Into the Ether - Stars Without Number Online

Image by Chris Foss

Well, all my games are now online. It was a sudden transition, but it has proven a lot easier than I expected. We played our first Stars Without Number session online tonight, and it was quite a surprise.

The storyline so far is that one of the PCs smuggled an alien life form back to the Sol system, built a secret hideout and kept the thing there. It can be duplicated by feeding it energy. He duplicated and delivered 100 of the creatures to an agent of a Jovian star drive magnate, Jia Rees, but did not inform Rees’ agents that the creatures could duplicate when they absorb energy. They did so, destroyed the ship, and eventually infested a space station that blew up. The creatures were destroyed. Rees didn’t get her shipment. 

In the interim, the PCs had moved on and accepted an invitation to travel with the Gold Star, guests of an eccentric billionaire who wanted to talk to the second crew to return from the stars. On that trip (with their ship, the Tartarus, flying alongside) one of the PCs made a deal with a billionaire passenger on the Gold Star for all of the creatures, for 5 million credits. They had just found out what happened with the space station, and felt that the person who was buying their original shipment would never find them.

The PCs are also wanted by the military who now know that they smuggled back alien life, against the law. They figured the trip with the Gold Star would take them off the radar. The Gold Star had jamming devices to hide their ship as it travelled as its owner was very wealthy. 

Rees had sent a bounty hunter android to bring the PCs back to her to get her shipment. It traced them in the weeks after they returned home. The PCs all took two weeks after returning from their mission to do character stuff before resuming play, this gave the bounty hunter the time to spy on the group, and get on to the Gold Star as crew. It attacked the party, there was some gunfire and fighting, and they stopped and agreed to go see Rees. They left the Gold Star.

The PCs met with Rees, and she convinced them to grab the last creature from the PCs’ secret hideaway and then bring her her delivery of 100 of the creatures and the PC’s creature as well, as fulfillment of their original deal. Under armed surveillance they agreed.  

They went to the remote asteroid with the bounty hunter in tow representing Rees. They retrieved the single alien creature, they duplicated 100, put the single back in cold storage in the facility, and flew away in their ship, The Tartarus, to deliver them to Rees. 

But then a ship appears firing on them, the TLS Carnegie, an armed and armored corvette owned by Omal Meck, out of Mars. Meck is a rival of Rees, his spies found out about all of this, and he wanted in on these creatures.

That’s where we stopped last week. This week we started up online for the first time.

There was a firefight, the Tartarus is heavily armoured, moderately armed and slow, the Carnegie is fast, similarly armed, and more lightly armored. 

The Carnegie fires and misses, the Tartarus fires and hits for no damage (all absorbed by Carnegie armor). 

Tartarus fires all guns in a targeted shot against the Carnegie’s guns, they hit but do not do enough damage after armor to disable. 

Carnegie’s guns miss.

Tartarus tries electronic countermeasures against the Carnegie and fails, Carnegie fires and hits but Tartarus armor absorbs it all. 

Tartarus does a “fire all guns” with a regular pass and misses.

Carnegie does a pair of targeted plasma cannon blasts to try and shoot out the Tartarus’ airlock, then board the ship. First shot misses, second shot hits but doesn’t do enough damage to take out the system, so the airlock is intact. 

Tartarus engineer boosts power to the guns for a few rounds by hacking the engines with some of the alien minerals they brought back from their interstellar adventure. He rolled and made the check. That added +4 to the damage from the guns for two rounds.

Tartarus won the initiative, the Captain supported the gunner, everyone else did their duty which gave them an effective 6 command points, they fired all guns and targeted the Carnegie’s guns. They hit, did enough damage with the bonus that they got to disable the guns.

The Carnegie, who were without their main guns, flew off, shooting a torpedo out the tubes. It was a scrambler, it would knock out the Tartarus for a few rounds and they would board with suits and shoot it out inside the ship.

The Tartarus shot the torpedo with their plasma cannons, and hit. 

The Carnegie flew off, they let  it go.

They arrive the next day on the moon of Jupiter, Lysithea, in a domed colony to see Rees.

They have dinner with Rees to discuss it, we RP’d that all out. I (as Rees) ask them what happened, they tell the tale of how they smuggled back the alien, got it past the military psi by sheer force of will and bribery. They tell of the Carnegie.

