Shaking up the Sandbox in Stars Without Number

Image by John Berkey

So the PCs in my Stars Without Number game have reached a crossroads. What started off as an intergalactic romp changed into an intrigue and political game when the PC engineer threw in with the NPC engineering technician in his plot to smuggle back an alien life form to the Sol system. As it happens this is SUPER ILLEGAL, and though they pulled it off successfully, they also inadvertently set off a disaster that has led to them being hunted down by the military.

They also double-crossed some very wealthy people who wanted to purchase these aliens, and that has created its own problems. Add to this that they are only the second crew to make it back from intergalactic travel, so they are kind of celebrities, and they are at a decision point. They have to decide to ride their fame to hopefully become important enough that the military can’t touch them, to go underground, or to find someone that can protect them. 

This session, after a lot of discussion, they decided on the last option.

They threw in with a mega-rich Jovian star drive manufacturer named Jia Rees. Rees was the original buyer for these alien creatures, due to the fact that the PC engineer didn’t tell her agents that the alien creatures duplicate themselves when they absorb energy, they duplicated, destroyed the agents’ ship and eventually destroyed a space station, and Rees did not get her cargo as promised.

She sent an android bounty hunter named Rinnix Phol to track them down, after a brief tussle they agreed to meet her and consented to deliver her cargo as agreed. Unfortunately, they had promised the alien creatures to another rich buyer in the interim, and Rees insisted that they deal with this buyer before sealing the deal with her. Rees has offered to be their patron, so they had to do this to move forward. They decided to go to the drop with the other buyer, give him two of the aliens as promised, along with a bomb in the alien’s storage cage that they could detonate remotely. They would follow the ship out of the station at a discreet distance, and blow it up in space.

Yeah, they are hardcore this bunch. Teenagers, no mercy!

That was successful (see my last blog post for details) and they returned to Rees, their “loose end” tied up, ready to move forward. 

Their meetings with Rees are tons of fun for me, I get to role play a ruthless, successful business magnate who has an unknown agenda, TONS OF WEALTH, and the resources to both keep the party in line and outfit them in any way they like. When they returned they went to dinner and met with Rees, we did the whole scene in character, and after a bit of small talk she told them what two possibilities she had in mind for their group and their ship, the Tartarus.

Option 1 was based on intel she had gathered. Right now there is only one way to travel beyond the solar system to other galaxies, the so-called “Gemini drive”, this drive allows you to effectively gate to any other part of the universe, then gate back again within 30 days of your departure. The ships that get to use the device are chosen from a lottery to keep it fair, and the drive is installed and they go to parts unknown, at the moment it is not possible to program a destination or to repeat a trip. 

So far 25 missions have gone out, one per month since the drive was invented, and only one had made it back until the PC’s went out. They returned early thanks to their plot to smuggle back alien life forms, the second group to make it back to the Sol system. 

Rees has discovered that some group has a facility where they are clandestinely building a Gemini drive. She has some details about the space station where it is being done, and the location of the station (near the sun), and she wants the PCs to go to the station and retrieve the Gemini drive so they can go out into the depths of space for her.

Option B was for them to ride their fame! She would sponsor them and help them to stay out of the clutches of the military. There were several ways to do this, one was to thrust them into the public eye so they would become too popular to simply arrest and take away, another was to align them with one of several groups that were politically powerful to gain them amnesty. 

After some discussion at the dinner they settled on going to the space station to steal a Gemini drive. 

Now, at this point all they had was a location and the outside appearance of the station (Rees had obtained pictures of the station), nothing about the inside of the facility, it’s security, etc. So they would have to do some recon. They knew whoever was doing this must be VERY powerful and VERY wealthy, as Gemini drive tech was super cutting edge and very protected, so this was either the government of one of the Sol system planets doing something in secret or some other group powerful enough to gain the designs for the drive and hide the manufacturing from the authorities. 

So either way this was not going to be easy.

I half expected them to run in guns blazing, they have done this sort of thing before, but I think they are starting to really enjoy the story line so they want to make it work. So, they brainstormed this real time in the session. The first half hour was their meeting with Rees, the next hour was planning.

Rees is extremely wealthy, so they had their pick of equipment. Much to my pleasant surprise they decided to do some recon before storming in. Their ship has a shuttle, the Hades, and they had it painted black and equipped with electronic countermeasures to jam any attempt to detect it. I informed them that although Rees had access to the best tech, there were no guarantees, they would have to roll checks to see if their tech hid them from detection. 

Now, as it happens about 5 sessions ago when the PCs were on an alien world they had an encounter with a strange energy creature that enveloped one of the PCs who is a psi. I rolled for effects, most of which were harmful, but one of which was beneficial, and I rolled the positive result. This was a bump to one of her psi abilities, raising it a random number of levels in power. I rolled a 2 level bump in her teleportation powers, and this resulted in the PC being able to teleport up to 10 km without spending effort, and carrying as much as she could physically carry. Which essentially means she can teleport line of sight with one other person up to 10 km.

