X-Plorers. any thoughts?

[Mike]

I was flipping through my game sessions from last year and found some notes from a memorable one-shot. We played the X-Plorers adventure included in the rulebook (all games should do that!): Cleopatra Station.

The session was a blast. Among the highlights: one of the 'treasures' to be found on board the station is a paper copy of the T&T rule book. With that find and eBay your characters would be able to retire.

Sadly, my crew didn't look in that particular draw (they were more concerned with the mutant space fungus).

Any way, just wondering if any other posters had some experiences to relate? It's a fine, complete retro-style game in under 60 pages.

I purchased the PDF and printed it out in booklet form - it almost fits in my pocket!

[bluskreem]

I've had off and on X-plorer game going since the print edition was first available. It's really become one of my fave games. I really like the simplified skills, the iconic classes and I try and incorporate at least one space battle in every session (can't get enough of the strips.) I tend to mod the game a bit, but nothing to major (alien characters, a few ship combat mods, and I have a few NPC classes that i allow for temporary colonists characters.) It's a very smooth running game that I really enjoy writing adventures for (but then I was always a bit of a scifi nut.)

I've been slowly developing a setting that I hope one day to get the ambition to publish as a part of our semi-biweekly games. It's sort of a new frontier / space station drama in the vein of Babylon Five and Deep Space Nine, I call Europa 3.

Europa 3 is an ice planet on the outskirts of USN space on the Foozie frontier. The planet was settled by aquacultural farmers seeking a way to break from the monopolies and extreme licensing fees farmers face on Europa in the Sol system.

Europa 3 seemed like the ideal system for the colonial fishing consortium to establish itself after it was discovered that many of the life forms on Europa 3 share 90% + genetic simularity to native life on Europa Sol (which in turn bear a striking resemblance Earth life during the Cambrian explosion.) One species in particular is hoped to become the primary export of the new world; The New European Shrimp which is similar to earth's Anomalocaris except nearly ten meters in length at adult size. The Europa Sol counterpart of the shrimp (the European Shrimp) has been a delicacy on many worlds for nearly a hundred years, and the colonists are hoping that the New Shrimp wll be a success despite it's odd coloring. So far the colonists are having limited success taming the beast and breaking into the market.

Unbeknownst to the colonists the colony is not the sole concern of the Team. At least three corps (Black Blade Bionic, Sine Nomine Weapons Tech, and Brave Halfling Manufacturing) have black project sites in the star system. The team has on occasion had to defend the sites from pirate, or defend the colony from out of control experiments, all while assuring the colonists never discover the sites' existence. Luckily the colonists are content enough with the added protection the X-plorers provide so far and haven't asked any questions as to why such a valuable team would be assigned to a backwater colony.

The primary threat to the colony and corps comes from the neighboring Foozie raiders and their crude cybernetic space whale and space dolphin ships. The primitive Foozies would normally not pose much of a threat to X-plorer teams, but the remoteness and low Economic Potential Class (EPC) of the colony makes procuring reinforcements difficult. More often then not the token X-plorers team and colony police force find themselves under equipped to handle such threats.

My team has fought off cloned-cyborg versions of themselves that went rogue after experiments by Black Blade Bionics to manufacture the perfect replaceable soldiers went awry, saved the colony from a collision with a Rok Generational Meteor Ship , explored mysterious trap filled crystalline ruins of a yet unknown abandoned civilization on several nearby asteroids, and in my next session are going to attempt to forge the first trade accord between between Humans and Foozies on behalf of OSRIC inc, and the Bunnilopp clan (in spite of extreme protests and possible terrorism attempts by rival clans and frightened colonists.)


edit: I seem to have veered a bit off topic there, sorry about that.

[Mike]

Awesome off-topic veering! I'd love to read of more exploits...

[ravenheart87]

I was thinking a lot about running a sci-fi sandbox - I had too much fantasy campaigns in the last few years, both old-school and new-school. This game seems to be a good choice for my plans, especially since mechanically it's not too different from D&D.

One question bothers me though! The equipment section says:

"The Ranged Weapons Table tells you what type of ammunition the weapon uses (where applicable), and how many rounds are expended per shot."

