In space, only Cthulhu can hear you scream

Greg and I ran a short Rayguns! session last night, partially to test out a couple of ideas, partially just for the fun or it, but mostly because I wanted to spring this Aliens themed idea at him. The Rayguns! rules seemed to work fine: turn activation and combat worked as designed, generating plenty of opportunities for the models to do interesting things, generating turnovers quick enough to keep the action rolling, and showing that flow between Rating and Combat points that makes the system flexible. We did finalise a couple of point regarding leaping, so we did some work while we played.

So, a ship in deep space finds itself in trouble. In the passenger section the main bulkheads lock and contact is lost with the crew. The passengers decide to arm themselves from the storage lockers…

And discover that a Xenomorph is running loose int he corridors, appearing from the roofs to surprise, slaughter and then disappear again, carrying the body.

First to experience the terror, the Mysterious Emissary did not have time to demonstrate what his secret power/knowledge was. He was left behind, isolated, and ‘something big’ dropped from the ceiling. He screamed and then was gone.

Not having any Alien models in 28mm I substituted Great Cthulhu. I don’t know what effect it had on Greg, but it scarred the willies out of me.

Next to go was the Trainee Mystic (suck that, Anakin Skywalker – the future of the galaxy is safe from Darth Vader now).

Alert to what was happening, the two Battle Monks set up a perimeter without he two civilians and then attempted to assemble the battle droids. This took a long time, and once assembled turned out to be clunky things that could not keep up with the running and screaming and never once warmed up their lasers.

However, while in the assembly room, the mother alien had a go at the Lead Battle monk. Bad move, as his lightsaber made short work of the monster. But by this time two daughters had spawned, and a lively fight occurred in the corridors. Both the Battle Monk and the civilian went down, but not until they had carved up several daughters.

Alarms started ringing and a countdown began to ship self destruct. At every alien turnover we rolled for a fifty/fifty reduction of six timers. When all counters were gone, we reasoned, the ship went boom. With three to spare, the surviving Monk and civilian crowded into the escape pod, leaving the droids to lumber after squawking, ‘Master, master…’

Was there an alien/cthulhu in the escape pod? Probably, but by that stage we were talking about other things.

So a good and simple game. Not too heavy…

Battle Monk (*2)  6/4 (10), Agile, Seasoned, Inspiring, Multiple attacks. Energised sword +3

Trainee Mystic 3/2 (5), Agile, Energised sword +3. Stun pistol +1

Mysterious Emissary 3/3 (6), Expert, Camouflage suit (did him no good), Needler +1

Battle droid (*2) 2/2 (4), Laser rifle +3

Civilians (*2), 3/2 (5).

*********

Mother Alien 5/5 (10), Multiple attacks, Terrifying, (stealth – special)

Alien spawn (*5) 4/4 (8), Multiple attacks, Terrifying, (stealth – special)

Behaviour rules for the aliens: 1) attack the most isolated human, 2) Reproduce (by taking Stunned or Out of Action bodies away), 3) get out of line of sight.

Rules for alien movement and combat: 1) Spend 1 Opportunity to appear anywhere on board, 2) Spend 1 Opportunity to disappear, but can only do so when out of line of sight, 3) When a foe is defeated, and out of line of sight of any other foe, can disappear, taking body for parasitic reproduction, 4) Newly spawned creatures are subject to all the preceding rules.

Geonosians for Rayguns!

I use the term Geonosian advisedly here – without intention to infringe anyone’s copyright. It is the name of some WOTC (Wizards of the Coast) pre-painted miniatures depicting insect creatures from the Star Wars universe.

As models of generic insect creatures, say the Selenites of the Moon, they are pretty good. They’re usable for that purpose.

Here are the quick stats I have worked out for them using Rayguns!

Soon, I hope to pit some square-jawed adventurers against them. This reminds me: I need to get some of those nifty GW craters.

Geonosian Overseer
Value 4. Rating 3, Combat 1.
Leader
Flying (airmobile). Natural armour +1.

Geonosian Warrior
Value 4. Rating 3, Combat 1.
Move and Shoot
Flying (airmobile). Natural armour +1. Stun gun +1.

Geonosian Drone
Value 4. Rating 3, Combat 1.
Extra
Spear +2. Natural armour +1.

Space Opera – from the Dictionary of TV Tropes

It’s an epic saga of rebellion and romance.
— Trailer for Star Wars: A New Hope

A space opera is a work set in a far future space faring civilisation, where the technology is ubiquitous and entirely secondary to the story. It has an epic character to it: The universe is big, there are lots of sprawling civilizations and empires, there are political conflicts and intrigues galore. Frequently it takes place in the Standard Sci Fi Setting. In perspective, it is a development of the Planetary Romance that looks beyond the exotic locations that were imagined for the local solar system in early science fiction (which the hard light of science revealed to be barren and lifeless) out into an infinite universe of imagined exotic locations.

