Fringe Space: Makavan 007 - Find, Part 2

“Plans are all right sometimes," I said. "And sometimes just stirring things up is all right - if you're tough enough to survive, and keep your eyes open so you'll see what you want when it comes to the top.” ― Dashiell Hammett, Red Harvest

New Hope, Early April '01

Makavan was pounding the street in the Pub & Rec district when he noticed a group of women yelling at each other; judging by the clothing, one very rich and two very much not. None of them were armed, and he couldn't tell which side to join in on, so he decided not to join in at all and kept walking.

New Hope, Later April '01

Makavan was hanging out in the Green at the west end of the Pub & Rec district, trying to make one cup of hot brown liquid last all morning, when Ribeiro sat down opposite.

"Mind if I join you?" she asked.

"Of course not," he smiled. "Welcome back. How was your trip?"

She made a dismissive gesture to indicate it was all behind her now and anyway it was none of his business.

"I hear you're looking for a hishen," she said. "Name of Crezzi."

"You're well-informed," he commented, making a face which could've been due to the taste of his drink.

"I make it my business to be," she said. "Captain Makavan, if you're going to work for Adrasaia - any razor, really - you need to be more discreet in your enquiries. The hishen has information she wants, and there are a number of other parties who also want it. As you seem to be new at this, here's a suggestion; three, really. First, look around the warehouses in Little Hisha. Second, think about why Adrasaia wants you blundering around New Hope City drawing fire. Third, think about how you can persuade those parties that you're an asset and not just another loose end."

"Thank you," he said, and meant it. "That's good advice." She rose and turned to leave, and he rose too, out of politeness.

"One more thing," she said, and frowned. "And I don't know whether you should thank me for this or not... I've been seen with you several times. You will inevitably be considered linked to me somehow. It may affect how people deal with you in future, but I can't predict how."

"Ah," said Simon. "I see. Your rivals might wish to deprive you of an asset, or - if I am fortunate - they may decide I am under your protection. Your friends may decide I am trustworthy, or may begin to wonder if I am part of a plan, and whether it will benefit them or not."

"Just so," she said, pleased at the demonstration that he knew how movers and shakers played the game. "You are not a player, not yet anyway; but perhaps you are no longer a pawn, either. Good luck, Captain."

He needed it; he was ambushed twice on the way to Little Hisha.

The pair of upper-class humans ran as soon as he drew his pistol, calling for the police; they hadn't thought they'd need anything more substantial than a slight edge in numbers and their manicured fists. The burly zhuh-zhuh labourer he actually had to shoot, several times; that one brought a crowbar to a gunfight, but knew enough to back off once burned badly enough, which told Makavan this wasn't a matter of principle, just a zhuh paid to deliver a message.

So. What did the hishen know that everybody wanted to find out? It seemed likely that the razor and the grath who had both tried to hire him were working for different factions, and unlikely he would wind up friendly with both. Either could have had tonight's shakers or zhuh-zhuh on the payroll. Presumably the hishen represented a third faction, which might just be him but probably included other hishen.

Then there was Ribeiro. Where did she fit in? Was she with the hishen, or with another faction entirely? Was her involvement linked to the xeogs somehow? If so, had his encounter with xeogs at the nightclub been a deliberate attempt to distract him, or just their usual wide-ranging hedonism?

He decided that while all this was interesting to speculate on, it didn't change his next step; find Crezzi.

Status at Mid April '01

• IRD/DRD: +5 (Find Job, pending completion), +2 (successful further interaction. Total: +2 (+5 pending).
• 5150 Stats: Rep: 5. Current IRD: Pending month end. Lifetime IRD: 10.
• SWADE Stats: Bennies: 3. Wounds: 0. Advances: None.

GM Notes

Motivation is lacking this week, so I've zoomed out to Quick Encounters and Networking on the rules front; it generally takes a little while before a new solo campaign gathers enough speed to keep going by itself, and during that time it's important to keep the rules-related cognitive load light so my mind can focus on the story.

