On the Rocks
Jan. 17th, 2004 02:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
terryclothLast night was the sci fi shadake game, which didn't go very well despite everyone being present. There was boredom and time-wasting, people forgot crucial bits of information, and large glaring holes in the game system's rules threatened to swallow up my will to live.
So, where to go? "The Maytag base!" Shadarack said, "It's closest."
There were many questions, from the crew:
How heavily armed was it? He didn't know. Did they know if their team had been attacked or not? He didn't know. How would they keep them from seeing either (a) the armor of their dead friends used as a gem-covering or (b) the disassembled burrower in the lounge? He didn't know. Why not just go to Europa? It'd take 90 minutes, at 5g! Like two hours at a more reasonable speed. So... why is that bad? He didn't remember.
So, after securing the ship for gravity in an unexpected direction, they went to Europa. They decided to land at the Ran Corp. base instead of seeking shelter with the Miracle Foundation, and were hailed on approach and given permission to land, after Shadarack affirmed that they'd be paying for their stay out of the ship's account.
Which he didn't have access to, except for small withdrawals for routine expenses.
They flew threw a magic fear barrier ("It's our only defense against all the monsters, so no, we can't turn it off for you.") and down a shaft that opened in the ice pack, landing in a large bay next to another ship, where a group of armed guards came to greet them and present them with a bill for 500k for the parts they'd requested.
Shadarack promised to get 'Captain Zilwicki' to sign off on it, and that was acceptable, although they were warned they wouldn't be allowed to leave until they paid. Checking with the computers, he discovered that his maximum credit limit for routine expenses was just 8k, which wasn't even enough for the part they needed to get the inertial dampeners back online, although it was close.
Shadarack went out chatting up the people in the base, which was mostly a grounded Artican (a type of cruise liner known for its excellent life support and comfortable accomodations, and lack of weapons or defenses), looking to see what they might be interested in buying from him. And if there was any gambling he could sit in on. The answer was that they were mostly looking for various luxury items, and that a few informal poker games would go on 'at night' (in 6 hours)... he sort of got the impression that one of the Anur was hitting on him, but it wasn't really clear if that was true or not. It wasn't something that Anur generally had any interest in.
Jackie and Adam headed straight for the med bay to get healed, and the healer was happy to oblige for a small fee. Afterwards, Jackie was eager to go on a tour of the depths of Europa, which the officer who'd welcomed them had told them he'd get a researcher to take them on, but no one showed up to do so. Asking around of random people, they eventually found out that (a) the captain was busy with something (for some reason, hearing that set off Adam's danger sense) and (b) there were monsters assaulting the barrier, so the tours were called off for the moment. Jackie was disappointed in the second -- he *wanted* to see (and bottle) monsters!
Ozar stayed on the ship, first repairing the inertial dampener, then loading the other parts, then (at Shadarack's behest) rebuilding the burrower into a hover-car they could sell to try to make the money they needed for the bill.
Jackie and Adam got bored, and decided to go on the tour whether anyone would help them or not. The Ran Corp. personnel were happy to point them towards the airlock to the shaft leading down to the ocean, but it was locked. Jackie bottled the lock, leaving the door closed, but some wires exposed. Adam fiddled with the wires at random, and by sheer luck managed to open the airlock.
Which automatically closed behind them. Leaving them trapped, as both the inner and outer doors had similar keypads. Rather than trying the same thing as had gotten them into this mess in the first place, Jackie bottled Adam and decided to act like an innocent kid out of his depth.
But outside the airlock, the response seemed to be disproportionately paranoid -- a squad of guards headed for the airlock to retreive the trespassers, and when they found the keypad disabled, they RAN back towards the Artican, sounding an alarm, which sparked the guards milling about the bay to close on the ship and point guns at Shadarack and Ozar. "Get down on the ground! We're placing you under arrest!"
"Why? What did I do?" Shadarack protested, slowly backing up the ramp towards the airlock.
"Get down!" The guard fired a warning shot into the air.
"But I don't even know what's going on? You gave us permission to land here."
"Our orders are to secure your ship until we've determined the status of the saboteurs who broke into the shaft and disabled the doors behind them."
