Episode: 2897
Title: HPR2897: Stardrifter RPG Playtest Part 03
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr2897/hpr2897.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-24 12:57:14

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This is HBR episode 2008-197 entitled, Star Drifter RPG Playtest Part 03, and in part of the series, tabletop gaming, it is hosted by Lost in Bronx, and in about 41 minutes long, and carry an explicit flag.
The summer is Lost in Bronx, and friends playtest are new, original RPG system.
Today's show is licensed under a CC hero license.
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Howdy folks. Fortunately, I need to bring some bad news that our good friend, 5150, has passed away.
Known to the rest of the world as Donald Greer.
Unfortunately, I have no information at this time as to how he passed.
I just know what happened over the weekend.
His friend, Brother Randy Hall, has been in contact with the Linux Logcast team, and 5150 was very involved over there as well.
They're planning their own tribute show, which obviously we put on here as well, and if you want to join that,
or send in some audio file, or send an email or messages or thoughts in tribute to 5150,
please do so. Links as I get them, and more information as we get them, will be available on the HBR website.
My thoughts and condolences go out too.
His friends, family, and deed is abd listeners and funds here on the metric.
Hello, this is Lost in Bronx, also known as David Collins Rivera, and this is Part 3 of our playtest
of the Star Drifter role-playing game.
Our players are Clat 2, Taj, Brynn, Brian, and of course myself as Game Master.
Last time, we continued reading the rules. This time, more rules, but then we do start on our adventure.
Let's get into it.
Okay, combat. Here we go.
Combat is divided into rounds, corresponding to one minute of time, initiative is determined as
follows. Now, the one minute thing that's up in the air too, but that's a holdover from the old days.
Initiative is determined as follows. All players roll 1D20 and add their characters decks.
High number goes first, then the next down the line, and the next.
The GM rolls 1D20 plus 10 for the opponent side and fits them into the initiative order.
And I guess depends on the size of the fight as to whether that's going to be individually for
each character, each NPC or opponent. Because if you only have 2 or 3, you can roll 1D20 plus 10
for each of them and fit them into the initiative order. But if you have a bunch of them,
that becomes impractical. And it might be easier to just say, your side rolls this and your side
rolls that and whoever gets first. That's going to be house rules, I guess. That's probably not
even worth a rule for it or ruling. I don't know. But anyway, during their initiative,
characters may move up to 7 meters, prepare a weapon or other piece of equipment,
and make an attack in that order. So you get 3 things that you can do in your initiative.
And I think that's also a holdover from dungeon raiders. They allow you to do a bunch of things
you know, when it's your round. And I think that works pretty good because it's a little more
explicit than the old D&D rules, which are actually pretty vague on stuff like this.
But this tells you what you can do and when you can do it. So I'm feeling like that may work
pretty well. Character may choose to do 1, 2, or all 3 of these things if they wish or none of them.
Skill and attribute checks, if any, occur in the movement phase of the round. But it is up to the
GM to arbitrate what can and can't reasonably happen in the middle of a fight. To attack an
opponent, the player rolls 1D20 and compares the result to their combat XXX skill score they're
using in the fight. If the character is using a combat skill, they are not trained in
all normal penalties apply. A successful role indicates a hit. Now, here's an optional
rule and I'm going to read it and then I'll tell you why I came up with it.
Optional, roll a saving throw versus physical to take half damage for any attacks that reduce HP
not stamina. Okay. Now the reason I came up with that is that if you go through the combat
rules, you'll see that there's nothing that takes into account your dexterity, your ability to dodge
an attack. That's what the saving throw would cover. And if you have put a bunch of good numbers
into your physical, you know, into the physical side of your stats, you will have a pretty good
saving throw for taking half damage on any attack. So somebody shoots you and you do, you know,
not your stamina, you're past your stamina at this point. Somebody shoots you, hits you,
your hit points, you get a saving throw for half damage just for taking damage like that.
Does that work? Does that seem like a crappy hack? Should there be a dex modifier somewhere in here?
Any thoughts guys? Hmm. What about opposing rules? Just something I'm throwing out.
