Incoming Hostiles

You were asleep when the alarms started going off. Pure instinct had your hands grasping for the mask before you were even fully awake. Clawing your way out of bed, you land heavily on the steel floor below, the impact only slightly lessened by the low gravity. Tired fingers brought up the status report on your display. Not an environment breach, but incoming hostiles.

**Перейти в ближайший приют**
**去最近的避难所**
**Go to the nearest shelter**

These alarms were meant for environment breaches. The discovery of an alien race hellbent on wiping us out meant they’d had to amend the protocols to include other hazards. There’d be environment breaches soon enough though. Ceres station wasn’t designed to take an attack, and the only reason the shelters provided any protection was they were deep inside the asteroid.

You had to force your door open, the faulty actuator obviously picking this moment to have a bad day. As you rushed to the shelter in the crowds, you were able to pick up the tell-tale vibrations as every ship docked at Ceres began to undock and leave. You’ll have to take your chances underground, you couldn’t find a place on one of the ships for you – only for your daughter. You hope she’s on one of those now, getting away from Ceres and towards somewhere a little safer.

Time to end the radio silence. I’ve been doing a lot of thinking over the last few months about the format I want to use for this LRP, and frankly the one thing I’m sure of is that I’m not ready to run a full-weekend event. I don’t have the team, I don’t have the infrastructure, and I don’t have the time to dedicate to it to do it solo.

But that doesn’t mean I won’t be running events. I need to start shopping around for a venue and see if I can’t get some people to assist me, but what I would like to do is start a little earlier in the timeline than the original game setting implied. Rather than start off with the ragtag fleet on the run, I want to roleplay through some of the drama that happened to the populace who couldn’t make it out of the Sol system.

Whether it’s those left behind on Ceres waiting in the shelters to see if they survive, or the colony workers who first fell prey to them, or the crew of a starship desperately fighting them off… there are plenty of stories to be told and I would like to spend some time telling them.

If you’re interested in helping tell these stories, join us in our new Facebook community. I look forward to seeing what you have to add.

Yoda

Checking the rules

It’s an interesting moment when you check your own rules and realise there are a number of assumptions you’ve made and thus not thought to write down.

Such as assuming that Strikedown, Shatter, and Cleave are all calls that anyone would recognise.

Version 0.2.0 of the rules now has several of those assumptions corrected. If anyone would like to help identify more holes in the rules, you can get early access to the current ruleset by contacting the Facebook page.

Ranged Rivals

Nerf Rival Zeus

Combat flows better if you don’t need to do a lot of maths in the middle of a fight and there’s no confusion about whether attacks were aimed at you or not. This is particularly an issue in ranged combat. If you have to rely on shouting at someone else to make something happen, it’s going to get lost in the noise.

My thoughts on fixing that is to change how ranged combat works. Nerf have released a new range of weapons[1]the Nerf RIVAL range designed to provide a high-impact shot with minimal consequences, and they’re currently at the centre of my revised ranged combat strategy.

Continue reading “Ranged Rivals”

Notes   [ + ]

1.the Nerf RIVAL range