Other Suns RPG, solo campaign, the Scattership and crew.

I have been talking about playing a solo adventure or two of the 80's game Other Suns, progress has been hampered by work, as you may note by looking at the top right of the screen, I run a miniature painting service and a online store selling bits and bobs suitable for modelling as well as a few sets of plastic miniatures.  By necessity I have had to put much more effort into my little business than I perhaps would normally need to do and  as a result I have not had any time for gaming., this is one of the reasons I play solo games, it can be difficult for me to commit to playing with a group on a regular basis and to drop out for periods when I am busy with WDMscenics.co.uk would be unfair to the other players.

Finally I have managed to grab some time to sit down and do a little work on the game.

The solo campaign.

At the moment I am not sure how much a of a campaign this is going to be, it may just be one short scenario, it may be a series of short scenarios, one offs that I can dip in and out of between other games as time allows me or if I really enjoy the game again, a full blown campaign.

I have decided that the games will revolve around the crew of a Scattership, the ship has 8 crew members (characters) sort of split into 4 ship crew and 4 planetside crew, the idea isn't to have all 8 characters involved in each and every scenario but to have 4 or 5 involved in a game depending on the mission.

So I have my Scattership and I am putting together the crew, next up is to create a few stars and planets for the ship and characters to explore.  Book 2 of Other Suns has some crazy clever and complex charts and tables for star and world creation as well as some details about the major 'human' worlds in the hegemony.  In addition there is info on flora and fauna so plenty to work on.  In addition, I downloaded the free copy of Stars without Number, its a really useful  pdf, load of useful stuff to help with worldbuilding and for generating ideas for adventure's.

I am still looking for other material to help with world creation and adventures, I have a bit of the old classic traveller stuff and I am tempted to try and get a hold of some of the other 80's Sci-Fi RPG's to see if I can pinch background and rules from them but that will depend on how involved I get in the Other Suns universe.

The Scattership

The Scattership, according to Jane's All the Galaxy's Starships is one of the more common and versatile Starships used by the military and the star arm. The total mass of the Scattership is 8000 metric tons and its maximum acceleration with a full load is 1500 gs.  It is capable of travelling in jump space at a pseudo-velocity of 60 light years per hour.  Crew size ranges from 1 to 8 depending on the mission assigned, usual crew is 4.

Spare cargo capacity is 25.9 metric tons.  The ship has 8 single cabins and two quad cabins, (one is the bridge, one is the common room), as well as a sick bay and 4 science labs.  To defend itself the Scattership is armed with an array of weaponry including 24 Attack Missiles for use in normal space and w-8 warheads for use in jump space.

I love the image of the ship (above) and it seems a good all round military/exploration vessel and so long as you have a pilot it can travel.

The Crew

I have already generated 4 characters for the ship, I did that before I read the books again and I will need to amend some of the skills on a couple of them to fit in with the required crew members for a scattership but that is not a big problem.

So far I have the following 

Zandra a human planetologist 

Yewlira the H'Reli soldier

Badratilat the Korli Survial Expert

Scout the Executive Officer (Weapons Officer)

Scout was originally going to be the pilot but I now want him to be the weapons officer as, after reading the rules, the captain is usually the pilot and that seems to fit in with things better.

I still have to generate the final four characters, I have to have a Captain, who I think I will make an Altani, the Altani resemble a fox and are able to use psionics.  Then there will be an Engineer, a medic and another scientist.  Maybe I will vary the speciality of the scientist depending on the mission, this idea could also apply to Yewlira who could be dropped in favour of a third scientist if the mission doesn't warrant additional combat troops.

And that's where I am at at the moment, still a lot a of work to do before I get a game going, although I may jump in quick with random adventure generated by using the super Stars without Number rules, once that's done it could be 

Adventure On!