Starfarer

Hi-tech sci-fi hack of Wayfarer by Chaoclypse. 

Updated 8pg zine release on itch with lots of Chaoclypse art!

Character Creation 

Roll 2d6 down the line for the four Stats: Strength (STR), Speed (SPD), Intellect (INT), Privilege (PRV).

HP is average of STR and PRV, rounded down.

Every character starts at Level 0.

Privilege Bonus

Characters with a PRV score of 11+ receive material bonuses in a personal estate on their homeworld OR an 8-person starship, and Sector-wide corporate contacts OR connections to government officials.

Skills 

Allocate 5 rolls between the Regular, Special, Streetrat, Landlord, or Institutional Skill tables to determine Skills. For example, a player can roll 3 times on Common Skills and twice on Specialized.

For each skill, allocate an inventory item appropriate to said skill.

After the first 5 Skills, players may choose to make a Death Save to survive another 5 years of life and gain a new Skill. 

Common Skills

1. Melee Combat (Specify weapon)
2. Ranged Combat (Specify weapon)
3. Survival (Specify Worlds or Void)
4. Piloting (Specify vehicle type)
5. Tech Repairs
6. Computing

Specialized Skills

1. Medical
2. Admin
3. Cultural Studies
4. Pharmacology
5. Astrobiology
6. Engineering

Streetrat Skills (Must have PRV 6-)

1. Fraud
2. Extortion
3. Streetwise OR Cultural Studies
4. Pharmacology
5. Piloting (Specify planet-based vehicle)
6. Tech Repairs OR Computing

Landlord Skills (Must have a PRV 8+)

1. Fraud
2. Bribery
3. Sector Law OR Admin
4. Pharmacology
5. Piloting (Specify vehicle type)
6. Engineering OR Computing

Institutional Skills (Must have INT 8+ or PRV 8+)

1. Medical
2. Sector Law
3. Astrobiology
4. Cybernetics
5. Superintelligences
6. Genemodding

Encumbrance

Inventories are slot based. Characters have an encumbrance maximum that is equal to their current STR+2.

Checks

To attempt an action where success is uncertain, roll 8+ on 2d6 to succeed.

If the task is easy, and you still feel it necessitates a Check, roll 6+.

If the difficulty is unclear, roll 2d6 for the target number. Any result below 6 is trivial and does not require a check. Even most easy tasks do not require a Check.

Dice Modifiers

Some conditions may modify the Check, called a Dice Modifier, or DM. This boon or bane applies to the 2d6 result.

• If a Stat applies to a the Check: 
• Stats of 6- grant -2 DM 
• Stats of 10+ grant +2 DM 
• If Skill applies to the Check: Add the Skill bonus. 
• If lacking a Skill required for the Check, -4 DM.

Stat Checks

If a singular Stat is all that matters, roll 2d6 under or equal to the stat to succeed.

World

Base chance of encounter/patron/rumor: 2-in-6 

If actively searching (takes time): 4-in-6

Reaction rolls

Roll reactions when a character’s reaction to the party is unclear. This also works for unclear situations.

2d6	Reaction
5-	Negative
6-8	Neutral
9+	Positive

Combat

Combat uses Checks as per normal. Each combat round, characters may move between range bands, and perform an attack.

To hit	2d6
No Armor	6+
Modest Armor	8+
Full Armor	10+

Slow targets gain +2 DM to hit; fast targets gain -2 DM.

Range Bands	Effective Weapons
Close	Melee
Medium	Throwable + Ranged
Far	Ranged
Distant	Ranged, -2 DM

Attempting to flee uses a combat round. Make a check with a +2 DM if Distant, and -2 DM if Close.

Damage

If less-than-lethal, take d3 damage. If it could kill a person, d6 damage. If it could blow a hole in a wall, 2d6 damage. If it could destroy an engine block, 4d6 damage.

Surprise

For random encounters, 2-in-6 chance of surprise for both sides. Roll d6 for distance, with -1 DM for each side that’s surprised:

d6	Distance
1-	Close
2-3	Medium
4-5	Far
6+	Distant

Death Saves

At 0 HP, enemies are killed (or unconscious), but player characters may make a Death Save, and roll 2d6 under SPD.

If failed, the character dies. The higher the difference, the more gruesome the death. A natural 12 is always a horrendous sight to behold.

On success, set HP to 0. Roll d6, with a +1 DM for every death save made that session.

d6	Death Save Effect
1	Gain d3+1 HP, and immediately perform a free action.
2	Gain d3 HP. Downed.
3	Unconscious.
4	Unconscious. Lose 1 point in a narratively appropriate Stat.
5	Unconscious. Scarred: Lose d3 points in a narratively appropriate Stat.
6	Unconscious. Bleeding out. Dead in 2d6 rounds without Medical intervention.
7+	Die on your own terms: Do one last action with +4 DM.

If any Stat drops to 0, the character dies.

Unconsciousness normally lasts 10 minutes, usually rendering the character useless for the rest of the fight.

Advancement

Award XP at the end of each session. If: 

• a character took a significant risk, earn 1 XP. 
• a character was in immense or constant risk, earn 2 XP.