You know, I did think of that and I thought it starts to get too complicated. Do you think
that's a complicated or an added complication? You know, I'm really good at shooting. You know,
I'm a sharpshooter or something like that. I'm, you know, my skill is so good. It becomes a task
differential between the two of us, right? That's a different mechanic than any other in the game.
It's not just a simple die role. You're actually rolling against another person's skill.
Do we, does that seem like it's in place here? Well, how do you determine a hit? I mean,
so let's say you're shooting at my character. What? And what is my defense? Is it just whatever the
armor I'm wearing or is there other factors? Exactly. Yeah, it is whether I, if I don't make my skill
role, it's a miss. And if you are wearing armor, it takes damage off of the attack. There is no
opportunity under these rules for you to avoid that attack. That's why I came up with the concept
of the saving throw for half damage. Okay. Does that seem right? Does it, does it seem like it
might work or does it seem wrong right off the bat? I mean, we can play it and find out. Yeah,
I guess we could play it out because this would be kind of the opposite of the stormtrooper effect
where they miss all the time. But if you have somebody that you that is has a decent shot,
you're going to get shot a lot. And there's no real defense unless you have the optional ruling.
Well, part of that is on purpose. And part of it is just a, you know, a side effect of all the
other rules up till now. But part of it is just you don't want to get shot. You know, in real life,
you know, and honestly, you know, we see it in the movies all the time. But in real life,
I don't care how dexterous you are. If there's a trained person with a gun, if they really know
what like a police officer or something like that, I don't care what kind of ballet sort of
jump it around, you're doing that none of that matters. You know, they're going to shoot your ass.
There's just, I mean, I've never even heard of that in real life as being an effect.
Do we want that much of a reflection of real life? I don't know. I don't know. I'm absolutely
up in the air about this particular rule. And I, I, in my mind, I think we need to play it to
find out. But I agree. Yeah. Okay. Damage caused by attack is either light, medium, or high.
This is all simplified. This is all very, very simplified stuff. Light is 1d4 plus 2,
medium, 1d6 plus 2, or high, 1d8 plus 2, depending upon the weapon type. So you have different
weapon types that do one of those three categories of damage. X-Mill characters, again, once again,
they gain plus one damage after first level and another plus one for every level thereafter.
This bonus applies whether they are skilled with the weapon type or not. That's an important point too.
So you may have penalties to hit, but if you hit, you're doing more damage with it simply because
your experience doing damage to people. Damage points are subtracted from the opponent's stamina
points first, followed by their HP. Stun. Certain types of combat and weaponry can cause a stun effect,
either in addition to or rather than a loss of stamina or HP. Stun characters are not helpless,
but they are greatly hampered. Movement, stat, and skill checks are all at half normal while the
stun effects are occurring. Saving throws, however, remain unaffected. Again, I didn't change that,
even though those are based on stats, I didn't want to change the saving throws because in my mind,
that's your last ditch effort. I don't want to be cutting into that simply because you're stunned.
It's your last chance to save yourself. So that's my thinking on that. Armor. Okay, armor is vital
in this game. If you go into a firefight without some kind of ballistic armor, you're going to die.
