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.