quick follow-up: my game + 4e + One Ring

Despite my best intentions I cannot report back any useful intelligence regarding the other two fantasy role-playing games at the Armored Gopher last night.  I just didn't have any personal energy to devote to paying attention to the other tables.  My own resources were more than sufficiently occupied because the cold I've been fighting seemed to flair back up plus I had seven players show up wanting to make new characters and explore the Caves of Myrddin.  Regular players Carl, Nick, Dane, Wheels and Lewis were joined by Tom Trumpinski (a long time feature of the local scene) and Chris Tichenor, known on some old school message boards as the Rogue Attorney.

The party consisted of a cleric, a thief, a dwarf, an elf and three fighters, if I recall correctly.  They entered the Big Cave, as did last week's online group.  They found evidence of the first group's mayhem and also located some treasure they missed.  There was a desperate fight with some giant beetles and a distant Mysterious Clucking Sound.  But the big event of the night was a run in with Joe Mama, the psycho-killer giant.  Joe sliced Nick's character clean in half with his giant-sized chainsaw.  The party dropped Joe through use of the Big Purple d30 Rule to overpower a couple of attacks (the final strike was a 24 point slingstone, David and Goliath style).  The survivors then located Joe's bag o' gold, which they split up into sacks and packs to carry out.  When they returned to the room where they "killed" Joe, he was gone, along with his chainsaw and hockey mask.  So he's still on the loose, only now he's pissed off.

The party returned to Abbey of St. Emmet with more than enough gold to do a little carousing, which 3 players opted to roll for.  Dane blew his carousing roll and ended up making a pass at a sultry peasant witch, who turned him into a pig for his trouble.  But Dane turned it around and apologized to her, using his d30 roll for the evening on the NPC Reaction chart.  The chart goes from 2 to 12, high being a more favorable reaction.  With the d30 in use, Dane got a result of something over 20.  So the witch turned the silver-tongued devil back into a man, because now she is totally smitten with his scoundrel ways.  So now I need to come up with a witch NPC.

Good times.

Fleet Captain: before you flip those cards

Before you start flipping cards to see who flies where and who shoots what, you actually have to do a little planning ahead. This simulates your best efforts to direct the rest of the fleet to where you want them to go on the board. Every Fleet Captain should be supplied with a set of counters. On side could be marked by Fleet/Faction/Polity/Race/Whatever or it could have a nice starfield decoration or it could just be blank. The other side of the counters should be marked in one of four ways:

Before the cards are deployed, every ship in play must have one of these markers face down next to it. If one guy at the table is holding up the game you are allowed to raz him for it. I suggest humming the Final Jeopardy countdown music in unison.

When you get a move result (a Black card) you activate the unit you are moving by flipping over their marker.  If you are shooting (a Red card) just pick up the marker and put it back in the pile.  A ship with no marker cannot be activated.  When one of your dumbass captains makes a normal move (using a 2 through 10 playing card) this is how it works:

FORWARD ARROW: Roll your movement die, move the full amount (divided by your Slowness, dropping fractions).  Optionally, you may sideslip one hex right or left on the last hex of your move.  A sideslip is an easy concept to show but can be hard to convey verbally, basically you nudge over one column while retaining your facing.  Like this little red ship making a 4 hex move that ends with a sideslip to the right:

Don't rotate your vessel at any point,
just slip to the side.  You dig?



If you can wrap your head around that sideslip thing the rest of this will be dead easy.  A key point to remember is that you can only sideslip at the end of your move.

RIGHT or LEFT TURN:  Move forward the full amount dictated by dice and Slowness, then turn your vessel one hexside (60 degrees) in the direction of the arrow on the marker.  That's it.  That's the whole deal.

STOP SIGN: The stop sign is a total lie.  In space they have this thing call Momentum.  (We have it here on Earth, too.  But it's easier to miss when it gets mixed in with Drag and Gravity and Ham Sandwiches and what not.  In space Momentum is just about the only thing they got going.)  A stop sign means your vessel executes a Drift maneuver.  You move forward exactly one hex.  After you move that one hex you may turn one hexside to your right or left, at your option.  You may not sideslip.

Notice how all these schmuck captains and their sucky vessels are about as graceful as oxen in tutus?  An especially important consideration here is that each turn NPC vessels have this nasty tendency to enter the hex immediately in front of their nose whether it is a good idea or not.  It doesn't matter if the enemy has dropped gravitic mines there or if that hex is surrounded by the sphincter of a giant space amoeba's bunghole. 

This is why the rules dictate that if you shoot you always Drift as well.  So your moron junior captain can smash into things right at the moment of his ultimate triumph.  Before you fire, you drift one hex forward.  You may not turn.  Also, if you run out of cards for the round and still have movement markers down, all remaining vessels Drift forward one hex, no turn allowed.  This can happen because the cards aren't just flipped off the top of a deck.  At the start of each turn the scenario organizer or some designated person deals off a small pile of facedown cards.  The number of cards so dealt is equal to the number of ships in the largest player fleet in the game.  This little pile is then turned over one card at a time.  The round is over when the last card in this small stack is turned over, whether everybody acted or not.  The cards used are discarded until an entire deck is exhausted.