I've also decided it's time to move on from using Turkish names for everything and spread my wings a little; hishen are now using randomly-generated names for Lord of the Rings Orcs, and razors ones for lamia, both courtesy of the Fantasy Name Generator. Anyway, this week's 5150 encounters...

Involuntary Encounter: Confrontation (5150NL p. 34). Walk in on a fight between a Mover (Rep 5 Patron, unarmed) and a pair of Joes Labour (Rep 3 Manufacturing, unarmed). Simon walks away, and the dice tell me there is no blowback from that.

Voluntary Encounter: Find (5150NL p. 40). 3 PEFs to resolve this time; Networking on the first (Rep 4 Mover, oh surely that must be Ribeiro) gives Success and a Raise, so Simon gets a Clue, but the second and third lead to Confrontations, and the wording of the rules shows he needs to fight through them. I decide that each Raise on the Quick Encounter is worth one defeated enemy, to a limit of three (as there can't be more than that against a lone PC). Simon gets a Success each time, so victory but no defeated enemies; given the frequency of morale checks in 5150, they probably ran away.

Then, there is a final PEF which is the NPC we're after; a die roll tells us this leads to a Raid Encounter, which we'll process next time. I think that should be a proper fight with tokens and a battlemat, but still count as part of April '01.

I've read that when the designer of Savage Worlds runs convention scenarios, he will often use Quick Encounters for the early part of the game, leading up to a full-on tactical combat for the grand finale. If I stay low on spoons like this, that might be a good way to do things.

Review: Lonelog

This popped up in my YouTube feed and intrigued me enough to download the free 68-page PDF from itch.io here. The author is Roberto Bisceglie.

In a nutshell: Concise standard notation for recording solo game sessions. The player is intended to use this format to capture mechanical game elements while adding as much or as little narrative as desired. It's free to use under a Creative Commons licence.

What You Get

A format-agnostic shorthand for recording your solo sessions. Why would you want to use it? It's fast, it's searchable in digital formats, it acts as a shared notation for sharing game writeups between players. The core of the notation, which can be expanded considerably, is:

@ for player actions.

? for oracle questions.

d: for mechanics rolls.

-> for oracle or dice results.

=> for consequences.

In use, it looks a lot like Markdown, in fact it uses some Markdown features like heading levels, although if you're using something like Obsidian you need to flag Lonelog entries as code blocks to avoid the parser getting confused.

This basic system is then expanded with additional (optional) layers and structures, multiple examples, best practices, templates, and notes on adapting Lonelog to your favourite system. In particular these add tools for tracking recurring NPCs, plot threads, clocks, random tables or generators, meta notes (which a programmer would call comments) and whatnot.

As usual, the examples are the best explanation of the system in use, showing how it works with different levels of narrative detail.

At the end of the document, there's a quick reference sheet 

What I Think

You'll have seen me moving gradually towards something like this over the last few years, with shorthand such as "d6w=11 SR" for "d6 with Wild Die, score 11, success with a raise", and more recently experimenting with Obsidian as a notebook app; so I'm positively disposed to the idea, as for years I've been wrestling with how to record the mechanical elements without burying the narrative.

My first attempts were using different colours and later putting mechanical detail in italics, but those were unsatisfactory. My current method of splitting the mechanics out into a separate section works well enough, but maybe this would be more elegant?

I'll have to try it and see; it'll be a few weeks before I get around to that, as with some travel upcoming I have a few posts already in the can, so look for this appearing sometime in mid to late March.

Aslan Route 35.5: Islands in the Rift

Previously, on the Aslan Route... Escaping the wreck of the Deepnight Endeavour, the Macavity finds herself in the Zuflucht system, on the extreme edge of the Islands Cluster. While her cargo of emergency low berths is unloaded, the local Imperial officials (such as they are) invite the crew aboard their orbital station to debrief them on recent events...

The next few posts contain spoilers for Great Rift Adventure 1: Islands in the Rift, but as it was published in 2018 I won't hold back.

