River of Heaven at 2012 conventions

Posted on March 1, 2012 by ottomancer

I’m hoping to attend several UK gaming conventions this year, such as Continuum and Furnace. I’ll be running The Last Witness again, and a new adventure currently titled The Guns of Olympus Mons:

THE GUNS OF OLYMPUS MONS
System: River of Heaven (OpenQuest d100)
Players: 4-6
Description:
2998. Mars has fallen to the Renouncers, who continue to wage their relentless holy war against intelligent machines and their allies. The Martian Space Tether is down, and as Renouncer war machines ravage the surface, the Mars Planetary Defence Network – a network of satellites capable of destroying any ship coming within 250,000km of the red planet – performs an effective orbital interdiction against Hegemony space assets.

Olympus Mons is the site of a Mass Driver battery and the command and control centre for the Planetary Defence Network. It is also the location of a Visser Cube  – a traversable wormhole linked directly with your home system of Alpha Centauri. Unfortunately the Renouncers have disabled the Visser Cube at their end.

You are a squad of IP Marines. Fired at Mars in drop capsules amidst a cloud of EMC, chaff and decoy drones, your mission is to land on Mars and penetrate the Olympus Mons Citadel. Once there you must take and hold the Visser Cube chamber then realign the wormholes, allowing the Hegemony to deploy troops to the surface of Mars directly.

Easy.

So check those suit seals, warm up your smart rifles and show me your war face.

Game time.

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Binary Deep

Posted on October 26, 2011 by ottomancer

The River of Heaven manuscript is completed and was delivered at the end of August to Newt and his team for proof-reading and editing.

The public playtest is complete.

Meanwhile, the Sunday Sessions crew – one of the gaming groups I attend – continues to play Binary Deep, the campaign that has helped shape the setting and road-test much of the sci-fi elements of the game mechanics.

Binary Deep is set in 28th century Alpha Centauri. The Player Characters (PCs) are all employees of House Harper-Yung, one of the eight Great Houses controlling the Kentauran Hegemony. When I planned the campaign I divided it into 5 adventure-sized chunks. The first ‘House Keeping‘ served as an introduction for the players into the River of Heaven universe, getting them familiar with the game mechanics and the setting. The adventure was set in its entirety on the planet Jericho, and was a relatively linear investigation into the missing wayward son of a House nobleman. Discoveries at the end of the adventure soon revealed that more was going on than at first thought.

Part 2, Entourage, took the players from Jericho out into the Alpha Centauri star system, while Part 3, The Hades Vector has taken them even further afield, but more of that anon. I can’t post too much about the campaign arcs and intended conclusions to various plot-threads here, for fear some of the players may be reading. :-)

Binary Deep has enabled me to flesh out the Kentauran Hegemony, with asides and throw-away comments from the players helping to add flavour to the setting.

Another campaign with another gaming group is in the offing. This one, as yet unnamed, also uses the default campaign setting of the Kentauran Hegemony. This time however, the action is set far from Alpha Centauri, onboard an interstellar Stepship…

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Alpha Centauri

Posted on August 29, 2011 by ottomancer

Here’s a sneak-peak of the map for the Alpha Centauri star system:

Alpha Centauri Star System

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The Last Witness

Posted on August 29, 2011 by ottomancer

Now that the public playtest is complete and the manuscript for River of Heaven is with Newt, I am able to turn to preparing the adventure I hope to be running at Furnace in October.

In case you don’t know, Furnace is an annual roleplaying convention in Sheffield UK, around October, which is held in a converted gaol. Each year 70+ people come and enjoy a relaxed friendly and yet game packed weekend amongst the seven hills of Sheffield. You can find out more here: http://rpgfurnace.com/

The Last Witness

System: River of Heaven (OpenQuest)
Players: 4-6
Slot: Slot 3 (Saturday evening)
Description: 
Almost a century ago, against the better advice of the Hegemony, the Solar Witnesses despatched the Revelation – an antimatter torch ship – on a pilgrimage to the Machine Civilisation Polis in the Altair star system.

It never came back.

That is, until now.

 You are members of a freelance search and rescue team hired by the Solar Witnesses to salvage their ship, and find out what exactly happened out there.

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Submission

Posted on August 26, 2011 by ottomancer

Well, the manuscript of River of Heaven is now completed and submitted.

All we have to do now it go through proof-reading, editing, art direction, layout design and layout and final checks… ;-)

I’ll be posting more information about the River of Heaven adventure I hope to be running at Furnace this year. Watch this space.

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Friends and Foes

Posted on August 18, 2011 by ottomancer

Chapter 14 ‘Friends and Foes’ is written. Here’s a taster:

Guild Engineer

For almost four centuries the triumvirate that is the Guild of Engineers, the Pilots Guild and Guild of Communications has maintained a monopoly on the technologies allowing interstellar travel and communications. All three organisations operate behind a shroud of secrecy, keeping their teachings and technologies hidden from the prying eyes of outsiders.

The Engineers are the only faction of humanity that has any knowledge of the inner workings of the Stellar Tap engine, and even that knowledge is limited. They alone are entrusted with the job of performing drive maintenance, optimising the plasma flow to coax more acceleration from the drive, or fine-tuning the exotic matter containment to improve thrust stability. Guild Engineers are loyal first and foremost to the Guild. Their job onboard a stepship is to protect the health and wellbeing of Guild property (i.e. the Stellar Tap engine and by association the Stepdaughter pilot) and to ensure the stellar tap continues to function.

