Review: Quick Ship File - Gagarin Class Scout/Courier

"To be the first to enter the cosmos, to engage, single-handed, in an unprecedented duel with nature — could one dream of anything more?" - Yuri Gagarin

No game last Saturday due to scheduling conflicts, so let's review something instead of sharing a writeup.

In a nutshell: Cepheus Engine stats and deckplans for the Gagarin class scoutship and half a dozen variants; 51 page PDF from Moon Toad Publishing with accoutrements, available here, £4.50 at time of writing.

Intentionality check: Not an impulse purchase, so check passed. I've known Moon Toad was working on this for a while, and it appeared to be inspired by one of my favourite scoutship deckplans, the Type S as shown in Traveller20. So it went on my wishlist immediately.

What You Get

The product covers seven versions of the basic design, each with full design details and deck plans:

• Baseline configuration. The usual scoutship features, but only one stateroom, no air/raft or turret, and 22 tons cargo. This is the basic spaceframe, built at TL 12; other variants are made by adding bits to it, reducing the cargo space, and they all start by adding a turret and air/raft.
• VIP transport. This adds a luxury stateroom and four crew bunks, and has 7 tons of cargo.
• Basic mail packet. This one has three staterooms, one standard and two cramped, and 11 tons of cargo.
• Extended operations packet. Three standard staterooms, 9 tons of cargo.
• Small cargo. One standard and one cramped stateroom, 14 tons of cargo.
• Basic passenger. With four standard staterooms and 5 tons of cargo, this one is actually the closest to the stock Classic Traveller Type S.
• Maximum cargo. One standard stateroom, 17 tons of cargo.

In all cases, the ship has jump-2 drives, but enough fuel tankage for an extra jump-1 (or additional mission duration). It also has two half-ton mission pods, each of which can further customise the ship with (say) an extra sensor or a one-shot missile. The product lists 21 different mission pods, which are more fluff than crunch but still intriguing, a random location chart, a page of details on the air/raft, and statblocks and portraits for eight characters, set up to be easily printed and cut out as cards.  

This is a fairly big download for the page count, and consists of three files:

• GagarinScout.pdf (15 MB). The main PDF; introduction, full designs for each variant, several deckplans for each variant with different amounts of 'clutter' such as cargo containers. These are interspersed with illustrations of the ship type in various paint schemes and attitudes.
• GagarinAssets.zip (112 MB). A collection of 153 PNG files; 21 clutter items (things like cargo crates), 16 environmental backdrops (roads, snow, jungle etc), 4 external views of the ship, 18 planetary backdrops, 9 illustrations from the PDF, 2 air/raft images, 12 deep space backdrops, 72 tokens of various characters. Basically, all the VTT or print-and-play assets you might need to use this product except deck plans, but I usually snapshot those from the PDF anyway.
• gagarin_POD.pdf (74 MB). I'm guessing this is the file you use for making your own hard copy via something like Lulu, but I'm not sure; I don't swim in those waters. It's about 5x the size of the basic PDF, so I assume higher resolution.

What I Think

Moon Toad deck plans have been my go-to designs since about 2020, and I think this one might take over from their previous Strela class as my favourite scoutship. One thing I especially like about it is that if I print it on A4 paper, it's exactly the right size for 15mm figures or meeples.

Moon Toad have clearly thought about how I might want to use the ship in a game, and provided me with everything I might want for 15mm print-and-play; the only things missing for VTT are the deck plans, but that's nothing a quick screenshot or two and a bit of image editing won't fix.

Given the number of ship variants and VTT assets included, I am very pleased with my purchase. 

Arion 1-01: A Glitch in the Matrix

"My mother, I dreamed a dream of stars that fell upon me." - The Epic of Gilgamesh

Elsewhere, date unknown

"Another instance?"

"Yeah. I have some predictions I want to check."

"What about the last one?"

"I've paused it. We can always restart it later... Aaannd it's fully initialised, here we go."