Of course, the Special Maneuvers available to all captains can modify these rules.  But those are tricky and uncertain.

IMPORTANT: FLEET CAPTAINS DON'T SUCK

• Your flag vessel may move less than a full move if you so desire.
• Your flag vessel may turn or sideslip at any point in your move, if you placed the appropriate marker (you can only sideslip in a Forward Move, etc.).
• If you put down a Stop Sign then your flag vessel may either sideslip when you drift one forward OR turn to face any direction if you go straight ahead. 
• In general, the Special Maneuvers rules work even better for your Fleet Captain.

this amused me

Great Moments in Fleet Captain History #1

Optional Rule for 'Small Hex' Games: Any time two NPC vessels enter the same hex roll d100 for each ship.  If both rolls come up the same number, the ships make contact and both take the number rolled in hull points of damage.

Fleet Captain does not come with a set scale for either time or distance.  Individual GMs, scenario designers and player-empowering anarchist collectives can work such things out for themselves.  Or simply do what the designer does and remember the MST3K Mantra: Repeat to yourself it's just a show, I should really just relax.

But there are times when the size of one of those hexes of empty space really matters.  One is when you want to know if ships can accidentally bump into each other or not, hence the optional rule above.  Another is when you want to put a planet on the map. 

If we're fighting a last ditch effort to defend Earth from the forces of Omicron Persei 8 it's important to figure out at some point whether or not Earth fits on the map.  Perhaps you print out a custom counter that's exactly one hex wide.  "This counter blocks line of site and anyone entering this hex must make an Avoid Hazard maneuver or crash into a randomly determined city in New Jersey."  Or maybe you cut an old globe in half and slap that puppy down on the map.  You'll need different rules for that to cover the partial hexes peaking out beneath the hemisphere.  Another possibility is that the battle is taking place so close to Earth that any vessel exiting the right side of the board at more than Drift speed crashes into the planet. 

Or perhaps these hexes are friggin' huge and the Earth is just another dot in hex 1213.  If I recall correctly, Steve JacksonMarc Miller's vector-based tactical sci-fi ship game Triplanetary has much of the Solar System on the mapboard.  You literally bank around Venus to line up a shot against your foe, who is over by Jupiter when you make your turn.  I kinda think turns were days or weeks long in that one.

Anyway, my point is that "Oops!  I got my destroyer in your frigate!" is funny.  But it shouldn't happen too often.  Space, after all, is really, really big.  Besides, if you want vessels crashing into stuff, that's what Improbably Dense Asteroid Fields are for.

this should be interesting...

Just got an email from Dave, the supercool dude who runs my FLGS:

Hey all...

Quick annoucement...

Beginning tonight, September 7th, Armored Gopher Games will be hosting D&D Encounters on a weekly basis. The sessions will be run by Eric Bohm, and promise to be a lot of fun!

Seating is limited, be here early. Game time is 6:30PM. Enjoy!

Dave @ Armored Gopher Games

Tonight also happens to be the night I'm resuming running D&D at the Gopher.  Six sessions seemed like a sufficient amount of Boot Hill and I wanted to give my FLAILSNAILS players some competition, so I'm sending whoever shows up for my game into the Caves of Myrddin.  It's not the first time I've GM'ed when another game was going down on the other side of the store, but it'll be the first time that other game was also called Dungeons & Dragons.

There's lots of interesting data that could be gathered in a situation like this.  Do the D&D Encounters people skew younger than my table?  How many encounters do they get through in an average hour as opposed to my game?  Setting up a couple of video cameras to observe the two groups could be fun as well.  In general I'd much rather focus on my own game rather than someone else's, but this is an unusual opportunity.

Fleet Captain: the card deck

In Fleet Captain the deck of playing cards is used as a sort of initiative mechanic, based upon Crew Inefficiency and the captain's Incompetence.  At the beginning of each turn d6's are thrown to see who gets to go first each card flip.  If Bob rolls a 4 and Susan rolls a 5 that means that Susan must act first after every flip until the turn is over.  You can think of the cards as sort of an impulse/phase time management mechanic, with better crews and smarter captains making better use of their time.  Let's look at Bob's fleets.

Bob is playing a contingent of Middle-Aged Uplifted Spacefaring Tortoises, a.k.a. the Maust.  He has 5 ships in his fleet:

• The MDF (Maust Defense Force) Warhol, a cutting art, state-of-the-edge Heavy Cruiser and his Fleet Captain's ship.  As Bob's personal vessel, it is not rated for inefficiency or incompetence.  It can act on any phase of Bob's choosing.
• The MDF Kinkade, a leaky old battleship that should have been sold for scrap seven centuries ago.  The Captain's Incompetence is rated Jack-Queen or JQ, which is not too bad.  That means he can attempt a Captain's Maneuver any time either of those cards come up.  The crew has an appalling Inefficiency of 234, which means the ship can only move or fire when those cards come up.  Picking which vessels to activate when a low card comes up is one of the tough command decisions the Maust hope Bob is capable of making.
• The MDF Pollock, a decent light cruiser design with only a slight tendency to explode.  The captain of the Pollock graduated from command school with top honors, but hasn't gotten along with the Fleet Captain since that embarrassing incident at the Admiralty Christmas Party, so his Incompetence is only JQ while the fleet is under Bob's command.  The crew is astonishingly well-trained, with an Inefficiency of 23456789.
• The MDF Bob Ross and Alex Ross, a pair of destroyers of the same mediocre class.  The commander of the Bob Ross is a young go-getter with everything to prove.  Her Incompetence is JQK, meaning she can attempt a Captain's Maneuver on any face card.  This kid just might have it in her to be Fleet Captain some day.  She's managed to whip her sad-sack crew into an Inefficiency of 234567, which is pretty decent for this fleet.  The Alex Ross, on the other hand, is commanded by a wily old fool near retirement.  No way in hell is he sticking his neck out any more than he has to.  His Incompetence is J and his lack luster crew is 2345.  Note that these two vessels have the exact same engines and guns and hullpoints and nearly the same name, but one of them is going to get a lot more done on any given turn. 

So let's look at some of Bob's options when various cards are drawn.

• A black (black means move) 5 would indicate that Bob could opt to move the Warhol, the Pollock or either Ross.
• A red 3 means that any vessel in the Fleet could opt to shoot.  Red=shoot.  This would be a good time to actually use those giant zap guns on the Kinkade.
• A black Queen would mean that the Warhol, Kinkade, Pollock or Bob Ross could attempt some sort of special movement-based Captain's Maneuver, like flying through an asteroid hex unharmed or doing a 180-degree turn.  Note that NPC Captains only succeed in some maneuvers on a d6 roll where they beat their vessel's Slowness, so the sluggish Kinkade probably shouldn't try anything too dangerous.
• An ace always indicates that the only vessel you can activate is your flagship.
• In this fleet, any ten card would mean only the flagship can move/shoot.

Note that the Crew Inefficiency is written out long form 2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-10, rather than just Inefficiency 5 because it also serves as the damage track for crew casualties.  Crew losses are marked off starting with the 2 and working up.  Similarly, the critical result Captain Bumps Head On Console can eliminate the Jack from his or her Incompetence rating.

Note that all vessels only get to Move or Shoot each turn and at the beginning of the turn there's no good way to tell if you should move now or hold out for an opportunity to fire.  You MUST move/fire if you can.

You can tell whether or not you've moved or shot by the markers mentioned in the Equipment Needed list.  Before all this card malarkey you place a marker face down next to each vessel.  Pick it up when ever you move or shoot.  Also, shooting actually involves a one hex forward Drift before you resolve fire, so every vessel moves every turn.

Fleet Captain: I like the way this sucks

Gameblog reader amp108 asked:

[D]o the dice all have to be of different sizes? Can you have something like d6/d4/d4 or d12/d6/d6? How about something like d6/d4+1/d4?


Otherwise, you only have 3 different types of ship. What say you?

Good questions!  Energy allocation by die type is not meant to be the only method whereby ship classes can be distinguished from one another.  It's an important mechanic, but not a primarily distinguishing one past the small/medium/large size difference.  The Slowness Factor mentioned earlier is another dimension that has small differences that are meant to distinguish more between Escort A and Cruiser D, rather than Escort A and Escort B.  Most small ships involved in space warfare will be Energy Rating d4/d6/d8 and Slowness 1.  A Slowness 2 rustbucket would not be out of the question, just to give an example.

Let me explain a wider point this hypothetical rustbucket makes.  One important touchstone for me in designing Fleet Captain is this vessel:

That big slab is the Klingon L-13 K’el Ri’anda ("Dangerous Fat Man") battleship.  To the best of my knowledge it first appeared in FASA's Klingon Ship Recognition Manual.  Brad Torgersen makes the argument for me in his entry for the L-13 at the improbably long-named Star Trek Starship Tactical Combat Simulator On-Line Database & Archive: The L-13 sucks as bad as it looks.  It was a complete boondoggle for the Klingon Empire, slower than nearly any other vessel in space and armed no better than most cruisers.  In short, it is just the sort of thing that a real military procurement system would foist upon the troops on the front line.

In Fleet Captain, not only do most captain suck at their jobs, most of their vessels are average at best.  I have no problem with the Fleet Captain's vessel being a sweet Constitution class heavy cruiser with kickass weapons.  But I want to explore conflicts involving mostly suboptimal vessels.  Therefore, the primary distinguishing characteristic for each vessel isn't high or low numbers in stats that all vessels possess, rather we'll be looking at simple (cross fingers) exception-based rules that define how badly each class of vessel sucks.  So the Archimedes-class frigate often suffers from Torpedo Jams, while the Jehoshaphat-class destroyer tends to be a Fast Decompressor.  Other differences are bound to come up when I get serious about hull points and weapons and firing arcs, though we're still trying to Keep It Simple, Rients.

Oh, yeah, here's another picture that's important inspiration for this project:

This is you after seeing the order of battle for your own side.