCS O'Bannon, a light towship which seems to be based on the Nostromo (Note the reference to Alien co-writer Dan O'Bannon). USCSS Nostromo I don't think the ship's stats are going to come into play much but let's list them here anyway. It's a 400 ton ship with a streamlined hull meaning it can enter a planet's atmosphere. It has 8 hull points and 8 structure points which are what it loses when it takes damage. The other stats are related to its travel speed and other factors that won't be needed in our game. Interestingly the Nostromo was built by Lockheed Martin, a rather infamous real life company. I managed to track down some deck plans for the ship on Imgur  which were in turn taken from what looks like a defunct Swedish fan website. Maybe they cam...

  Ash (Ian Holm, RIP) Introduction We're making the crew of the Nostromo in Hostile, the RPG from Zozer Games in order to play through the plot of Alien and see who survives. Wow, this is taking me a long time but we're almost done with character creation. That's what happens when you only have an hour of free time per day, I guess. Ash, Science Officer Characteristics Strength:  14 (+2) Dexterity: 9 (+1) Endurance: 13 (+2) Intelligence: 11 (+1) Education:  9 (+1) Social:  7 Ash, the secret android sleeper agent onboard the Nostromo is incredibly strong and tough as demonstrated in his fight with Ripley and Parker, gripping Parker and disabling him, pulling him to the floor. He doesn't stop attacking even after being partially decapitated and has to be hit with a cattle prod and short circuited. He has a better than average Dexterity as we see when he uses a laser cutter on the facehugger, carefully cutting its limb without harming Kane. He's more than capable menta...