By this time, Shadarack was inside his ship, and able to shut the airlock in his face -- they shot at him as he moved, but he was able to dodge behind the closing door. Shadarack ran for the bridge, and flew the ship over to the airlock where the rest of the crew was trapped, and Ozar fiddled non-randomly with the wires and opened it.
Just in time, as the big doors to the landing bay were opening, revealing a huge silvery globe blocking the path outside -- the Nezumi, which had been following Shadarack since Terra! Jackie fired the ship's guns to disable the doors to keep them from opening fully, and the ship fired back with ionizing blasts which peppered the ship with stunning energy -- apparently, they wanted it intact.
Shadarack hid the ship in the shadow of the doors, out of line of fire, while the Nezumi tried to blast its way in, and the base threatened both of them and called the UTMN to intervene. It would be a while before a destroyer could actually arrive, however -- a much shorter while than it took for the Nezumi to finish blasting open the doors. As soon as enough of a gap opened, they zipped out at full power! Or, well, half power, their generator had taken a hit and wasn't working at full blast.
They took a lot more hits as they made their escape, and at one point everyone but Ozar, who'd taken over piloting, was stunned... but they got away, Ozar managing to outpilot the Nezumi's rather horrid helmsman and at least get out of weapon range, although to keep up the flight he had to shut down every system except sensors and engines. And after the Nezumi tried to hack their computer remotely through the comm array, he shut down the sensors too.
As internal comms were down, Ozar and Jackie tried to go see if each other were okay, only to find that Ozar's fighter and the 'Gems of Io' were arcing electricity back and forth, completely cutting off Engineering from the rest of the ship. Ozar tried to drain away the ionization with an improvised device, only to discover that it wasn't the lingering effect of the (many many) hits to the cargo bay they'd taken, it was the Gems draining energy from his fighter through the ionized air. He turned on his PPF and flew through the maelstrom so that he could reach the pile of 'spare parts' in the lounge and build something to disperse this effect.
Meanwhile, the ship flew blindly on through the darkness, on autopilot.
Me: "Argh! Let's see... how long did I say it'd take to build 1k worth of magitech?"
Murdoc [Ozar's player]: "*I* don't remember." No one else remembered either. I quickly did math in my head.
Me: "Hmm, I guess 1k per hour of work by Ozar would be about right... and you'd need the right parts..."
Murdoc: "No I don't. I'm a gadgeteer, remember?"
Me: "Right, but if you're improvising from nothing it's going to be harder. Not that I know how hard it should be in the first place. Gah! I hate this! Why aren't there rules for magitech?"
Lazar: "I made up rules for magitech several times, but they always turned out to be really bad, and I'd have to start all over."
Murdoc: "I'll just play some other character, if it bothers you."
Me: "You don't have to --"
Lazar: "We do need to make up rules for it some time..."
Shadarack: "You're the DM! Just make up some numbers!"
Me: "That's what I --"
Shadarack: "You don't need rules, you can just make a ruling! Decide how hard you want it to be and set a difficulty!"
Me: "But I know what his skill --"
Shadarack: "You're allowed to just use your imagination and make arbitrary rulings! You're the DM!"
Me (shouting): "That's WHAT I'VE BEEN DOING! And it's really aggravating and hard, and sooner or later a I'm going to start contradicting myself!"
Murdoc: "Fine, I'll just play another character! There's no point in me playing a character that you hate."
Me: "You don't need to play another character. I just want there to be some rules or something so I don't need to keep making up rules on the spot... although Ozar *is* the one with the least ties to anyone else, so it'd sort of make sense if he just flew off."
Murdoc: "Fine, I'll do that then."
Me: "You don't need to..."
Murdoc: "I'll play the Illiski. She's already on the ship."
[sigh] And she's PARALYZED and a PRISONER and HATES EVERYONE. I don't know what's going to happen with this, but it can't be good.
last session next session
At that point we cut it off, because I was getting really tired (in multiple senses) and didn't have anything else planned anyway (except for something with the gem that I decided not to do in favor of something stranger).
I think part of the problem is that this game now falls on the third straight day where I don't get any time to myself -- Wednesdays I work late, Thursdays I have a D+D game, and Friday is this. All this morning, I've been feeling like crap, too, like I wanted to just tell everyone to go to hell, and crawl into a hole and pull the legs off ants.