Zuflucht, 1108 Weeks 43-44

The Macavity's crew are met at the airlock by a woman in Scout Service uniform and a (non-regulation) headscarf, who Mazun knows as Sunita Hamed; he remembers her from his deep cover training in the Covert Survey Bureau, always reliable and polite, and – if he remembers correctly – unusually religious for a citizen of the Imperium, who are by and large a secular lot. They were in the same group of trainees, but ordered off in different directions.

“Mazun,” she smiles, “Good to see you again! What are you doing this far out in the Rift?” And to the others, as an explanation: “We knew each other on Batav! What are the odds? Once we’ve finished the debrief, I hope we can catch up socially.” Mazun notes she carefully doesn’t specify exactly how they knew each other, leaving that open for whatever story they concoct between them.

She addresses the crew more formally, with Mazun translating for Kharrash, who stands blinking dumbly throughout.

“I’m afraid this will take some time, we’re short-handed so I need to do all the interviews myself. Let me reassure you, you’re not under any suspicion of wrongdoing, but… well, when you turn up with this many survivors in low berths and you say some of them have some kind of unknown disease, we need to give you a complete physical and do some detailed interviews. Debriefing you will take a few days. There are reports to make, statements to clarify, and the ship’s logs will need to be looked over. Then, you should expect a second round of interviews to answer any supplemental questions.”

“I’ll start with Captain Ashran, and his interview is likely to be the longest; I tell you that so you won’t think anything is wrong because of that.” She gestures around her.

“As you can see, this is a small station; officially we’re a naval base, but actually we have one docking berth and a dozen or so people, mostly Navy men, but with myself and another Scout as cultural liaison. I must ask you to stay on the station while we work through the formalities, after that you’ll be free to go.”

Once Mazun’s debriefing is over, Hamed opens up a new discussion with him in private; she needs help.

She explains that the Islands Cluster is important because it is one of the main crossing points for the Great Rift; trouble here could cause undesirable delays to Imperial communications. So, the Imperium maintains intelligence assets in the region. One such asset is the Perfect Stranger, a Far Trader like the Macavity, crewed by a mixture of undercover Navy and Scout personnel; like the Macavity, her mission is to embed herself in the local culture and observe, gathering raw data, analysing it, and sending it back to the Imperium. None of this is illegal, as such; but it must have trodden on someone’s toes.

A few months ago, two members of the crew arrived on Zuflucht. They were dead, apparently shot by a laser weapon. The bodies were shipped in low berths aboard a civilian vessel transiting the Rift; there were no personal effects, and the documentation simply gives their names and the point of origin: Amondiage.

Hamed sighs.

“I’m afraid I’m transferring your activation under Scout Service Directive 119 section 12.” She goes on to outline the mission:

• The primary objective is to take possession of the Perfect Stranger and return her to Zuflucht with her data cores intact. If absolutely necessary, the ship is expendable, but the data cores are not.
• The secondary objective is to discover the fate of the crew and render assistance if possible, but this must not be allowed to compromise the primary objective.
• Mazun will be given paperwork proving that he is entitled to take possession of the ship, as well as passcodes and so forth, including those for a line of credit with the government of Amondiage – using this will clearly signal to Amondiage that he is connected with the Imperium, and abusing it will eventually result in it being withdrawn. It is monitored.
• Operating expenses will be paid, and there is a sizeable payment for each crew member on successful completion of the mission.
• There is a spare collapsible fuel tank for the Perfect Stranger at Zuflucht, which as it was designed for a ship of the same class, will fit the Macavity. This will be needed for the jump from Zuflucht to Gloire, and the extra range will be useful in the Cluster.
• At the end of the mission, Hamed can arrange for the Macavity to be transported back to the Imperium, or the crew can stay in the Islands if they prefer – she can find work for them. Meanwhile, she will send messages to anyone they need to explain their absence to.

“Now then,” she says, “What are we going to tell your crew, so that I can back you up?”