"This one, then coffee, okay?"

"Sure."

Jewell, 001-1105

Arion starts awake, and at first he doesn't remember getting into this particular bed. Shouldn't there be someone in it with him? Memories start assembling themselves, slowly and with a strangely unreal feeling at first, but gathering speed and fluency. He's had that a few times in recent years. After a moment, he remembers discussing it with the medic recertifying him for flight duty, who said it was called jamais vu and nothing to worry about. He realises he can't remember the doctor, just the diagnosis, but then reasons he has seen a lot of doctors over the years so that isn't too surprising.

He steps to the window of the hotel room - sealed against the atmospheric taint - and gazes out over the city lights. Only the brightest few stars are visible, and despite knowing rationally that he should recognise them instantly, it takes a few seconds; he recognises that as another symptom of jamais vu. A couple of them seem to be falling, but after a moment his experienced eye recognises them as inbound ships, radiating heat. Jewell has a big starport and this close to the border, it has a lot of military facilities too.

None of this is anything to worry about, he tells himself, and troops back to bed. Let's see how I feel in the morning.

The human equivalent of "Have you tried turning it off and on again?"

Jewell, 004-1105

Arion enters Godown 95 at the starport, and sees the man he's looking for; thirtysomething, unpolished shoes on the desk, cleaning his nails with a packing knife. In theory, it's illegal to carry a knife on Jewell; in practice, there are a lot of innocent things you need one for, like cooking, or opening parcels, so you still find them in a lot of places, and as long as you're in one of those places doing something innocent that needs a knife, you're okay, unless the police are looking for a reason to arrest you. The nametag on the man's chest says PHILLIPS.

"Good morning," Arion says. "I'm looking for a cargo, and people tell me you're the man to talk to."

"That's kind of them," Phillips says, with a genuine smile. "Ex-scout, just mustered out?"

"Guilty as charged," Arion smiles back. It's impossible not to like Phillips, even if you've only just met him.

"Any particular destination?"

Arion shrugs. "Anywhere I can reach with jump-2." Phillips makes a small noise to indicate he is thinking.

"I've got some luxury goods for Emerald," he says. "If you're running a Type S, you should make about 1200 Credits after operating expenses."

"That sounds good. You're familiar with the ship class, then?"

"Pfft. Second commonest in the Imperium, I wouldn't be much of a factor if I didn't know it," Phillips grins.

They shake on the deal, and thumbprint the contract on their commlinks.

"I'll get the cargo bots to load it up. What's the ship?"

"The Dolphin, hangar 87."

Jewell, 007-1105

Phillips comes to in darkness, tied to a chair. Gagged too, he thinks.

"There he is," a distorted voice says. A second voice, equally distorted, speaks to Phillips directly.

"Eshguurii, I take no pleasure in this, but I do need you to understand how serious it is." There is a bright flare of pain in Phillips' hand, and he realises one of his fingers has been broken. He tries not to cry out, because that might encourage them, but fails. The gag converts his scream to something more muffled.

"Now, I'm going to ask you some questions, some of which I already know the answers to. If you don't answer, or lie, that will cost you another finger. Once you run out of fingers, things will get more unpleasant and harder to repair. Nod to show that you understand." Phillips nods, wondering how they will be able to see that in the darkness. Obviously they can, as the second voice says "Good. Take the gag off." This is done, and voice number two continues.

"Where is my shipment?" Phillips weighs his loyalty to a man he met a couple of days ago against his loyalty to his remaining fingers, and the fingers win.

"It's in a crate of luxury goods bound for Emerald aboard a ship called the Dolphin, in hangar 87. It's scheduled to lift today, I don't know if it already has."

"Go get it back," the voice says to someone else, before turning to Phillips once more, dangerously gentle. "Now, Eshguurii, who told you to do that, and why did you think it was a good idea?"

It takes several more fingers before the voice is satisfied with the answers to those questions.