I rolled a reaction roll to see how she took the story. A positive reaction roll meant she was impressed, and she started asking the other’s questions, and I interpreted the roll as her wanting to form a partnership with the party. They are only the second known crew to return from an interstellar trip, and they are wanted by the military for smuggling back alien life that led to disaster. And they have made a deal with another billionaire Tallyar Kiz, a passenger on the Gold Star for all the aliens.

So as we are role playing the dinner, in character as Jia Rees, I say,

“Direct your attention to the screen” Jia waves and a holographic screen appears above the table, from both sides you can see a deep space shot closing in on an asteroid, you see a small facility, the one you had been to recently with Jia’s bounty hunter in tow.

The facility explodes.

Rees turns to the party, “We had a deal, I get them ALL, you kept one behind. It’s gone now, Rinnix planted an explosive before you left.”

PC engineer “That facility was worth a lot of credits”

Rees - “I know, so you are walking out of here alive, I figure that’s fair exchange for destroying your facility”

PCs chatter for a bit, “Yeah, sounds fair.”

Rees - “Now, I have all of these things, but you owe them to Tallyar Kiz, and he’s going to want to collect. “

At this point, I rolled a reaction roll for Rees to see if she felt being connected to the party’s fame and what that could bring would be worth having to deal with the military interest in the PCs. I rolled, and interpreted it like this:

Rees - “Here’s what I see, you can lay low, or you can live high, you are the second crew back from interstellar travel, you can live in the public eye and I can back you, be your silent sponsor, or you can lay low, work for me and I will give you a new ship transponder, and you can act as my agents. Or you can go and fend for yourselves”

So there it was, they could walk away, their deal complete, the leger balanced, and do what they wanted. Or, they could take Rees' patronage, and either capitalize on their fame somehow or go on mission for her. Either way they had to deal with the other buyer, and they have none of the creatures at the moment.

The crew discussed this for about 15 minutes, I clarified a few things that had happened and answered  a few questions for them, then they decided to throw in with Rees.

So she told them to go into business they had to tie up the loose end. They talked about this for a while, one of them asked if they could duplicate two aliens, cage them, and put a bomb in their cage, detonating it remotely when the deal was done, the other buyer would be out of the equation. 

Rees - “Yes, that could be done, but if they have a psi at pickup to ensure you are delivering on your end of the deal they will know what you are doing. You would need a psi with you to actively suppress your memory while scanned to hide your knowledge of the creatures and of the explosive,  get the payment, then depart and detonate remotely” 

They agree to that plan. They discussed how they are going to do the deal, “When do we plan to detonate the bomb?”

There is some chatter about that. They ask me, what difference does it make when we detonate it?”

When I’m asked, I answer, “Well, if a rich person goes to a clandestine meeting to buy illegal alien life forms for huge sums of money, they will be doing it in secret, but with lots of thought and planning. If they blow up as soon as the deal is done, SOMEONE will know who did it.”

“But tell you what, if you can explain to me how you would determine who knows about this meeting, you might be able to find out whether or not you will be easily traced.”

I put it back to the player to come up with something, and the PC who plays the “security” guy, the fighter, he has notice as a skill, he says that he will contact the buyer and ask where the meet is, and arrange to get there early. I roll for the communication to see if the move raises suspicions, but it doesn’t. There is a remote starbase near Jupiter’s moons, playground of the wealthy mining magnates who control things there, their buyer bought out the station for the night of the meet.

So the PC and crew get there one day early, dock in and register their arrival, citing unexpectedly fast processing to account for their early arrival. The PC leaves the ship and goes to the restaurant where the meeting is going to happen. It’s late and there are many private parties there, he finds room at the bar. He has notice as a skill. He plays the part of a rich miner back on leave who hitched a ride with the ship in the dock, and makes conversation with the wealthy mining magnates and their hanger’s on. He finds out that the facility rents out to groups most nights, so there will only be a few ships there. 

He sees the restaurant workers, and gets to know them so he might spot a ringer on the night of the deal. He leaves and goes back to the docks, asks the dock workers about ships coming in, I make a notice roll when he asks and a reaction roll for the worker and it is a positive reaction, the notice part is interpreted this way

“The docker smiles, ‘we get big tips from some of these mining suits, when they rent out the facility for the weekend, even bigger tips, they show off to each other.’ You get the feeling he’s being straight with you, he offers you a smoke as they adjust the clamps on the Tartarus.”