No one knows the criteria for being approached by the Guild of Engineers for potential recruitment. Like everything else, the Guild keeps this secret. The path to graduation is a long and difficult one. Upon graduation every Apprentice Guild Engineer must leave Triton and serve a year aboard a stepship under the tutelage of a more experienced Engineer Adept. It is common policy for an Engineer to be present on every ship equipped with a stellar tap drive. It is one of the Tenets of Space Law that all the Merchant Houses, HyperCorps and freelance spacers abide by. Making an enemy of one or more of the Guilds is not good for business.

Though most Guild Engineers spend prolonged periods in microgravity, they are usually exposed to enough gravity to avoid being Skinnies. It is rumoured that the Guild headquarters on Triton has centrifuges to simulate gravity.

STR: 3d6 (11) Hit Points: 13
CON: 2d6+6 (13) Major Wound: 07
SIZ: 2d6+6 (13) Damage Modifier: None
INT: 2d6+9 (15) BioEnergy Points: 15
POW: 2d6+9 (15) Movement Rate: 15m
DEX: 2d6+6 (13) Armour: Guildtech Skinsuit (8AP)
CHA 2d6+6 (13)

Skills
Culture (Guilds) 40; Language (English) 65; Engineering (Exotic – Spook) 75; EVA 50; Science (Spook) 50; Science (Physics) 50; Science (New Maths) 50; Mechanisms 50; Computer 50; Technology 50; Pilot 30.

Resistances
Dodge 40; Persistence 40; Resilience 40

Augmentations

  • Cortical Shunt
  • Data Storage
  • Group Intelligence
  • LifeLog
  • Neural Interface
  • Rapid Healing
  • Tolerance (Radiation)
  • Subdermal Communications

Ranged Weapons 40%
Needler: ROF3 / PV2 / 2d6+2

Close Combat 40%
Vibrodagger 1d6+3

Typical Equipment
Guildtech Skinsuit, Black Robes, Environment pack, Compad (containing Class 2 AI assistant).

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Progress Report 4

Posted on July 15, 2011 by ottomancer

Chapter 14: Friends and Foes. The last big chunk of content I need to write before River of Heaven is a complete manuscript, ready to be handed over to Newt and the D101 Proof-readers for checking.

The chapter is structured as an A-Z of example creatures (Old Earth and Extraterrestrial), and cultures player characters might meet during their travels through colonised space. It’s stat blocks, but it needs doing. In my experience, having stats for GMs to either use as they are, or to provide inspiration/guidance for creating NPCs/alien creatures is an important resource in a core rulebook.

After Chapter 14, all that remains is Chapter 15: Bibliography aka Bibblywibblybong. A list of books, films and documentaries that GMs can draw inspiration from.

While all of this is happening, the public playtest continues. It is scheduled to complete at the end of August. After that, schedules are in the hands of Newt and D101.

Onwards!

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Intellectual Property

Posted on July 4, 2011 by ottomancer

Another chapter complete is Chapter 13: Adventure Seeds. This chapter contains a set of adventure seeds – hooks to help a GM dive in and start playing River of Heaven. Each Adventure Seed has a title, basic premise, a series of possible twists, and an epilogue suggestion for follow-on adventures.

Here is an example entry from the chapter:

Intellectual Property

A research scientist working on highly sensitive R&D projects for an up and coming robotics Hypercorp has gone missing. What’s worse is he has taken all his research data with him, downloaded into a Tellenbach Loop. The PCs are trouble-shooters hired to track the scientist down and bring him and his data back.

  1. A rival Hypercorp has poached the scientist, provided he brings his research data with him. The PCs must track him down before he can contact his new employers. Several other Hypercorps have heard about the defection and have sent recovery teams to make the scientist an offer he can’t refuse. The PCs will have to fight their way through the competitors.
  2. The scientist has decided to go into business for himself and set up his own Hypercorp. He has planted a logic bomb in the datacloud of his former employers, which when it detonates will wipe billions off their share portfolio.
  3. The scientist has serious misgivings about the work his employers are doing, and has decided to flee with his research and start a new life in the Outremer colonies.

Epilogue: This is an adventure potentially filled with double and triple crosses. Hypercorps are notoriously mercenary, and the PCs should be careful or they could find themselves hung out to dry. A successful outcome could result in more work from a Hypercorp.

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And so it begins…

Posted on June 17, 2011 by ottomancer

So I have just sent out the email with all the information that the volunteer GMs will need for the first public playtest of River of Heaven.

Yikes!

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Progress Report 3

Posted on June 14, 2011 by ottomancer

The first draft of Chapter 11: Islands in a Sea of Stars is complete. I need to go back through it and polish the text, but it is more or less there.

In the 28th Century, humanity clings to a scattering of islands in a sea of stars. This chapter is a gazetteer of all those star systems known to contain human settlements as of the year 2701. Each entry contains a small amount of technical data about the star and its planetary system, and brief description of each planet where colonies are present.

These stars and their accompanying planetary systems are divided into three distinct categories. Cardinal Worlds, Transitional Worlds and Outremer Worlds. There is also a fourth category: Machine Civilisation Territories.

Chapter 12 is already written: Reunion, the introductory adventure that I ran at Continuum and Furnace last year.

Onwards to Chapter 13: Adventure Seeds!

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