GM Notes

No session last Saturday because it was Valentine's Day; some of us are married, and would like to stay that way. So rather then spend half the next session on an info dump, I wrote an introduction (above) and a handout summarising the Islands Cluster (not shown) and circulated that to give the players something to mull over during the break.

The group's last adventure was Great Rift Adventure 2: Deepnight Endeavour. This is Great Rift Adventure 1: Islands in the Rift, which has merit, but won’t occupy them for more than a few sessions. In the adventure as written, the Perfect Stranger is a Type R subbie, but another Far Trader works better for this campaign.

Putting the handout together revealed that the Traveller Wiki is diverging from Charted Space as I know it, and the Islands Cluster canon (Classic Traveller Adventure 5 and Mongoose Great Rift Adventure 1) as previously published. I'm starting to think I'd be better off with another setting, the Official Traveller Universe is starting to make me feel cramped and constrained.

Still, that's a decision I don't need to take for a year or two yet.

Fringe Space: Makavan 006 - Find, Part 1

I go checkin' out the reports; diggin' up the dirt.
You get to meet all sorts, in this line of work.
- Dire Straits, Private Investigations

New Hope, Late March '01: Find

Makavan reluctantly paid the cover charge to enter the nightclub and headed for the bar. He'd heard on the street that his quarry came in here sometimes, and you had to speculate to accumulate. He put on his Old Money manners like a comfortable old jacket to blend in, leaning back on the bar and nursing his drink while he looked around.

A pair of upmarket xeogs swayed over to him and smouldered at him, one from each side.

"Hello handsome," one purred, using the noise of the music as an excuse to get close enough to his ear to brush against it. "What's a nice guy like you doing in a place like this?"

"Working," he said, and to avoid matters developing in a direction which would cost him a night's diligent searching: "I'm looking for this guy, have you seen him? I hear he sometimes comes in here." He showed them the holocube the razor had given him. They made a show of examining it, using that as an excuse to leave their long blue fingers resting on his just a little longer than they needed to.

"I think we've seen him," one said. "Yes," the other confirmed, "In the Green's at this end of Pub-and-Rec. A couple of nights ago. He was boring. Are you going to be boring, handsome? We're vid stars, we can make you famous."

"Probably," he sighed, wondering what kind of vids they made. Probably the kind he wouldn't want his family seeing. "I'm on a clock here."

"Your loss," they pouted; one winked, the other laughed, and they wandered off, arm in arm, in search of easier prey.

Makavan wandered out into the night. The transit might still be running, and it was worth checking out the Pub & Rec district; he could get lucky. It had to happen sometime.

Status at End March '01

• IRD/DRD: +5 (Find Job, pending completion), +1 (defeat opponent), +1 (successful interaction), -3 (ship upkeep). Total -1.
• 5150 Stats: Rep: 5. Current IRD: -1 (roll 5 so no penalty). Lifetime IRD: 10.
• SWADE Stats: Bennies: 3. Wounds: 0. Advances: None.

GM Notes

Having survived the attempted mugging, we now turn our attention to finding the hishen we're after, using the rules on pp. 40-41 of 5150 No Limits Maiden Voyage. Essentially this means resolving 1d3 PEFs, any of which may turn into a fight; the ones which don't may generate clues, and once you collect enough clues, you find the target NPC. 

We had a short but detailed fight last time, so I decide to use SWADE Quick Encounters (p. 134) for any Confrontations and Networking (p. 133) for interacting with NPCs, with a Raise representing a successful "further interaction" and thus a clue.

The dice give me one PEF, a pair of Xeog Shakers, which given the above and the fact it does not result in a Confrontation don't need to be detailed further, so I roll Simon's Persuasion for Networking and as he has Wealth d8 I make a Wealth roll to gain a +2 on that roll; success, so Wealth drops to d6, and the Persuasion roll Aces as well, giving me a 10 for a Success and a Raise. First Clue found.

However, I now need to roll 1d3 and score the number of Clues I have (1) or less to find the NPC; I roll a 3, and must try again next month. This is the downside of Find missions, they can take several months and you don't get paid until the end.

