"If no Confrontation occurs, congrats! You just got paid for nothing." - 5150 No Limits Maiden Voyage
Happy Pi Day, everyone!
New Hope City, Early June '01
Another day, another robbery. A basic ganger stepped out of the shadows uncomfortably close to Makavan, waved a large knife at him, and hissed "Give me your money!"
Makavan looked at him with the arrogance born of aristocracy and months fending for himself in the shady end of NHC.
"No," he drawled. "I don't think I will."
The ganger leapt at him, slashing furiously, but Makavan's armour turned the blade. Makavan sighed, and while the ganger was pulling his knife back for another attempt, drew his laser pistol and shot him.
As the would-be robber lay curled up around the agony of the laser burn, Makavan rolled him over, checked the burn, extracted the robber's wallet, then thought better of it.
"You keep it," he decided, tossing it to the ground near his assailant. "You obviously need it more than I do." He moved off, muttering to himself.
"You get a better class of mugger around the spaceport."
New Hope Desert, Late June '01
As their rented crawler approached the shrine, Makavan made the gesture his AR visor was programmed to recognise as a request to magnify his view. As he thought, the tiny dots in front of the shrine resolved themselves as sentient beings; a pair of women, shading their eyes and pointing at the shrine, while off to one side was a second crawler. Hearing Makavan and Victoria approaching, they turned to look, and waved. Victoria stood up in her seat and waved back.
So far so good; nobody shooting. In fact, neither of the other party seemed armed.
Pulling up alongside the other crawler, Makavan jumped down and helped his passenger out, scanning the horizon for threats as he did so. Victoria strode purposefully over to the others through the sand and talked to them animatedly while Makavan checked their packs and other gear on the crawler's flatbed. She'd said she wanted to be discreet, so he left it there and pretended to be checking something behind one of the wheels until his patron called him over. He walked over and nodded to the ladies; expensive but casual desert wear, he noticed, although not as expensive as Victoria's.
They talked so long Makavan started to think they were deliberately stalling while something else happened, but nothing did. Eventually the other two left, Victoria got out her recording equipment and took footage of the sunset over the shrine, which it turned out was what she had wanted to do discreetly. He had been expecting something more exciting, possibly involving laser burns or large fangs.
After that, he made a meal from ration packs in the crawler; they ate; and he drove her back through the evening coolness to New Hope City.
Money for nothing, he thought. Why bother to keep it secret, though?
GM Notes
This is my first experimental use of Roberto Bisceglie's Lonelog notation, which you can get here, free and in a variety of formats. For this run, I've inserted it below; I immediately found it easier to conflate several of the encounter table rolls onto one line and apply my usual SWADE dice roll notation. For those unfamiliar with that, "w" means the roll is made with a Wild Die, S is Success, R is a Raise, F is Failure, CF is Critical Failure. I don't note Aces separately as you can infer them from the dice roll.
S1. Robbery
(note: involuntary encounter)
d: 1d6=3 -> robbery. 1d3=1 -> one basic ganger. 1d6=6 -> no firearms. 1d6=4 -> Rep 4.
(note: initiative - draw action cards)
d: Makavan 5C, ganger 8D.
d: Ganger rolls to hit d8=9 vs TN 5 -> SR. Damage 1d8+1d4+1d6=3 vs TN 9 -> F.
@ draw laser pistol and fire.
d: Makavan rolls to hit d8w=9 vs TN 6 -> hit. Damage 2d6=14 vs TN 10 -> SR, 1 Wound.
d: Ganger rolls to survive d8=3+2 (self-cauterising) -> survives.
S2. The Shrine
(note: voluntary encounter to carry out current job offer)
@ Approach shrine.
d: 1d3 -> 1 PEF; 1d3=3 vs 1 => no confrontation
? Who are they? Various tables -> 2x Basic Shakers, female, Rep 5
@ Interact with PEF
d: Simon Persuasion d6w=4 S (note: d6 with Wild Die, roll 4, a Success)
[PC:Makavan | Wealth +2-1 = d10]
Well, that notation works well enough. It seems more concise than my previous ramblings; comment invited.
However, I kept getting the urge to wander away from the 5150 scenario generator into something else, say The Scheme Pyramid. There's no reason not to, but at that point, why am I using 5150 at all?
I'm in a weird mood this year, aren't I?
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