Space opera has a lot of romantic elements: big love stories, epic space battles, oversized heroes and villains, spectacular places.

Note that this is quite different from the original definition of space opera, which was a derogatory term. It was a variant in a long line of terms for substandard genre fiction: ‘horse opera’ was bad Western fiction, whereas a ‘soap opera’ (so named because they began as hour-long ads for soap) was a hackneyed drama. The phrase was coined in 1941 by Wilson Tucker to describe what he called “the hacky, grinding, stinking, outworn space-ship yarn”. Weirdly, this means that today many works which were originally touted as examples of ‘serious’ science fiction, such as the Lensman series, are today held up as prime examples of Space Opera. As more authors and writers came to embrace the space opera style, the term has largely lost its negative connotations. Assisted by writers who regarded all tales of action and adventure in space as bad, and so tried to label it all “space opera” in pejorative sense; they succeeded with the label, but not with keeping it pejorative.

Star Wars is probably the most famous modern example of space opera. In Star Wars, technology is either magic (the Force) or slightly faster versions of today’s gadgets (blaster rifles, hovercars, space ships) and the characters would be right at home in a fantasy novel (evil emperor, farmboy, princess).

The opposite of Space Opera is Hard Science Fiction.

Flash Gordon, the original is still the best

Flash Gordon. King of the Cliffhanger

Alex Raymond, in 1934, with his creation Flash Gordon, conceived and rendered a spacefaring future so intriguing and exciting that it has persisted in the visual imagery of Science Fiction ever since.

In 1936, Universal Studios would produce the most expensive serial production to date bringing Flash Gordon to the big screen starring Buster Crabbe and Jean Arden. A reported $350,000 budget was set, about double the normal serial budget.

So successful, Flash Gordon has become synonymous with Cliffhanger Serial. After three serials and film adaptations of those serials, Flash Gordon would find a home on television during its early years in the 1950s.

Flash Gordon reappeared on the big screen in 1980 with Sam Jones playing Flash and Max von Sydow playing Ming the Merciless. Timothy Dalton of James Bond fame plays Prince Barin.

Flash Gordon Serials

“Flash Gordon: Spaceship to the Unknown” The planet Mongo is on a collision course with Earth! Flash Gordon and Dale Arden join Dr. Zarkov and blast off in his rocket ship to Mongo, trying to avert worldwide destruction.

“Flash Gordon’s Trip to Mars” (1938, 299 min., 15 episodes) – A mysterious beam of light emanating from Mars is sucking the nitrogen from the Earth’s atmosphere, and only Flash Gordon can stop it, battling Queen Azura, the Clay People of Mars, and his mortal enemy Ming the Merciless!

“Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe” (1940, 234 min., 12 episodes) – A rocket is dropping purple dust into the Earth’s atmosphere, causing instant death! Can Flash Gordon stop the madman from Mongo while retrieving the antidote to the death dust from the frozen planet of Frigia?

Rescue June Mayweather – Act 2

Last time, you will recall, the Rocket Brigade had tracked baron Aristodemos to his palace on a remote planet. He had kidnapped plucky reporter, June Mayweather, and certainly had no-good in mind. During the battle with the baron’s mechanical servants, dashing captain Stagg Wallop was killed, and the team were unable to prevent the baron from having his wicked way with June and then escaping in his personal rocket.

Now, read on.

A reformed Rocket Brigade with a new leader in captain Cody ‘Uppercut’ Kirby had traced the baron to an inhospitable jungle planet. He was now reinforced by a squad of picked goons, armed to the teeth and protected from the environment. With June in tow, the baron needed to recover a necklace that (we discovered by using Mythic) would chain June in mind and body, and kill her within 40 days unless a hefty ransom was paid.

For this game we had a first test of the Raygun Gothic rules, using the d6 countback dice resolution system. In addition, we incorporated our favourite elements from other games, including randomly occurring monsters, and natives with changing allegiances. Figures were a mix of Eureka, Renegade, Pulp Figures, and some D&D pre-painted as well. The main terrain piece was a Paizo flip map of a swamp, supplemented with some walls to lift some of the ruins into relief. GW trees were dotted around as well, and I ringed the uncompleted tree armatures at the edges to give the impression of dead and rotten swamp vegetation. And just to further help tie the map into the underlying board, I dotted some Miniature World Maker rubber swamps to break up the hard edges of the card.