So they know there aren’t any other ships but the Tartarus and the ship coming with their buyer,  so there aren’t likely other parties that would know that the ship had been destroyed. 

So they have the meet. 

The PC engineer who had smuggled back the creature, the android bounty hunter working for Rees, and a psi disguised as a bodyguard meet up with the buyer. 

They all sit down, the buyer has an assistant with a small sphere covered with pins. She manipulates it in her hand and closes her eyes. Tallyar Kiz speaks, “We will scan your mind, see that these are indeed the only two of the creatures left, and if so we will take delivery and you will get your credits.”

The PCs agreed. At that point the psi with them suppressed his memories of the creature and the bomb. I decided to give the person operating the brain scanning tech a skill check to notice the interference from the psi, I made it difficulty 10, she rolled 2d6+1 and failed, so didn’t notice.

At that point, to be fair I rolled to see if Tallyar Kiz noticed anything odd, they were running a dangerous double cross, would they give it away? I decided that Kiz, nobody’s fool, would have to make a reaction roll to see if he thought something was up. It should be hard, because they did their due diligence, but a lot of money was at stake, and they showed up with three people…

The players know I run the NPCs smart sometimes, and I roll when I’m not sure, I rolled here, and it came up that Kiz didn’t notice anything.

So they do the sale, and they depart from each other, and they head back to their respective space ships, the PCs to the Tartarus, Kiz to his ship, the Shamrock.

They launch as Kiz launches and I ask them.

“What are you going to do?”

We follow from a few KM distance, can we track them?

Yes you can, have your comm officer make a difficulty 10 check to hide your ship from their scanners, as they will likely want to keep track of you. 

At that point, I decided I would roll to see if Kiz had planted some sort of device on THEM, or planned to kill them off to ensure that he had all of these aliens in existence. Fair is fair after all, so I rolled, and it ends up that Kiz wanted the aliens and was convinced after the scan, he planned no retribution.

So they travel at a distance, and we roll the check to avoid detection. When they are sufficiently far from the space station they will detonate the bomb and they are done.

They fail the check to avoid detection.

They are hailed by the Shamrock, the Shamrock powers up weapons.

The Tartarus comm officer, one of the PCs, responds.

“Tartarus, this is Var Roktoma, Captain of the Shamrock, you are on a similar course, our business is done, yes? I hope so as I rarely miss and your bridge shielding looks thin from here”

So I ask the PC, what are you going to tell him to convince him that you aren’t about to attack them in some way, do you just want to detonate the device?

There is some talk, I tell them to make it quick, and they decide to lie.

The PC asks me, “is there a route that is more popular, would we know where the Shamrock was going, and say we are going that way too”?

When this happens I roll for it, because either option is reasonable, and I want to be fair. So in this case, the comm officer has “know” as a skill and I have her make a difficulty 8 check to know something relevant. I decide that means she knows that you can use the gravity of  a planet to slingshot away when you fly by, if the Shamrock was taking Kiz back a great distance home it would fly by Jupiter on the way out to get some velocity. So the PC decides to go with that. She asks if the Shamrock was going towards Jupiter to slingshot out. Kiz is from Venus, which I had picked for no reason a while back, so it is a long journey, so yes, they would be going towards jupiter. The Tartarus is just going the same way to fly back to Mercury, but they say they will hang back.

I roll and that convinces them. They fly off. The Tartarus waited until the Shamrock was at maximum range to detonate the bomb, then they followed. They waited for half an hour, during which I did another check to see what the Captain of the Shamrock would do, he chose to do nothing, and the PCs detonated the bomb before they hit the main shipping routes back towards Jupiter.

We’ll see what they do next session, if they become agents of Rees and go after the Gemini drive or if the seek fame and fortune.

The online was brilliant, everyone was involved and contributed. In person they horse around a lot, and waste a lot of time, online they got a ton done and had lots of great RP. Since we were all on Zoom on audio only, they couldn’t do smaller person to person conversations as easily, so they were a lot more focused.

The game could go in several directions, we meet in two weeks. I maintain that Stars Without Number is doing the job for this game, which is going in wildly unexpected directions.

Good times.