GM Notes

I'm in a low energy state at the moment, and while I want to do some more solo play, I want it to have the highest fun-to-effort ratio possible. So I've picked my favourite solo PC, solid rules I'm familiar with that allow me to operate at multiple different levels of abstraction, and a setting I know very well. To reduce the initial effort, the PC begins alone; more characters can always be added later.

In concrete terms, that means Arion's back in the Third Imperium, using a mixture of Savage Worlds and Traveller products, with One-Page Mythic in my back pocket to fill in the gaps. The character concept is "somebody who can operate a scoutship single-handed", and this time around I'm interpreting that as follows:

Arion Metaxas, human scoutship pilot

Attributes: Agility d8, Smarts d6, Spirit d6, Strength d6, Vigour d6, Wealth d6.

Skills: Athletics d4, Common Knowledge d4, Electronics d6, Fighting d4, Notice d4, Persuasion d6, Piloting d8, Repair d6, Science d6, Shooting d4, Stealth d4.

Pace: 6; Parry: 4; Toughness: 6 (1).

Hindrances: Heroic, Impulsive. Edges: Ace, Alertness.

Gear: Scoutship, pistol, leather jacket.

I haven't used the Jewell subsector in several decades now, but it fits the spies-in-space vibe that my SF games always gravitate towards; it's detailed in the Mongoose campaign Tripwire, and I think that would pair nicely with Zozer's Into the Neutral Zone as a future group game, so the secondary purpose of this first season is to familiarise myself with the region and maybe flesh it out a little more.

The encounter on 004 was generated by drawing a card every day as per page 144 of the SWADE core rulebook until I got an encounter; the Ace of Hearts told me the encounter was neutral or friendly, then I switched to Zozer Games' Solo and the Starport Encounter table on page 39, which confirmed it with a 53, potential Contact, and referred me to the Patron table on page 59, where I learn this person is a government official, who rolled an 11 (friendly, SWADE p. 33) for reaction to Arion and a personality of 7 (Lazy, SWADE p. 112). What kind of NPC is this? I pull out Classic Traveller Supplement 4 and take the first pregenerated Bureaucrat, which gives me an age and an easily-converted statblock. I roll high/low for gender, and get male. I generate a name for him using Space Corsair's language generators: Eshguurii Phillips

For trading, I'm looking for something simpler than the Traveller rules, so I turn to Veiled Fury Entertainment's Trader Voyages. Looking at the map, I think the routes around Jewell are busy, so draw 4 cards - the best one is an Ace of Spades, luxury items with a 20% bonus - $600 per unit. I also roll a success for Persuasion, meaning one Complication, which a d10 tells me is an attack; some Mythic rolls shed a little more light on that.

As I walk you through each use of the various rules, I'll let them fade into the background, so we can focus on the story.

Normally, I strive for the minimum number of products in a game, especially when playing solo, but for once I'm going to unbend and use whatever is most helpful, which will generally be whatever is most familiar and relevant.

More of this as the game unfolds.

Aslan Route 011: The House of Shrouded Mirrors

Previously, on the Aslan Route: The crew of the Macavity has learned that the swamp on Sink is an alien data storage device, with a secure satellite location on Pourne for sensitive data. Their eyewitness account of the fall of Torpol alarms a missionary from Sink, who asks them to take him back there to consult the Abbot. Now read on...

Sink, Paal and Pourne, 204-1105 to 245-1105

The abbot wants to charter the Macavity to travel to the House of Shrouded Mirrors on Pourne, but the crew say that’s risky and they want hazard pay. Complex three-way negotiations end up with the Macavity’s crew owning a share of the monastery gold mine plus all the gold on hand, while Prince Hteleitoirl and his followers provide military service to the monastery in return for land, which they will develop over time.