I'm just going to save it up front. Okay. Armor is classified by protective rating, PR, and by
structural rating, SR. PR refers to the amount of damage per attack that the armor protects its
wearer from, while SR refers to the total amount of damage the armor can take before it's
junk and has to be discarded. A character wearing a PR2 flak vest who gets shot for 4 HP only
takes two HP of damage, the vest having absorbed the other two points. That same flak vest might be
SR20, meaning it can only absorb a total of 20 HP before it loses its protective capabilities,
requiring it to be replaced. In this scenario, the vest goes from being SR20 to SR18. Players are
required to keep track of the structural rating of their character's armor. Okay. Is that too complex
a mechanic to expect people to do? I don't think we're going to play it. Yeah. Okay. I did in the
character sheets that I sent out in advance. I did have a place for the SR of the armor that you
might be wearing. So some armor can be combined with others such as ballistic shield. Now they're
probably really, I know there are ballistic shields in real life, but in my mind, this is a specific
type of thing in this environment. It can be used in, okay, this hat, I'll just read it. This has
the cumulative benefits of all the armor worn for the sake of calculating PR. Individual SR must still
be tracked for each being divided equally among all the armor pieces. That's when it starts getting
complicated. If you have three or four pieces of armor, well, two in this case, because we're starting
off with just a couple of different types, but you're getting shot by a bunch of different people,
you have to kind of calculate that. And I'm not sure how that would play out and might get too
complicated, but we can figure that out later. Some armor incurs depth penalties or penalties to
hit an opponent due to the awkwardness of it all. And these penalties are cumulative. So characters
with certain skills may be able to affect repairs and damaged armor at the GM's discretion. I don't
have an armory skill, but someone with general repair might be able to fix somebody's armor with a,
you know, a good role or something like that. Damage in healing. Okay, stamina. All damage comes
off the character stamina points first. These represent the character's ability to take a few hits
without slowing down and to shrug off a certain amount of damage like a true adventurer should.
Stamina points return at a rate of 1.4 every five minutes of rest. Characters that go below 0 HP cannot
regain stamina points until they are brought to 1 HP or better. I said go below 0 HP that should
be 0 or below. I could use a little clarity there. And then HP once a character's stamina points
are exhausted, all damage comes off of a character's HP. Should a character be reduced to 0 HP,
that character is unconscious. Extra damage from the hit that brought them to 0 is ignored.
They will continue to lose 1 HP per round down to a negative number equal to their constitution at
which point they are dead. If they are tended to by someone with the medical skill or by someone
without it who rolls very well, they will be stabilized but still unconscious. Further medical
attention or natural healing will be required to bring them to 1 HP or better at which time they
will regain consciousness. Under normal circumstances, HP returns at a rate of 1.24 hours of rest.
Certain drugs and medical procedures can mitigate the process of healing. That's where the
medical skill comes in. Okay, money and equipment. Now, I don't know if anybody heard the last
voice from the void episode, but I talked all about money in that one and I cribbed from that for
this. So in Star Drifter, the standard currency is the Q and that's the letter Q.
Character's start off with 2,000 Q with which to buy equipment, weapons and armor. Now remember,
the stationer gets double that. The stationer has 4,000 Q. They will probably not want to spend
all of it before the first game since there are other expenses to be met here and there.
That's just standard stuff. Okay, I have a very small list of gear. We have a calm unit that would
be equivalent to E-Jocks risk comp and his retinels and implanted stuff. That's what the calm is
and that's why it's more expensive than other types of stuff. And that can take any form that you
want. You just tell me what it's supposed to be like and then that's the way it is from this point
on. But more or less, they all do the same sort of thing and I'm not going to read through
what everything does. So there's a medical kit and that provides a plus on your medical skill
checks. You've got to have that if you're going to do any serious thing. But if you just have
the skill, you can affect some healing and stabilization on hurt people. A radio headset and that's
exactly what it sounds like. It's nowhere near as advanced as a calm unit. So that's a simple thing.
A science XXX field kit. Each branch of science has its own field kit. So if you've got
a science skill, you want one of these kits in order to take full advantage of that skill.
But obviously, there will be certain circumstances where maybe you don't need the kit just
having the knowledge is plenty. You know, that thing, whether that's a nebula or a black hole,
that's a perfect thing. You don't need a science kit for that. That's what you rely on your skill
for. So you don't necessarily always have to have the field kit in order to practice that skill.
But there are many cases where you will a simple back suit. That's one of those emergency back suits
that's described in some of the stories. And it's not a full exosuit. I don't have that listed here
because again, this is a very limited sort of thing and it's only what we need for the adventure.
Then a toolkit, the toolkit is a must have item for engineering XXX skill. Again,
just because you have that skill, it doesn't, you know, if you have one of those engineering
subskills, just have a toolkit. There aren't specialized toolkits for all the subskills. I think
that would get a little too complicated. So there's one toolkit, but you really kind of need to
have the toolkit to really use that engineering. I mean, if you don't have any tools, how are you
going to fix anything? How are you going to even test a lot of stuff? It becomes very difficult.