Another short one this time, but that's okay, we're not ending world hunger here, just killing an hour or two doing something slightly more creative than watching TV.

Books in January 2026

 

In my early days of blogging, as well as writing about gaming, I discussed what I'd read. I've decided to try that again this year, and joined Storygraph to help me keep track. Let's start with a quick look back at January...

The Iron Hand of Mars by Lindsey Davies. Number four in the Marcus Didius Falco stories, which follow the adventures of a Roman private informer in the first century AD. Under cover of delivering a new standard to a legion in Germany, Falco must investigate the legion's loyalty, find out what happened to a missing Legate, and broker peace with a rebel Gaul. Despite the complex mission, I found this one dragged a bit compared to the first three, which are best thought of as a trilogy as they follow a single story arc centred on a conspiracy against the Emperor; but it was still enjoyable enough to lure me on to number five. If you're new to Falco, start with The Silver Pigs.

Assorted Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells. These follow the self-styled Murderbot, a security android which has hacked its own operating system to remove Asimov's Laws of Robotics, and just wants to be left alone to watch soap operas, but keeps getting dragged into lethal intrigue and conspiracies. Mostly novellas; I enjoyed them all, but Wells is at her best when telling novel length stories such as Network Effect, where her worldbuilding and characterisation have room to breathe. If you're new to Murderbot, start with All Systems Red, but the series doesn't really start motoring until the third novella, Rogue Protocol.

The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van dek Kolk. How severe trauma rewires the brain and body, what treatments are most effective, and how all this was discovered. This book held a number of surprises for me, including abused children greatly outnumbering war veterans as PTSD diagnoses, how much politics gets in the way of real science and treatment, and how simple the most effective therapies are - yoga, for example, and controlled eye movement.

Simple Sabotage Field Manual. This was originally written by the OSS in World War II, to show how people in occupied Europe could conduct a million tiny acts of untraceable sabotage against their occupiers, none individually significant, but collectively making everything just that little bit harder for the invaders. The recommendations are surprisingly similar to everyday life in a large corporation.

Aslan Route 35: Deepnight Endeavour, Part 2

Previously, on the Aslan Route... Misjumping into deep space, the crew of the Macavity find the wreck of a huge survey vessel, where factions of the surviving crew compete for resources and an alien infection is gradually turning them all into zombies. But they have a plan...

Spoilers ahead...

Void 8, 1108 Weeks 40-42

Mazun decides the first order of business is to issue an all-hands call on the internal PA system, explaining that his ship is here to rescue the survivors and there is room for everyone, but it will take some time so please be patient. As the point of this is crowd control, he carefully doesn't tell anyone where the ship is, and given where the Macavity docked and where the survivors are, none of them can actually see it, though Mazun suspects the bridge crew knows where they are. He does, however, explain the plan: The engineers of both ships will work together to fashion a drop tank for the Macavity and recover a sufficient number of emergency low berths to hold all survivors. These will then be frozen in small groups, and the low berths thoroughly disinfected and moved to the Macavity's hold. After that, the Macavity will make a multi-stage jump to Zuflucht, that being the closest system.

The Captain of the Deepnight Endeavour agrees to reinstate the Chief Engineer's command privileges for the purpose of refuelling their rescuers, and while she will still have to answer for mutiny, they are both pragmatic enough to defer that until they land somewhere civilised.

While Vila supervises the Endeavour's engineering crew in building a drop tank, Rex and Kharrash lead other engineers into the bowels of the ship to select and recover the most promising emergency low berths. This leads to a firefight with zombies during which they lose a couple of engineers and Kharrash suffers bumps and bruises.