Kind of like a transporter.

So they decided they would do a fly by the station in the Hades (their shuttle), painted black and concealed by electronic countermeasures, to see if they could find a good place to teleport in. They would also carry a powerful telescope/camera so they could study the station from as far away as possible. Their first consideration was how to get close to the station in the Tartarus (their starship) without being detected. They had equipped the ship with concealment tech that would make them safe from detection if they were far enough away from the station (I arbitrarily decided that 50 km was enough for this purpose), but unbeknownst to them the station had several fighters that patrolled nearby space to ensure that no ships wandered close by. 

So they flew the Tartarus to the 50 km point, and I rolled to see if one of the patrols came by while they were there. The check came up negative, and they discussed approaching the station. That led to some conversation.

They didn’t know how to determine their teleport point, it had to be line of sight, there was a huge biodome over the station, so they could try that, but it was very open and visible, every other area was lacking a view, except the docking ports, you could see all the way to the middle of the station spire through those. They decided that the docking ports would be their best bet.

It gradually dawned on them that they had no idea where the drive would be, they needed specs for the station. So they asked me if they could hack the station with electronic countermeasures. The party is accompanied by an android bounty hunter that represents Jia, he is a source of information in some cases. In this case, he suggested that they probably could do that, but it had a chance of being detected, this would be a very secure facility. So I told them it would be an opposed roll against the station’s security personnel and they might get detected. 

So I told them to give it some thought. How can you find out how the inside is laid out without walking through the station? After about 10 minutes one of them said, “can we get inside, and hack from the inside of the station, would that be easier?” 

At that point as a ref I have an opportunity to play off the player, here someone has had a good idea, that internal security might be different than an attack from the outside. I played off that and said that it might, and then they asked about using an ECM device to download station specs from a data station on the inside. 

I said, “OK, specs are not command or defense, they are just information for operations, so it makes sense that would be accessible from the inside, you can take one and we’ll roll to see if it works. A big failure means detection, a success means you get the specs”

I gave them a black slab to hack in with, and then I asked,

“Anything else, are you ready now?”

One of them spoke up, “What if we are in and the cameras see us?”

“We can just take out the cameras”

“Won’t that get someone coming down to check it out, they will also have footage of you shooting it out, that will bring someone down for sure if they see you first”

So that led to conversation, and they asked, “can we find the cameras before we go closer and try to teleport in somewhere they don’t cover?”

I gave this some thought, and then I said, “You have powerful imaging technology in the shuttle, you can fly by and look in, I will make it a roll to spot the cameras and find a spot to hide from them. But they will be hard to see.”

“Wait, unless you happen to be close to a data pad when you find that spot, you will be seen going over to the data pad, right?”

Bing bing. Let them talk it out and they start to get the right idea.

So they kept talking it out.

“Can we build a device that makes the cameras go black as if the power failed or something, and then come back on again?”

I gave that some thought, one of the crew, the PC engineer, has fix and another has program, so I made it a difficulty 10 check to hack a device that could get you a black screen on a camera from a distance. They suggested that the device could use a microwave burst to interfere with the signal from the camera. The engineer with fix would find and repurpose a microwave generator and the comm officer with the program skill would create a wave modulator to tune it for this purpose. 

The first PC crewmember, the engineer, made the check so the second one (the comm officer) got a +1 on her roll, she made his check, and they had their two tools. 

So they planned a drive by, scope out the bay for cameras, teleport in, use the devices, teleport out. The question was where. They had brought a special scope to view from a distance, and they flew close enough to see into an empty docking port. They would spot the cameras from a distance, and then find a point of teleportation.

At that point I made two rolls, one to see if anyone on the station saw their craft, another to see if their jamming tech kept the station’s sensors from spotting them. Since they were coming at the station from the bottom where there were very few viewing spots, I made it a 1 in 20 chance of them being seen. 

They passed that.

“You are flying below the main station, there are very few windows here, and there is no one in the dock you are passing, so you do not see any alarm raised or hear any communications in reaction to your presence.”

The chance of them being detected by the station sensors was a separate roll, this time I treated it as an opposed roll between the crew member on the Hades that was operating the electronic countermeasures, and the similar crew on the station manning the monitoring equipment. 

Their equipment gave them the opportunity for the roll, without it they would have been detected for sure. So I narrated it like this.

“You come in the range of the station’s sensors, they sweep space in your area once every 30 seconds, your jammer calibrates itself to the detection wave then anticipates it, creating a dampening field to dissipate the wave and recreating it in the other direction, as if it passed by uninterrupted. You have to keep an eye on the equipment to see that the exiting wave frequency is in the right error tolerance range to avoid detection.”

The comm officer for the Tartarus (now on the Hades) had to make an opposed roll, with a +2 Int bonus, they succeeded at that. So they managed to tune the Hades to the detection frequency, keeping it effectively invisible.