And that's it. So as I said, it was a very small list of equipment. Now we're into weapons,
a club. Now, I say this cost 10Q, but if you tell me you're just picking up a stick and then
you're going to use it as a club, you got that for free. Okay, you have a knife, we have a mini grenade,
and this is only like an explosive kind of, yeah, kind of just an explosive thing. I don't have all
the different subtypes in here just for this. It's a very limited list, but there will be in further
versions of the game. There'll be all the different kinds of explosives and grenades and stuff that
you'd want. Epistels is specifically a firearm, and I'm not getting into all the fancy different
ammunition. You know, again, I hope people weren't expecting to be shooting ape rounds and blowing
things up because that's not happening in this right off the bat. I don't have those rules yet.
A stunner, this is one of those disposable stunners that gets mentioned several times. A rifle,
it's a firearm like the pistol, it's just more powerful. And a sword, this would be a short sword
or something like a machete, that sort of thing. But finally, we're into armor. Okay, the first
is a ballistic shield. Okay, and this is a shield specifically designed to stop firearm rounds,
to stop bullets. It can take other types of damage too, but they're big and awkward. And these
things can't and they're specifically designed to be used with all sorts of firearms. So if you have
a rifle, you can still use this shield without any penalties. It's designed to do that. So it might
have a notch in there that you can fit your rifle into and you're able to hold the shield up in
front of you and the rifle is nice and secure. It's designed for that specifically. So the next one
is an extensible ballistic shield. And this one I did for you, Bren. And I don't know if you
remember, we go way back. Oh, yeah. You're the extensible shield from D&D. Yes,
Caribdus. Yes, Caribdus. And that was beautiful. I loved it. It got shot down, but I loved it.
And this one is kind of a riff on that, but I think it works pretty different. It is differently.
It's not a ring, obviously, but it's a forearm shield that straps your forearm and it's collapsible.
And you know, there's like a hand control and you can collapse it or open it. And it otherwise acts
just like the ballistic shield, but there are no penalties to this. The ballistic shield is
big and awkward. And there are decks penalties associated with it. The extensible shield, they're
not because you can collapse it when you need to, but it's more expensive. Next is a chest plate. This
is a hard chest piece of armor that goes over and there's that's kind of a standard one. There's
also a flat vest, also very common. There's a hard suit. This is basically like the full like
that's the chest plate and everything else. That's what the hard suit is. And that gives you extra
bonuses and things like this. This is not a vac suit. If you are only wearing a hard suit and you
go out in the vacuum, you will die, but a simple vac suit will fit over a hard suit. That's different
from Powered Armor, which is the next item. And Powered Armor does act like a vac suit. And it's
probably the finest armor you can get in the game so far. And that is the end of the rules.
Any questions, gentlemen? I was just going to make a pedantic thing. Depending on like the types
of firearms clip, maybe the wrong terminology. Yes, pedantic. Thank you. You were going to say
place I will. We'll just say a reload. How about that? Probably. Actually, it should be magazine magazine.
Well, not everything. I mean, if I have a revolver in this future time, it may not have a magazine.
You can have them. They have them now, but they didn't always. But no. Yeah. Okay. That no fence.
That sounds like a minor quibble. But I'll take it under advisement. Is there a armor missing
right off the bat that you think should be here? Or do you not like these at all?
They're pretty standard. Most of these exist today. The Powered Armor, maybe not, but everything
else does exist. Maybe not the extensible ballistic shield, but I wink and nod at that one.
That's actually my favorite. No, okay. Then we will say that this has been done. We have gone
through the rule set. Got my character ready to go based on the walkthrough and I had a question
and I've forgotten it. Okay. Oh, I know what it was. So if I took, I'm playing a Drifter and I took
heavy, or I may take, I guess, heavy weapons combat. I'm not really seeing any heavy weapons
in the rulebook. Is that is a rifle a heavy weapon? Or what do we? What do we? No, there actually aren't
any list there. And that's because I think it's quite frankly. Don't take it because you won't
need it. Okay. Adventure. Everything is, everything is tailored to the playtest. The basic rules have
been in further adventures. You'd have things like a chart pack or ground to orbit,
rocket launchers and things like that. That would all be heavy weapons, but you won't need one.