Let's see the table on the other side of the page:

Weapon / Damage / Ammo /Range / Cost
----------------------------------------------------
Automatic Pistol / 2d6 / Bullet / 30 / 200
Automatic Rifle / 2d6 / Bullet / 100 / 300
Bullet Clip (20) / - / - / - / 5
Laser Pistol / 1-3d6 / 20 EU / 50 / 600
Heavy Laser Rifle / 1-5d6 / 100 EU / 100 / 800
20 EU Clip / - / - / - / 50
100 EU Clip / - / - / - / 250

Does this mean that basically automatic pistols and rifles fire a single bullet in a three second round for 2d6 damage, not eg. a short burst? Not a problem if the answer is yes, I'm just curious (and thinking about how to house rule burst fire).

[thorswulf]

I always assumed that an automatic pistol or rifle simply meant non revolver foor pistols and semi-automatic feed for the rifle. You might consider giving a select fire version of either firearm the effect of area fire that affects a certain size say anything up to 3"x 5" and each target takes 1d6/2 hits of damage. You could make the area smaller or larger if you use miniatures or markers and battle board.

By the way if you need good basic figures in 15mm check out RAFM. They are making the old traveller figs. If 25mm is more your thing check out Reviresco. They make the classic Stargaurd miniature line and fairly affordable.

[capheind]

X-Plorers seems like the perfect game to run a post apocalyptic ark-ship romp. By default the human-centric core rules are a better match for something like The Starlost than MF.

Given some hyper-evolved psionic nanotech pretending its the force of magic on the ships interior you could use S&W (Or DD) and some basic mutant rules to run the thing. PC's could be S&W savages or XP crewmen.

I was thinking of running something like this with S&S 2nd ed LL and MF but I don't know that I'd want the Mutants to be that random or the licensing restrictions of S&S should I want to publish the thing at some point. Even though I have to say that S&S does have some attractive features (stats for star trek like tech etc).

Something like the asteroid from Eon minus the "Bigger on the inside" bits with a fantasy world on the inside and cosmic horror hitchhikers on the outside could be brilliant.

Re-skin Barrier Peaks as an intro adventure.

Islands ruled by Aboleth kings in marble ponds, ruling the descendants of the scientists who once experimented with the very aquatic intelligences that birthed their overlord.

Ephemeral glittering cities on the outer shell populated by spider-like fungal incomprehensible horrors.

Deep dungeons that go all the way through the barrier to the outer core built by darro-like worshippers of the color out of space.

Vast abandoned airstrips that once serviced internal ark ships populated by flightless intelligent birds hoping to understand the great metal birds enough to kiss the sky once more.

Matrix like virtual realities who's physical structure is easily confused for giant metal insect hives by the kangaroo riding psionic humans living nearby, who's coming of age ceremony involves subduing and riding the mosquito like nutrient system service droids.

And then once they work their way to an outer hull facility or a backup bridge they are left with the grandest adventure, what do you do when your surrounded by derelict ships sent before and after your ark and vast amounts of empty space.

[DeBracy]

This past weekend I ran Cleopatra Station for the second time (the only two times I've run X-plorers actually) and we had fun. The whole crains thing makes for a corny (tihi) game with a lot of laughs. Both times Fluffy took someone down so it's pretty ingenious of Mr Bezio to put a potential back-up PC close at hand.

[Merias]

Oct 21, 2013 12:30:57 GMT -6 DeBracy said:

This past weekend I ran Cleopatra Station for the second time (the only two times I've run X-plorers actually) and we had fun. The whole crains thing makes for a corny (tihi) game with a lot of laughs. Both times Fluffy took someone down so it's pretty ingenious of Mr Bezio to put a potential back-up PC close at hand.

Yes, that is a great intro adventure. I ran it for my family a few weeks ago and we had a great time. One of the things I liked was that there were alternatives presented for skill checks. For example, if you could not open the airlock door by clever, technical means, you could blow it open, or force it as a last resort. I never had the urge to fudge the skill rolls, since if they failed, there was always another option to move the adventure forward.