While that's going on, Mazun notices a battered figure with a laser rifle setting up an ambush by the airlock bay the Macavity is docked to, which has a small circulation space and access to both personnel and cargo locks as well as a lift to the Endeavour's starboard PSM. They start talking using the airlock comms, and the figure explains that it's nothing personal, but given how dangerous the infection is, she simply cannot allow anyone to leave the wreck, for the survival of the species. Mazun patches the camera feed through to Doctor Matauranga, who deduces from a remote examination that the poor woman has gone psychotic under the stress of the situation. The Chief Engineer identifies her as the ship's Weapons Officer, who blew up the fuel cache - that action now makes sense, and Mazun and the Doctor hypothesise that in the early stages of infection, victims go insane in a way directed to make use of their skills; the astrogator caused a misjump, the weapons officer blew up the fuel cache, and this makes them deeply suspicious of what the Chief Mission Specialist might be up to in the science pod.

However, Mazun manages to keep the woman talking long enough for Vila to sneak up behind her, get The Drop, and zap her with his stun pistol. While she's processing that, Kharrash rappels down the lift shaft and zipties her, and before she can deal with that, Dr Matauranga places her under heavy sedation.

They now settle into a risky but straightforward execution of their plan. The drop tank is plumbed into the cargo bay and filled. The crew is called forward, twelve at a time, to be checked over by the good Doctor, frozen in low berths, the berths disinfected and loaded into the cargo bay. The science crew bring lots of data, records, and some samples of the alien life form. A few of the crew are infected, and these are diverted into separate and easily-identifiable low berths. The Chief Mission Specialist gives Mazun and Matauranga a bad feeling, so she gets her own low berth. Twice, groups of zombies try to join the party, but they have to come through a carefully-prepared kill zone in a single corridor, and any that get past Rex's dual-wielded laser SMGs are cut to pieces by Kharrash.

Mazun takes Vila and Kharrash aside; Vila he asks to make completely sure that nothing is getting out of those sample containers, and Kharrash he orders to move into the cargo bay for the duration of the trip, with permission to take lumps out of anyone - anyone - who tries to get at them.

As their final acts before abandoning ship, the Captain and Chief Engineer are persuaded to open the ship to space and shut down the power plant, to deny any possible comfort to the infection.

Jumping into deep space, the Macavity refuels from and then jettisons her drop tank, then jumps again, and staggers out of jumpspace at Zuflucht.

Zuflucht, 1108 Week 43

Dr Matauranga has spent the time in jump poring over the records from the Deepnight Endeavour, which may or may not come in handy later. The crew as a whole spent much of the time debating what to tell the authorities once they arrived; they settle on a cut-down version of the truth.

"We misjumped, and found ourselves near a wreck. We rescued the crew in low berths; some of them are infected, those are in separate marked low berths. Be very careful when you open them up."

If pressed, they decide they will reluctantly hand over the coordinates of the wreck, which Vila wants to sell to potential salvagers, and admit that there used to be a fuel cache there but it's gone now, in case the Navy jump there confident that they can refuel and become stranded themselves.

Zuflucht has an Imperial Navy "base" which is actually just a few offices with liaison and intelligence personnel; these explain that as per normal procedures, they would like to debrief the Macavity's crew in person aboard the orbital station.

The Macavity docks, and the crew disembark.

To be continued...

GM Notes

I did not see the PA call coming, but having established that the PA was still working and checked the motivations for each faction, it did in fact bypass a lot of the potential conflict in the scenario. Having established for other purposes earlier in the campaign that low berths can be transferred between ships without having to defrost the occupants, the players sacrificed their cargo to get everyone off the wreck; that wouldn't have worked otherwise.

The data dump to Dr Matauranga would've happened anyway in game, since he has Curious as a Major Hindrance; but it also allows me to establish the crew as experts on this infection, which gives me a lead-in to the larger campaign Deepnight Revelation later.

I'm not sure we want to do that; Deepnight Revelation is one of the few Kickstarters I regretted backing - if you can create stories of Man vs the wonders of the Universe, Star Trek style, week after week, then you don't need the campaign, and if (like me) you can't, it doesn't help you much.

However, Deepnight Endeavour is a nice little adventure, good for a session or two, with a good balance of combat, NPC interaction, and puzzle-solving; I commend it to the House. In hindsight, I should have made more use of the survival horror aspects, but the players seemed happy to avoid those and had solid plans for doing so. Likewise, I could have run more combat - that would have extended play time quite a bit - but the only combat-loving player couldn't make the relevant sessions, so such combat as there was we handled with Dangerous Quick Encounters.