So don't waste that slot. All right. So cool. Thank you. Sure.
During that description, I revamp my character. So I'm going to send you another copy or just
you. I don't need to play with that. I trust you all.
We can cheat. We can cheat. However, do we want to roll up any characters as anybody need a
character? And do we want to go through that process right now? It might be a good thing to do,
actually. I mean, I think that's what we were supposed to be doing while we went through the
rulebook. So that's kind of what I was basing my feedback on as we were going. Okay. Well, that's
fine. Touch. Are you set with a character or yeah, I have one that I did. So I'm ready to go,
but if you want to build another one, we can. No, no, we don't have to. I mean, because at this
stage, we're going to find out whether they work or not while we're playing. Brian, are you set,
do you need to roll up a character or? I'm mostly put together here. I was just picking up some
equipment. I got. Okay. That's cool. That's fine.
A quick question. How expensive is it to live around? Because I know you said, don't spend all your
money, but that there are certain things that are very expensive. There are, but it depends on where
you are. And right now when the game begins, you guys are all in cold passage. So you buy what you
want, buy what you think you're going to need, but try to leave some behind because where you
end up will probably not be the cost of living won't be the same as where you were. It can vary
greatly. But as a general rule, anywhere from say two to three Q a day on up to 30, 40, 50,
depending on where you live and what's expected of you while you're there. But yeah, if we're ready,
we can get right into it. So just as a, let's see. All right. You all know each other. We'll establish
that. You all know each other and you are part of something called a company. Now, a company is
both a legal designator and a euphemism. On the one hand, they are a group of people who have created
an incorporated body for the purpose of conducting business. On the other, the business is essentially
being fixers, right? Many companies are a little more than mercenary groups that specialize in
industrial security, military situations or body guarding. There are other types as well,
focusing on nearly every specialization imaginable. Most, however, have a reputation or violence,
okay? So you guys are part of a company and I will leave it up to you to give yourself a company
name, but that will be important. So that's something you might want to establish right away.
What do you call yourselves? You're a group together. You don't have to have figured out what
your specialty is just yet, but you should have some sort of company name. So company, like you say,
it's not, it's not a corporation. It is, it's our, it can't, it is. It is. It's a, it is a legal
corporation, but it's also a euphemism because I feel, I feel like could we, could we quickly or
briefly introduce our characters? Because I don't know who even I'm working with. So it's hard to
imagine what a company might be. Of course. Yeah. Yeah. Please just tell everybody your characters name
the basic things about what they are, who they are, what your basic skills are, what your class is.
You would all know this information before any of this action begins. All right, I'll go first.
My name is Brynn Solar. I'm male 28. I am an ex-male pilot. Collective? Yeah. My name is Ranotep
and I'm a male. I'm 52. I'm a drifter. Grizzly old drifter. Okay, Taj. So I rolled up a character
named Dev who's probably around his mid 30s. He's a stationer and he basically lived his entire life.
And he seems like he's had a very good productive life of just talking a lot and easily his way
out of any situation that he doesn't like. He takes combat at all, almost always, but he can
usually figure a way out of things. Cool. Brian? I've got a male drifter who is 42 in Quigro. What's his name?
I'm sorry. Quigro. Quigro. Okay. It's you, I-G-R-O. Quigro. Wow. There's a name.
Okay, however you guys came to know each other, you know each other. And I think our company should
be called the Dodgers. Dodgers. Seconded. I like it. Is that work for everybody? That's what you're
going with? Yeah. Okay. The Dodgers. There you go. All right. Everybody comfortable with what
everybody can do. You take note of what everyone can do. Understand working together as a company is
what keeps you alive. So good enough. Okay. Sorry, I did you want to go through skills because I
basically a pilot and I do a bit of hacking as well. Okay. It'd be a good idea if you know
each other do. I'm going to throw situations at you. I don't really care if you got the skill or
not. If you know, it's up to you guys to get out of it. So knowing what you can do matters.
