As we shift into a more routine summer schedule, our various live-play roleplaying sessions are starting to settle down on schedule. We were able to fit in the second session of our Pirates of Drinax campaign, our home-grown Franken-system of Shadowrun and Traveller, with the group continuing their exploration of the Trojan Reach. Having ventured to Torpol, investigating recent pirate attacks, they then followed the leads to an abandoned deep-space station, now converted as a pirate prison, in search of one of the pirate attackers. What they found was a derelict hulk of a station, damaged and barely operative, infested by an alien menace known as a Chamax.
Catch up on the storyline with our playlist – The Pirates of Drinax
Most of the session went smoothly, but I rather quickly realized I had some challenges – most of which I will need to resolve before our next session.
The first was a missing graphic or map of the station. Our campaign intent is to rely more on theatre of the mind descriptions, however, that requires clear and detailed descriptions… something that I was challenged with. I could easily describe the old hallways, powerless doors, and creaking hull, but describing the geometry of the station was harder and confusing. A graphic exterior view likely would have gone a long way to making the scene clearer, without getting too detailed with a battle map.
The second main issue with the combat system. Since our game mechanics are based on Shadowrun, we are using a mix of 5th and 6th edition rules. Functionally, gear, skills, stats, etc. are all 6th edition. Action economy is 6th edition. However, combat mechanics – hit modifiers, damage, armor, etc. are all 5th edition, since very bluntly the 6th edition mechanics are pretty terrible and non-intuitive (at least to my sensibilities). On paper, this works well. Everyone has a major action, and one or more simple actions, and you roll your attack, determine success margin, subtract armor rating, and soak damage (overly simplified description). In reality, it’s not nearly that clean, as demonstrated by the very first action of the players, to pull an automatic shotgun and blast away at the bug. I quickly realized that there are differences in the two systems, and I will need to go thru and compile precisely how things work. A good example is Simple Actions – 6th edition defines those differently as to what you can and cannot do, since 5th edition we used an Initiative pass system. 5th edition gave a fast character multiple attacks and secondary actions, 6th edition gives 1 complex action (attack) and multiple minor actions (move, etc.). All workable, but needs some thought and preparation, rather than a quick spur of the moment choice at the time.
However, overall, the story is progressing well. These sorts of challenges always happen with new games, especially with systems we are unfamiliar with, and definitely with mechanics we have heavily modified. Its workable, and will settle out, I just need to put some focus into those specifics before our next game – when the Chamax strikes back and tries to kill a few of the group.
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