So, where to go? "The Maytag base!" Shadarack said, "It's closest."
There were many questions, from the crew:
How heavily armed was it? He didn't know. Did they know if their team had been attacked or not? He didn't know. How would they keep them from seeing either (a) the armor of their dead friends used as a gem-covering or (b) the disassembled burrower in the lounge? He didn't know. Why not just go to Europa? It'd take 90 minutes, at 5g! Like two hours at a more reasonable speed. So... why is that bad? He didn't remember.
So, after securing the ship for gravity in an unexpected direction, they went to Europa. They decided to land at the Ran Corp. base instead of seeking shelter with the Miracle Foundation, and were hailed on approach and given permission to land, after Shadarack affirmed that they'd be paying for their stay out of the ship's account.
Which he didn't have access to, except for small withdrawals for routine expenses.
They flew threw a magic fear barrier ("It's our only defense against all the monsters, so no, we can't turn it off for you.") and down a shaft that opened in the ice pack, landing in a large bay next to another ship, where a group of armed guards came to greet them and present them with a bill for 500k for the parts they'd requested.
Shadarack promised to get 'Captain Zilwicki' to sign off on it, and that was acceptable, although they were warned they wouldn't be allowed to leave until they paid. Checking with the computers, he discovered that his maximum credit limit for routine expenses was just 8k, which wasn't even enough for the part they needed to get the inertial dampeners back online, although it was close.
Shadarack went out chatting up the people in the base, which was mostly a grounded Artican (a type of cruise liner known for its excellent life support and comfortable accomodations, and lack of weapons or defenses), looking to see what they might be interested in buying from him. And if there was any gambling he could sit in on. The answer was that they were mostly looking for various luxury items, and that a few informal poker games would go on 'at night' (in 6 hours)... he sort of got the impression that one of the Anur was hitting on him, but it wasn't really clear if that was true or not. It wasn't something that Anur generally had any interest in.
Jackie and Adam headed straight for the med bay to get healed, and the healer was happy to oblige for a small fee. Afterwards, Jackie was eager to go on a tour of the depths of Europa, which the officer who'd welcomed them had told them he'd get a researcher to take them on, but no one showed up to do so. Asking around of random people, they eventually found out that (a) the captain was busy with something (for some reason, hearing that set off Adam's danger sense) and (b) there were monsters assaulting the barrier, so the tours were called off for the moment. Jackie was disappointed in the second -- he *wanted* to see (and bottle) monsters!
Ozar stayed on the ship, first repairing the inertial dampener, then loading the other parts, then (at Shadarack's behest) rebuilding the burrower into a hover-car they could sell to try to make the money they needed for the bill.
Jackie and Adam got bored, and decided to go on the tour whether anyone would help them or not. The Ran Corp. personnel were happy to point them towards the airlock to the shaft leading down to the ocean, but it was locked. Jackie bottled the lock, leaving the door closed, but some wires exposed. Adam fiddled with the wires at random, and by sheer luck managed to open the airlock.
Which automatically closed behind them. Leaving them trapped, as both the inner and outer doors had similar keypads. Rather than trying the same thing as had gotten them into this mess in the first place, Jackie bottled Adam and decided to act like an innocent kid out of his depth.
But outside the airlock, the response seemed to be disproportionately paranoid -- a squad of guards headed for the airlock to retreive the trespassers, and when they found the keypad disabled, they RAN back towards the Artican, sounding an alarm, which sparked the guards milling about the bay to close on the ship and point guns at Shadarack and Ozar. "Get down on the ground! We're placing you under arrest!"
"Why? What did I do?" Shadarack protested, slowly backing up the ramp towards the airlock.
"Get down!" The guard fired a warning shot into the air.
"But I don't even know what's going on? You gave us permission to land here."
"Our orders are to secure your ship until we've determined the status of the saboteurs who broke into the shaft and disabled the doors behind them."
By this time, Shadarack was inside his ship, and able to shut the airlock in his face -- they shot at him as he moved, but he was able to dodge behind the closing door. Shadarack ran for the bridge, and flew the ship over to the airlock where the rest of the crew was trapped, and Ozar fiddled non-randomly with the wires and opened it.