Tasha, I didn't catch your your class or your your your name is dev. What was your class again?
Station. Cool. I kind of imagine that he's probably somebody who's had a good racket going on
a station and maybe Brandon the luck and probably had tag along with you guys. I like that.
Yeah. So as a as a drifter, I've got exosuit engineering general combat rifle, social engineering
lying computers and survival urban. That's what I chose. I don't have a prime skill as a drifter.
Brian. My skills. I've got those engineering general repair,
social engineering, lying, stoking, this meadow go and hand to hand combat.
Cool. And I'm I've a pistol combat. Excellent. Which is my prime. Very good. Okay. And you guys
bought what equipment you wanted. You'll get another opportunity later even if you haven't. So
all right. So you guys were offered a pretty sweet security job in another star system.
Which one doesn't matter because when you get to dryer system, a high dock on the edge of
dryer system, you get woken up. All of you. And there's a message. Basically, they wake you up
and they say, look, um, the rest of this passage has not been paid for. And you got an emergency
message here. So you you better check it out. And when you do, it's basically from your employer
saying, yeah, see, we've had some company shakeups and all our projects have been canceled. Sorry.
You guys are left high and dry. Man. You are on. Yeah, that blows. You guys are on a high dock
called jump out, tie dock zero, one zero, also known as jump out. You're in dryer system.
Dryer system is a, um, it's a mining slash industrial sort of place. It's very, very busy.
Their station maltees is a large rims day right on the edge of the system.
There are no major settlements in into the system, but there's an awful lot of work being done
in there. So you won't see a colony station in there, but there's a, there are mining outposts.
There are all sorts of things. It's a slightly grimy place. Everything, you know,
looks like people are coming and going all the time. I don't know if you've ever been at
new work airport, but new work airport as opposed to something really nice. It's kind of like
that. It's very functional. It's very functional and kind of old. They do a lot of raw mineral and
metal work in this thing, but there's also an awful lot of used ships here. And that's primarily
as a result of all the beating that the mining work and the industrial work in this star system.
So a lot of people come here to pick up old parts and to pick up old ships or hulks.
Sometimes they'll buy a whole old starship or an old boat just to tear it apart for its parts.
And there's an awful lot of that here as well, but it's a side effect of the major industry.
This is a, a kind of a busy crude sort of place, but fortunes are being made here. So there's
also a lot of money in this place. So here you are. I dock 010 jump out. There are some motels.
There's like cube motels, some of those cubicle motel type of things here. There are restaurants
and stuff like that, but they're all kind of shabby. This is not a place where people live.
This is a place where people hang out for a while. This is the truck stop of the galaxy.
This is the truck stop of this part of this system. There are places like this everywhere.
And you probably as a drifter have seen many of them. So did I understand correctly?
Or are we not on the ship anymore? Did we, did we disembark and we're, we're on a space station?
Or are we on the ship? Did anyone else understand that? I took it to be ship or a station.
Yeah. Same here. Or at the high dock. Yeah. Jump out has large temporary storage facilities
for freestube passengers. Basically, you weren't awoken on the ship you were on. You're awoken
right here on the high dock. We were. Okay. Got you. You were. Basically, you get moved by like
freight when you're frozen down. They freeze you on a place like this, stick you on a ship,
pull you out frozen and wake you here. Many of them do. Some of the higher end ones wake you up
when you're there. But most of them, no, you're moved like freight and you're stacked like industrial
parts in a warehouse. So when they wake you up, you just see stacks and stacks and stacks of
people and tubes all frozen down. And they're all tagged and they're going someplace else like luggage.
They're all being shifted around. All right. So I feel like it's probably sensible to go get
something to eat first or or or maybe yeah, I guess probably get something to eat.
Agreed. And then maybe try to find some some work or some way off this place. Yeah. Yeah.
Try to find like the dive bar on the station or something so we can try to hit up people.
Yeah. There's there's some taverns and things that you can get some cheap food.