The Macavity makes its way to Pourne and enters the dome containing the House of Shrouded Mirrors, which proves to be full of shrouded mirrors. The crew is informed this is because there is a miniature swamp (“the Pool”) in the basement and the mirrors show what various parts of it are thinking about. After some difficulty, the abbot obtains an interview with the Sage of the Stars; between that and Dr Matauranga’s stealthy peeping into mirrors, the crew learns the following:

• During the Ancients’ War, many of the factions used human troops and servants.
• One faction developed a menhir-like weapon which emits a field known as the Fury, which distorts human minds, making them xenophobic and militaristic; this was used to suborn the human troops of other factions. The fondness for black and silver uniforms is an unintended side effect.
• By kidnapping people and throwing them into the Pool, which absorbs their memories, the House has learned that archaelogists on Drinax uncovered one of the menhirs; Mazun hypothesises this is what started the problem. The Drinaxian Star Guard then emplaced a menhir near the south pole on Torpol, thus gaining control of the downport and later the rest of the planet. (The field propagates at lightspeed, so for rapid expansion menhirs must be transported by ship.)
• The field is only effective on sentients genetically engineered by the Ancients, chiefly humans and vargr. The Sage believes aslan should be unaffected. He doesn’t know if droyne are affected, but there are none in the Area of Operations so that’s not relevant.
• A few years ago one Mike Matin visited the Sage and asked similar questions, though as hypotheticals rather than based on eyewitness testimony. Mazun recognises him as a Scout Service covert operator.

While the discussion turns to questions such as how many menhirs does Drinax have, how do you destroy one, and would that help or would converted people stay converted, an aide interrupts to point out that a vargr corsair is cutting its way in through the dome.

As the corsairs barge in, Mazun offers the Sage and the abbot a ride, which they accept; if the Pool is destroyed, the Sage will be the only repository of certain data, and if not, he can always come back. Mazun leads them away at a run while Vila and Dr Matauranga sneak away, hiding behind shrouds and pilfering small objects of monetary and scientific value respectively, and Rex roars defiance at the pirates in the hope of intimidating them; it doesn’t do that, but does mean they close into melee to fight him like men… errm, vargr.

Mazun joins the fight to help Rex while the others look for a way back to the ship. Mazun uses his tactical skill to identify a line of retreat, Vila locks the doors against pursuit, and Dr Matauranga injects everyone with useful but probably illegal substances to sharpen senses and reflexes. Rex continues to hurl threats over his shoulder as the party falls back to their ship.

The corsairs appear chiefly focused on looting, and Rex jams the desultory missile locks while Vila crash-starts the engines so Mazun can fly the ship out through the new holes in the dome.

Mazun takes aboard as many of the staff of the temple as can be herded on without substantially slowing us, up to the number the Macavity can safely convey to the starport.

As soon as all are aboard, they call for help from the PDF - something that Matauranga can do while Mazun flies, Vila works the engines and Rex mans the weapons.

To be continued...

GM Notes

Having completed The Borderland Run, and being (as they say) low on spoons at the moment, I switched over to the Bulldogs! campaign Heart of the Fury as the core of the second phase of the game. I prepared for this session by working through it and seeing what could be salvaged and adapted, and sadly it's less than I hoped; part of that is how suitable the various scenarios are for the Trojan Reach, and part of it is that I've already tried to run it and one of the current players was in that game. I had to do more surgery on the setting and campaign background than expected; I'll probably wind up using less than a third of the product as written, but that's better than it languishing unused on my hard drive.

Of the 16 adventures, the first four need to be ditched because Rex's player has already played them. The next three are covered by the last couple of episodes and so are not really needed. This session merged scenarios 8 and 9. Scenario 10 is not something that the players or I would enjoy, so I scratched that one. Scenarios 11-14 I'm not sure what to do with, although that is a problem for Future Me, and the last two look viable if I relocate them to Drinax.

You'll probably see spoilers coming up, but Heart of the Fury was published in 2016 so I regret nothing. I think it would work better as a Bulldogs! game with the various free one-sheets folded into it, but I've used most of those already with other groups.

Over the next few weeks, I need to give some serious thought to where the campaign goes next.