Then they looked inside the dock with their camera, and spent time looking for cameras inside the dock. One of the PCs (the security officer) has notice as a skill and manned the camera, I made this a difficulty 8 check to find the cameras, and he passed it. I interpreted this as follows:

“You notice a quantum fueling rig, they have to cool before storage, and it has been left out, locked down to the dock to cool off. You can teleport behind that and you will be blocked from camera view, then hopefully there is a data port nearby”

They decide they liked those odds.

The Hades has the captain (piloting), the security officer and the psi (the comm officer). The psi can teleport one other person with her. They teleported into the dock in space suits, behind the quantum refueler. 

That was the easy part.

Then they had to look around for the data port. I rolled to see if they found it, which they did, and to see how close the port was, and they got fairly lucky, 20 meters away. I rolled to see if there was a camera that covered the distance between them and the port, and there was. 

So then they activated the jamming device. They succeeded on a difficulty 8 check, jamming the camera.

So the command center is now showing a grey screen on the camera.

I roll to see if the comm officer notices the grey screen and if they do anything about it. Electronics go out periodically, they aren’t going to set off any alarms, but they might send someone down right away. Or they might not notice it for a time, or they might simply ignore it as a glitch and not deal with it immediately. So I rolled to see if the monitor sent anyone down due to noticing the screen. 

It comes up negative. I decided that I would check again in 5 minutes.

So they run over to the data port and use their black slab device to hack in and steal the blueprints.

I make that a difficulty 10 check, the operator has program as a skill and a +2 intelligence bonus, and she makes it. I roll randomly to see how long it takes to get the information (3-10 minutes, d8+2) and it’s 3 minutes. They get the info, move back to the point they arrived at, turn off the camera blocker, and teleport out.

Just about there.

They turn away in the Hades and I roll to see if anyone sees them or the ship detects them as they pull off. The chance of being seen doesn’t come up, the chance of being detected by the sensors is another opposed check. 

The comm tech PC rolled it and they escaped undetected with the station plans. 

They flew back to the Tartarus and docked, took in the black slab and downloaded the plans for the station. They found a manufacturing facility in the bottom section, the top section was residential administrative and occupied the giant dome on top. The domed area was entirely forested to help provide oxygen for the station. 

The drive would be in the bottom manufacturing section, they managed to identify the storage crib for the drive, whether it is occupied or not cannot be determined. They identify the security stations, and the reactor for the facility.

And then the planning starts.

“How do we want to do this”

“We could sneak in again and get to the device”

“Yeah, but I can’t teleport the drive, it would be too big”

“But you could teleport all of us into the facility, right?”

“Sure, one at a time, and I need line of sight!”

They stewed on that.

“Can I look at the camera footage to see if there are any windows near the device crib?”

I said sure, they did do a fly by.

There were some windows on the lower portion of the station, so I rolled to see if there was a window anywhere near the storage location of the drive. I made it a d4 roll, 1 was very close, 2 was 50’ away, 3 was 100’ away, and 4 was 500’ away

They rolled a 2, 50’ away. Not bad.

So they looked to see what the room was behind the window. 

I rolled for that too, it was a loading area for drives before disembarking, that was why the window was there, to get visual confirmation with approaching ships.

I like to interpret that sort of thing to make sense.

So they decide they will teleport in there one by one, get to the drive, blow out the door, fly the drive out in the decompression, take it on to the Hades and depart.

Bold plan.

Then they started to talk again.

“Can we get power armor, heavy duty stuff, and weapons?”

“Sure” I say, “your patron is wealthy and has access to tech, she can get you what you want”

So then they REALLY start talking.

They settled on this, they were each going to equip themselves with field emitter panoplies, energy field projectors that mimic storm armor. Each one would take a high end weapon or two as well. They would teleport in one at a time, go get the drive, blow out the door on the side with their weapons, take the drive into space.

The armor and weapons would ensure that they could deal with any resistance if their arrival or removal of the drive set off alarms of any kind. For all they knew they might have to destroy shielding or defensive tech around the drive crib as well.

“We can go in soft, come out loud” as one of them said.

As it happens, a field emitter panoply has a sheathing hologram, so they all picked who they would look like. That was a cool thing, at least one was contemplating going in looking like a giant tiger man.

That’s where we left it. 

When they go in they will have to roll to see if they are detected again, which could ruin it all, and if the fighters that patrol spot them. Once the first one teleports in they are on the clock, I will have to roll to see if they are detected by internal sensors/cameras or not. I’ll see if they remember to take the camera jamming tech with them when they teleport in. 

So much can go wrong, but if they are fast, smart and don’t screw around too much because they want an excuse to use the big toys, they might just pull it off. 

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, this is a terrific game, I have yet to come up with something it can’t handle, the players are loving the openness of the system, and it has handled a wide range of play styles and activities. If you love sci-fi, and you are tired of the franchises (Star Wars, Star Trek) this game has you covered.