Essentially in this place, let's see, I'll give you some prices here. First off, all your weapons
and armor have to be left in storage lockers while you're on jump out. So obviously when they
wake you up, you don't have this stuff on you. But they don't confiscate it, but it has to be kept
locked up. Locker rentals cost one Q per week. It's payable at the end. You don't have to pay it
now. But it has to be locked up there. When you go to leave jump out, you can take it with you.
No problem. But you can't walk around with your weapons or your armor and you look around. Nobody
has any. Nobody has any on there or they're not supposed to. Now of course, if you're
feeling like it, you can try to hide these sorts of things. What about my toolkit?
Like I got a toolkit for. Oh, that's fine. Yeah. You see tons of people walking around with
tools. You know, I mean, it's that sort of environment. Yeah. Okay. So I'll strap that to my back
or whatever. But yeah, I'll leave my stuff here. Okay. My grenade and my rifle.
I went to like a locker for my shielded pistol. Okay. Actually, yeah, actually, so
does it look like they're going to be like there are checks? Like I mean, my rifle would be
pretty obvious. But if I just if I had my toolkit and I accidentally had a grenade in the toolkit,
does it look like anyone's going to check? It's a tool. It's a tool.
Well, in some stations, they do and some they don't. This one, they do seem to have customs cops
waiting and customs cops tend to look at they're looking for smuggling or contraband and stuff.
But if they see things like weapons that aren't supposed to be there, that's a flag too.
There are some of these guys there. Do you want to go see what kind of job they're doing?
How do you want to work this? Yeah, I want to kind of yeah, I want to scout out like,
yeah, what what it looks like. Okay, you can saunter over there as nonchalantly as you want.
Can I get a intelligence check? That would be a die roll for your intelligence.
All right. That's a 10. My intelligence is 12. So I beat it by two if I'm if I'm correct.
Yes, you you are correct. It takes you a few minutes to watch, but you notice that these guys
seem to be picking and choosing the people that they pay special attention to. In other words,
families with kids and they like they more or less just let them walk through without checking much.
Shifty looking characters, they get special attention and if they're hiding anything,
they're going to find it. All right, I'm going to do we look shifty?
Yeah, exactly. Well, you tell me. You tell me, you know, when you go up there,
perhaps a social engineering role might get you right through or lying or maybe a basic
charisma role. It's up to you. Yeah, I'm going to toss my grenade in my toolkit and then I'll just
make myself look as just as oily and as workery as possible. Like all the other characters running
around non non-descript. Exactly. Yeah. Okay. By doing that and specifically telling me you're doing
that, they don't pay you much attention and you get through pretty pretty easily. They do a cursory
look at your toolkit, but they don't they don't spend a lot of time. You do have to go through an
ident check when you walk in so they know you're not from here, but that doesn't mean on the off
a lot. Some people have registered their residences could be on the other side of the galaxy,
but they work here all the time. I mean, so they don't go necessarily by that, but they they can tell
just when you when you do your ident and you go through, they can tell you just arrived. You don't
live here officially that much they know. So sure. Anybody else want to try anything or do anything?
Otherwise, you guys can get right through. If you aren't actually hiding anything that they would
consider, you know, their boat and there's not going to be any problem getting through this.
How do they feel about knives? It depends on the size and the context. If you had like four or
five of, you know, work knives strapped to your front like they were you were going to chuck them
at people. They would have a problem with that clearly, but if you had one stuck at the bottom
of your toolkit, it might look like it's part of the toolkit, depending on this sort of overall
as I say, it looks like they're stopping people who look like they might be trouble and digging
through their stuff. Do you look like you might be trouble? No. No, that was not at all. Do you have
the lying skill? I don't know if he has to roll for that, but that was not convincing. What are your
figures? 42 year old drifter to look up? I think they're probably going to look at you at least
twice. Are you trying to get us a knife? Well, it says the one weapon that my guy did have,
and I mean, that's what I do with my knife and my card nowadays. It's in my toolbox. It's not
a knife. Yeah, but nowadays you get into fire fights and stuff because if you do, I doubt you'd
leave your knife in your toolbox. Oh, not too often. Yeah. So are you telling me you're actually
going to try to get through with the knife? That's basically. No, I don't think I need my knife.
