Arioniad Season 1 Retrospective

Elsewhere

"Well, that doesn't usually happen."

"No. We knew their relationship was metastable, but this is a new point of equilibrium. What should we do? We don't have the cycles to follow both."

After a brief pause:

"Set up a low-res fork to follow Cori. Keep the main focus on Arion. Something usually pushes them back together, eventually."

"Okaaay... Done. You have all the data you need before I restart?"

"Uh-huh."

"Okay, then."

Season 1 Lessons Learned

• It's neither necessary nor desirable for Arion to be in the same setting as my group games, although that does have a certain elegance to it.
• The Arioniad doesn't actually need a star map, or a timeline beyond the sequence of posts. So when we resume, let's see how far we can get without either.
• Interstellar Rebels isn't suitable as a long-term scenario and campaign generator for the Arioniad; it doesn't give me enough to work with.

GM Notes

So that season 1 is parked up neatly, let's take a moment to line all Arion's ducks up in a row.

The Story So Far: After some minor encounters in the Jewell system, Arion takes Coriander Ganzfeld, Mr Osheen, Aksunar Karagoz and Major Evelyn Sheng to the Hollis system, near the Zhodani border. There, they meet Officer Karen Muhammed. Coriander, Evelyn and Karen all have romantic designs on Arion, none of which come to fruition. The team investigate mysterious signals from the planet's surface, and the trail leads them to a criminal gang running the Hollis Highport docks, who may or may not be Zhodani catspaws. A Zhodani agent sends a team of assassins after Karagoz and Sheng, and appears to recruit Cori. The team fight their way through gangers to the docks, board the Dolphin, and jump outsystem.

Characters. I'm shifting from detailed statblocks to a mixture of the Interstellar Rebels NPC Variants and statblocks from the core rulebook, to save time and reduce cognitive load.

• Arion Metaxas, Imperial Scout pilot on loan to Intelligence with his ship, the Dolphin. Heroic, Impulsive. A detailed PC, and the only one gaining Advances because doing that for everyone is too much work.
• Coriander Ganzfeld, Imperial agent and psion. Ruthless. Basic Psion.
• Hollis Highport dockers' union. Definitely a violent criminal group, possibly an Ine Givar cell. Soldiers.
• Aksunar Karagoz, taciturn Imperial spymaster. Let's make him an Advanced Civilian for the moment.
• Officer Karen Muhammed, corrupt member of the Hollis Port Authority. Relentlessly cheerful. Basic Civilian.
• Mr Osheen, alien mercenary who consumes the bodily fluids of the fallen. For nourishment. Uses the Zombie statblock.
• Major Evelyn Sheng, Arion's long-time friend and would-be lover, also Karagoz' bodyguard. Let's call her an Experienced Soldier. Two Combat Edges? Hmm, Combat Reflexes and Dodge, I think, and she can also have Healing d4 as she has used it several times.
• Zhodani agent, name unknown. Cruel telepath. Advanced Psion, Wild Card.

Arion got his second Advance at the end of episode 16, which we'll say is Smarts d8. Strictly it should be Notice d8, to bring him in line with the original vision, but I dislike spending a whole Advance on one skill.

Threads:

• Hollis Highport dockers' union and possible Zhodani involvement.
• Has Cori actually defected, or is she infiltrating?
• What was Karagoz' actual mission, and does it still matter?

Chaos Factor: 6, in case I switch over entirely to the Mythic GM Emulator.

I keep wanting to map the Foreven Sector, or at least the subsector where Arion is, but experience teaches that if I do, I will immediately decide it's not good enough and feel compelled to reboot the campaign, so as I say, let's see how far we can get without any mapping.

I'm not sure what I want to do next as far as solo gaming goes, so that's the next thing to figure out.