The baron and crew trekked along the path, pretty much ignored by the natives who lurked in the thick greenery. Every turn, we randomly discovered who’s side the natives were on, and for every group in the jungle we rolled to see if a crocodilic monster or giant snake appeared and attacked. Once engaged with a monster, we rolled to see if a feeding frenzy started and another appeared. The natives spent most of the game fighting off these beasts, though a couple managed to shoot their poisoned arrows at one unfortunate goon, who went down.

The rocketeers bounced over the undergrowth, and found themselves in the middle of the path, directly in front of the baron’s picked squad, who gunned a couple down. Bypassing the main group in one direction, and bouncing over them in another (while firing his Colt .45 as he zoomed over their heads), the rocketeers cornered the baron in the ruined building. A goon had been trying to retrieve the necklace (requiring 3 successes in difficult checks), but he dropped his shovel as Cody lived up to his nickname and sent him reeling.

But it was to no avail, the baron’s man defended admirably, recovered and then knocked out Cody, and the baron calmly pulled his raygun and vaporised another rocketeer entering by the other doorway. Then, June still in tow and presumably still enamoured of the villain, the baron fled.

Again he slipped the net, but he failed to retrieve the necklace. The rocketeers were almost wiped out, and the final act will need to be prosecuted by a different unit of the galactic law enforcement agencies.

Rescue June Mayweather – retro-future game

Greg and I played out a single scenario last night using our own house rules, based on Song of Blades and Heroes, for the Planetary Romance genre.

Formerly this had the working title of Flaming Plasma, and was designed to be a fairly generic set of science fiction rules. However, this topic is soon to be covered by an official Ganesha Games product, so we have pulled back from that big picture. Now the working title for the rules is Raygun Gothic, or possibly Zeerust, two industry terms to describe that style of science fantasy that ran from the turn of the 19th century through to about the mid 1960′s. It covers both the pulp adventure of the interwar years (including our science fantasy StarGate 1900) and also the Sword ‘n Blaster adventures in the mould of Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers. For my own tastes it does not include WWII, or Atomic weaponry. Instead, it assumes the fantasies of the interwar period are a fair, if romanticised version, of what the future becomes.

The scenario ran as follows: Baron Aristodemos had kidnapped plucky human June Mayweather and spirited her away to his place on the Jungle Planet for a secret ‘wedding’. Doubtless there were good political reasons for this, but as we all know, those alien dictators are obsessed by Earth girls.

Heroic Captain Stagg Wallop of the Space Brigade led his team of Rocketeers to the palace to rescue her. Bestial primitives marauded in the steaming jungle. They were fearful of outsiders and vengeful against the Baron, probably because of foul experiments, or destruction of their holy sites to extract Phlebotnium, or something like that. Guarding the palace was a squad of the Baron’s mechanical men, robotic helpers armed with stun rifles. The Baron had to achieve 6 successes in Very Difficult Quality checks in order to ‘persuade’ June that life with him wouldn’t be so bad (all this stuff happens off screen, of course, but we know what’s really going on).

The Rocketeers broke into separate groups and approached the palace on three sides, with the Captain running straight up the main steps. A quick zap with a stun gun slowed his enthusiastic rush, but not until he had plugged the door robot with his Colt 45, causing it to stand shaken and confused for the rest of the game.

The men made their way through the upstairs windows and burst into the upstairs landing to spray the robots with Thompson fire. In two memorable moments, a robot fell back over the balcony with the sound of a crashing piano, and another robot was heard through the wall by a Rocketeer who made a successful listen Quality check. So good was his estimation that he  sprayed through the wall to get the mechanical menace.

As the Rocketeers cleared the landing in well aimed machine-gun fire, Stagg kicked in the door to the master bedroom, only to discover that he was too late. June was snuggled against the baron in flagrante delicto, clearly convinced that life was just fine this way, thankyou. Unperturbed, the Baron pulled a raygun from under the pillow, and killed Stagg in a single devastating zap. Then, with June clamped to his side, he jumped into the escape chute and rocketed away in his private ship. This, again, required a Very Difficult Quality check, which the Baron managed to perform with ease.

Each turn we rolled to see who controlled the beast men. They swapped sides regularly, causing no lasting harm to anyone, but they did get into the palace, so I expect there will be an awful lot of cleaning up to do. We now have a recurring foe in Baron Aristodemos, and the Space Brigade now has the death of Captain Wallop to avenge. And will June ever come to her senses and be rescued? How can she live with the shame of what has happened? Or did what we think happened really happen at all?

Find out next time in Raygun Gothic. [Cue stirring music]