Okay. All right. Then you guys have a possibility that I could walk up and like start to distract
with that be something we could do to see if he can sneak it in if he wanted to. You could try that,
but you know that many of these places have hidden sensors. You don't know for a fact if this
place does. You've never been here before. Right. So this is like the TSA. They it depends. You
don't necessarily know what's forbidden and something like a knife. It says knife, but you see some
guys walking through that have pocket knives and little like holders on their belts and stuff.
These are working class guys engineers and mechanics and things like that. You see some of these
guys carrying knives, but they don't look like they're combat knives. Yeah, that's what I was kind
of picturing that I had. I think I'm going to stick it on my hip and just go walking through plain
site. Okay. I am going to roll a die to see what happens with my new die roller. Listen to this.
One of the guys stops you and he says, uh, what's that? Any points to the knife?
I go. Oh, that's my knife. Why are you carrying a knife? That looks like a knife you'd stick
somebody with. No, that's a knife for cutting my sandwich. Your sandwich? Oh, your sandwich. Um,
okay. Do you have any kind of social engineering or lying skills? Or do you wish to make a
die roll? I do have both of it. Okay, which one do you want to try to use? The social engineering.
Okay, you're going to try to, you know, you're going to be friendly. You're going to joke. You're
going to laugh about this. Please make a die roll. Okay, that's, uh, the 20.
Yes, it is equal to or less. Oh, equal to or less. Well, I didn't, I did not cut that one.
He's like, listen, he finds you, you know, he laughs at your little guests and he smiles and says,
listen, I'm sorry, you can't come in with that. You know, I mean, if I knew you, if I knew you
lived around here, it might be a different story, but I can't let you do it. My partner here is not
going to let me, you know, I'm sorry. You know, it's, it's out of my hands. I'm sorry. All right,
I'll stick it in a locker. Thanks. Appreciate that. No problem at all, buddy. So you have to stick it
in your locker, but you didn't get in trouble. Sometimes these guys, if they don't like you and you
know this from traveling around, if they don't like you, they will arrest you right on the spot.
It depends on where you are and who they are and how you behave. But you're through. You're into
jump out, which is kind of a grimy place, but not too bad. It's not horrible. It's just busy
and lots of working class folks. There are lots of local guides to businesses and things like that.
And you can easily find a a tavern slash restaurant. That's no problem at all. Is that what you guys
want to do? Yep. Yeah, I think so. I think we'll go in. Yeah. Okay. It's a good place to start. Yeah,
you find a table and you guys are sitting there. You get served unless you're doing something crazy
for the entire evening and a meal and everything else. We'll just say one cue. We'll cover it for
each person. So, okay. And we'll just that will be the only expense you'll have here. And Marla,
I'm assuming you're not going to make a night of it. Aside from the locker, you said, right? Yeah,
aside from the locker, but you don't have to pay that right away. Yeah. So, you know, maybe you'll
make some money before that. Who knows? Yeah, I'll I want to ask like the waitress or the waiter
or whatever we have the server. Yeah. I want to and this in this. Yeah. There's somebody here.
There's there's there's basically you make your orders either through some sort of wireless
device you have or on a display that's right there, but a physical person does bring it to you.
Yeah, I want to say, Hey, buddy, I want to we just got stuck up for a job and we're wondering
if there's a place around here where people pick up extra work that you know of.
Lots of people pick up extra work. I think we're hiring. You want to you want to
10 bar? No, I was thinking more something a little bit more technical than that.
Well, excuse me. What's all put out?
Oh, it's just my skill set. You know, I don't know nothing about tending bar being nice to people
as you can probably tell, but machines I can usually fix. Well, there's lots of machines. You're
in a machine. It's a space station. All right. That's a good tip. Maybe I'll ask around to see if
people need me need people to to tend the space the space station machinery. Thanks. Yeah, no problem.
It's free. Looks like he didn't like you for some reason.
No, I didn't like him either. That's okay. You just better watch yourself.
Next time our characters get a lead on a job, but will they nail it? Oh, you'll have to tune in
and find out. See you then.
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