Just in time, as the big doors to the landing bay were opening, revealing a huge silvery globe blocking the path outside -- the Nezumi, which had been following Shadarack since Terra! Jackie fired the ship's guns to disable the doors to keep them from opening fully, and the ship fired back with ionizing blasts which peppered the ship with stunning energy -- apparently, they wanted it intact.
Shadarack hid the ship in the shadow of the doors, out of line of fire, while the Nezumi tried to blast its way in, and the base threatened both of them and called the UTMN to intervene. It would be a while before a destroyer could actually arrive, however -- a much shorter while than it took for the Nezumi to finish blasting open the doors. As soon as enough of a gap opened, they zipped out at full power! Or, well, half power, their generator had taken a hit and wasn't working at full blast.
They took a lot more hits as they made their escape, and at one point everyone but Ozar, who'd taken over piloting, was stunned... but they got away, Ozar managing to outpilot the Nezumi's rather horrid helmsman and at least get out of weapon range, although to keep up the flight he had to shut down every system except sensors and engines. And after the Nezumi tried to hack their computer remotely through the comm array, he shut down the sensors too.
As internal comms were down, Ozar and Jackie tried to go see if each other were okay, only to find that Ozar's fighter and the 'Gems of Io' were arcing electricity back and forth, completely cutting off Engineering from the rest of the ship. Ozar tried to drain away the ionization with an improvised device, only to discover that it wasn't the lingering effect of the (many many) hits to the cargo bay they'd taken, it was the Gems draining energy from his fighter through the ionized air. He turned on his PPF and flew through the maelstrom so that he could reach the pile of 'spare parts' in the lounge and build something to disperse this effect.
Meanwhile, the ship flew blindly on through the darkness, on autopilot.
Me: "Argh! Let's see... how long did I say it'd take to build 1k worth of magitech?"
Murdoc [Ozar's player]: "*I* don't remember." No one else remembered either. I quickly did math in my head.
Me: "Hmm, I guess 1k per hour of work by Ozar would be about right... and you'd need the right parts..."
Murdoc: "No I don't. I'm a gadgeteer, remember?"
Me: "Right, but if you're improvising from nothing it's going to be harder. Not that I know how hard it should be in the first place. Gah! I hate this! Why aren't there rules for magitech?"
Lazar: "I made up rules for magitech several times, but they always turned out to be really bad, and I'd have to start all over."
Murdoc: "I'll just play some other character, if it bothers you."
Me: "You don't have to --"
Lazar: "We do need to make up rules for it some time..."
Shadarack: "You're the DM! Just make up some numbers!"
Me: "That's what I --"
Shadarack: "You don't need rules, you can just make a ruling! Decide how hard you want it to be and set a difficulty!"
Me: "But I know what his skill --"
Shadarack: "You're allowed to just use your imagination and make arbitrary rulings! You're the DM!"
Me (shouting): "That's WHAT I'VE BEEN DOING! And it's really aggravating and hard, and sooner or later a I'm going to start contradicting myself!"
Murdoc: "Fine, I'll just play another character! There's no point in me playing a character that you hate."
Me: "You don't need to play another character. I just want there to be some rules or something so I don't need to keep making up rules on the spot... although Ozar *is* the one with the least ties to anyone else, so it'd sort of make sense if he just flew off."
Murdoc: "Fine, I'll do that then."
Me: "You don't need to..."
Murdoc: "I'll play the Illiski. She's already on the ship."
[sigh] And she's PARALYZED and a PRISONER and HATES EVERYONE. I don't know what's going to happen with this, but it can't be good.
last session next session
At that point we cut it off, because I was getting really tired (in multiple senses) and didn't have anything else planned anyway (except for something with the gem that I decided not to do in favor of something stranger).
I think part of the problem is that this game now falls on the third straight day where I don't get any time to myself -- Wednesdays I work late, Thursdays I have a D+D game, and Friday is this. All this morning, I've been feeling like crap, too, like I wanted to just tell everyone to go to hell, and crawl into a hole and pull the legs off ants.