Onwards to Great Rift Adventure 1: Islands in the Rift.

Fringe Space: Makavan 005 - Attempted Mugging

"Don't fight a battle if you don't gain anything by winning." - Erwin Rommel

New Hope, Early March '01: Robbery

Heading into the spaceport looking for his quarry, Makavan rounds a corner to find a pair of armed hishen. They turn to face him, and the leader clicks and chirps something which his translator renders as "Give us your money or else." They both brandish laser pistols to underscore this point.

Setup: Stand and deliver! Tokens and battlemat: Two Hour Wargames.

Makavan's aristocratic code of honour does not allow him to hand over all his valuables to some street thugs without at least a determined resistance, so ducking back to use the corner as cover, he snaps off a bolt at the leader, which misses. The second hishen fires back, making a small, white-hot crater in the wall near Makavan's head.

End of turn 1. As you see, I was playing in Roll20.

The lead enemy crosses the street to the best cover available, a narrow doorway niche in the building opposite, and shoots ineffectively at Makavan. Makavan sprays a fusillade of shots down the street, distracting the leader and by pure luck hitting his henchman and penetrating armour, inflicting a potentially lethal wound.

End of turn 2. Time to go.

Makavan considers his options for a split second; he can stay, and at best kill two hishen, which does him no real good. At worst, the remaining hishen could kill him, or enslave him - they're big on enslaving people. He decides his honour is satisfied by despatching one of the ruffians, and breaks contact before the leader dares stick his head out again.

Status at Mid-March '01

• IRD/DRD: +5 (Find Job), +1 (defeat opponent). Total +6.
• 5150 Stats: Rep: 5. Current IRD: 6. Lifetime IRD (calculated at month end): 11.
• SWADE Stats: Bennies: 3. Wounds: 0. Advances: None.

GM Notes

The involuntary encounter this month is another Robbery, this time by a pair of hishen gangers, a Rep 3 and a Rep 4, both with P-1s. Having established the scenario in 5150, I switched to SWADE for the actual combat.

• Turn 1: H1 (Ace of Hearts) tries to Intimidate Simon and rolls d8 = 8+2 = 10. As a PC, Simon (10 of Spades) is not having that, steps into partial cover, and fires; d8w = 2, miss. H2 (8 of Diamonds) fires; d6 = 5 - 4 for half cover (corner of building) = 1, miss.
• Turn 2: H1 (AD) makes a Spirit check to engage an armed foe and succeeds; he moves into cover (-2, door niche) and fires at Simon; d8 = 7-4 = 3, miss. Simon (KS) lays down Suppressive Fire on both enemies; careful placement of the template lets him hit both, d8w = 9 thanks to an Ace, and lasers ignore the Recoil penalty, so that's a Raise on H2 (a hit inflicting 19 damage thanks to Aces, beating his Toughness of 9 by enough to inflict two Wounds; he only has one, and I'm not spending my only GM Benny this early in the "session") and a Success on H1 (who is in partial cover), Distracting him. H2 (6H) is incapacitated by this point so declines to act. H1 and Simon both make Spirit checks to stay in the fight; H1 succeeds, but Simon does not, and slinks away around the corner, leaving the field to the enemy.

The idea of regular Spirit checks is adopted from 5150's Will To Fight tests at the end of each round of combat; in this case, H1 checks because his side has taken 50% casualties, but is still game (hishen will take all kinds of crazy risks to capture prisoners), but Simon has little to gain by fighting a couple of randos and could easily get badly hurt, so he's outta there. He's got a hishen to find, and it's not either of these.

Just as the paragraph is the emotional unit of writing, I think the encounter is the emotional unit of the solo campaign; so I'll leave it at that for tonight. One needs to pace oneself in these games, especially when using relatively complex rules, or one burns out and the campaign folds.