The character needs XP equal to the level they are trying to reach, cumulatively. Player characters start at Level 0.

Level	XP required
1	1 XP
2	3 XP
3	6 XP
4	10 XP
5	15 XP

etc.

Level Bonus

Each level, do the following: 

• Add +d3 to maximum HP 
• +1 to a chosen Skill, up to a max of 3 
• Note: This must be a skill used in a risky situation during this advancement stage
• To increase skills beyond 3, one must seek out willing masters and prove their worth or parley with them.

To learn a new Skill, one must find a teacher with at least 3+ in the Skill, and a month of dedicated training time. This achieves a Skill of 0, preventing the -4 DM for lack of specialized skills.

Decagone Driven to the Maw

I'm running a Classic Traveller campaign right now, and have a medieval tech level planet named Lorien.

The ruler of the planet is a religious dictator, Uzuale. Pontiff Uzuale de Lorien.

My brain went: "Hrm, de Lorien. Delorean. I need a medieval sci-fi time travel adventure."

Not without grand surprise, that subgenre suffers a bit of a dearth in adventures. But the characters, one of whom is a Duke, got invited to the Pontiff's banquet, so I had to get this one in. I adore the Mothership adventure Decagone, by my pal WacoMatrixo. I just needed a D&D-like banquet adventure to run, and the OSR module that popped into my mind was Brad Kerr's Demon Driven to the Maw. 

Now kiss

So you have the "Why?" Now the "How?"

This next bit contains massive spoilers for both modules. Don't read if you want to play either module.

Demon Driven to the Maw is set in a Scottish castle overrun by beautiful, secretly-hooved vampires called Baobhan Sith who have opened a gate to hell so the Devil himself can attend their party where they intend to eat and kill all the villagers for Satan's amusement.

Decagone is a time loop module set on an ocean-floor research base where the crew members are living the same 10 minutes over and over until they stop the experiment doing this to them, or die from exhaustion and stress.

Lorien has a good spaceport on a trace atmosphere, waterless, 60% gravity world, where hundred of millions of people live under a religious dictatorship with medieval technology (i.e. C5108D93).

A big part of the fun in making Classic Traveller work is taking a sentence like that, and forcing it to make sense. How can a medieval society survive on a world with basically no atmosphere or natural water? Well, on Lorien, they live in pressurized cave systems, ancient and massive lava tubes caverns deep underground. The sector at large follows Starseed, a religion based on teachings of The Shepherd for surviving on hostile worlds, so the Pontiff Uzuale de Lorien uses these teaching to motivate the mining industries and "piously" enrich Lorien.

I took the castle from Demon Driven to the Maw, and the time loop mechanic from Decagone. I extended it to 15 minutes because the castle is quite a bit larger than the suboceanic research lab. For the map, I swapped the Hell's Maw for the final two rooms of Decagone, with a secret passage from the Chapel to Decagone's Security Booth. 

Instead of a murder vampire party, the time loop became "The Festivities," which is a Purge-like party where everyone gets assigned a mask, based on Demon Driven to the Maw NPCs:

• Red Caps: ugly man red masks (2-in-6)
• Baobhan Sith: beautiful genderless white masks (1-in-6, on a 3)
• Villagers: stoic male black masks (3-in-6, on 4-6)
• The maskless Baobhan Sith chef was a robot, and I was rolling 2-in-6 chances for other hidden white mask robots 

Why do this though? Well, to rout out the "sinners" and for the Pontiff and his robotic servants to collect information on the nobles and influential of Lorien. I borrowed the shady secret police angle from Hard to Be a God by the Strugatsky brothers. There's some basic rules to follow during the Festivities:

• Red mask: Must do what white masks say / provocateurs
• White mask: Must do what black masks say / investigators
• Black mask: Must only speak when spoken to / arbiters
• Anyone rule-breaking or slothful must have their liver removed (i.e. killed)

The loop began with the Pontiff asking everyone to put on their masks, as he was to admit in the workers, commoners, to eat the leftovers from the banquet and join the festivities. This leads to many people not knowing the rules off the bat, including the PCs. 

In Decagone, it's implied the PCs are just out of range of the artifact's effects when the experiment starts charging the artifact. On Lorien, the people know what they're doing, and time the loop accordingly as the Pontiff wishes. The Pontiff also is immune, as are his secretly robotic servants. 

But why were the PCs immune to the loop? Well, a few days earlier, the Traveller's Aid Society came around distributing "vitamin enhanced water" which yeah, had vitamins but also a coppery metal taste of esoteric nanobots that interfere with the time loop device. (Yes, a magic protective potion, I know.) The PCs drank the lightly green water. 

And how to stop the loop in such a big castle filled with such grotesque violence? There were three "tests of faith":

• Fight back heroically upon violent provocation (so that a bot/Pontiff sees it)
• Defeat the Pontiff in the religious debate/card game (i.e. Helal)
• Get past Decagone's laser corridor, into the artifact room.

What I didn't anticipate, and frankly should have, was that one of the players, the Duke, was wearing Reflec armor which is highly effective against laser weaponry. He didn't have any time left though to figure out who the three scientists were, nor what the artifact was.

And since the players may read this, that info will have to wait for another blog post.