Episode: 2922
Title: HPR2922: Stardrifter RPG Playtest Part 08
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr2922/hpr2922.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-24 13:19:18

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This is HBR episode 2922 entitled Star Drifter RPG Playtest Part 08, and in part of the series,
tabletop gaming, it is hosted by Lost in Bronx, and in about 33 minutes long, and Karim
and exquisite 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.
This episode of HBR is brought to you by AnanasThost.com.
Get 15% discount on all shared hosting with the offer code HBR15, that's HBR15.
Better web hosting that's honest and fair at AnanasThost.com.
Also known as David Collins Rivera, welcome to part 8 of the Star Drifter role playing game
playtest. Today we have Taj, Brynn and X1101. Last time I was still confused by my own rules.
The player characters got into a bit of a firefight with some unknown individuals who were probably
not space hobos. They were able to retreat to their rented boat and they were able to cut off
any immediate pursuit. So let's jump right into this episode. You guys are able to be a hasty
retreat, and if you leave the exterior door open and not shut it, this thing can't be cycled
again. Yeah, we'll do that. Okay, you make it back to your little boat,
able to close the exterior door on the little boat, cycle your airlock on the boat, and you're safely
on your boat. Well guys, what now? That went well. That is definitely one way to look at it, yes.
I didn't die. That went well. Nobody died. Nobody died. Got close.
So how do I recover?
All right, healing is essentially time. We'll do it. First off, you can't heal any stamina
until your hit points heal back up. Normal healing 24 hours of rest, otherwise someone with a
med kit can heal you up. I have Medico and a med kit. Okay, then you are able to do that. Let's
let me go to rules for that. I also have that. I have rules. Okay. All right, so who have
figure out between the two of you who's got the better one and the worst one try it first,
then the better one try it. Well, my medic is 12. Okay, if he's successful, then there's nothing
more you can do, but if he fails, the one with the better one can then try. Mines 18, so I think
that's worse. No, it's better. No, that's your skill level. Yeah, I'm sorry, yes, it's. Yeah,
it's not what you rolled. It's what your skill level is. Okay, so I should try it first. Yeah,
I'm at 18. Okay, you try it first. Okay. Yeah. When I have a med kit, which gives you plus two,
yes, on the hit points. So roll a skill check, successful skill check, Medico.
It says plus two for skill checks and plus one hit points. Correct. So whatever your skill is,
add two to that right now. So that would put me to 14. I rolled a nine. Okay, no problem. Now,
roll a 1d4. Two. Two plus one for the med kit itself. So that's a total of three hit points that
you get back immediately. Okay, so do I have to get all my hit points back to stop losing them?
No, you are, you are not losing, were you at zero? No, oh no, no, no. Zero hit points,
not stamina, then you're not losing anything. So you just get these points back and tomorrow,
someone can try to heal you up again or you can rest and just get it back normally.
Depending on what you guys want to do. So you want to go, you can go right back in again right now
if you want to. I think we should probably rest to come up with a game plan for sure. Remember,
you do have two weeks to pull this off. Oh, two weeks minus a day and a half at this stage,
because a whole day passed and it took time to get out here. But you do have time before your
contract expires. Yeah, that was really bad luck all around. Well, we got provisions so we could
just hang out in this boat. Couldn't we just hang around here? Yeah, yeah, you could. You've
rented the boat for a week. So you can hang out here. This thing has more than enough air and
water and life support that amount of time more than enough. You could stay out here a month at
least. I'll go ahead and unjam that frequency and listen. Okay. Once you do, it's silent while,
but then you do hear someone pop on hello, hello, hello, anybody? Anybody? Hello?
And bit by bit that come back. It's almost as if maybe they switched to another channel.
Some of them did. Some of them didn't. The idea being that if a channel was jammed,
maybe there was a protocol in place to switch to another channel, but not all of them did.
So if some of them are on the other channel, can I figure out what that one is?
Yeah. Oh, you can basically roll a dive for that one as well.
The minuses. Do you have a, what is that? I was 17. I rolled a 16. Yes, you just did it.
You're able to find they have two channels as far as you can tell. It's probably not more than that.
Whoever has the comm probably can set any channel they want arbitrarily, but these two seem to be
the only two that they have. And if you had the gas, you think maybe the comm is acting as some
sort of local network, but yeah, you can listen in. Okay. Okay. How much time do you guys want to hang
out here? First off, the amount of time will determine how much you learn. Well, I know both run
and I need to heal up. So first off, if you only took stamina, you get one stamina point back for
every five minutes of rest. You're just shrugging it off. You're a hero. You're shrugging it off.
Okay. If it went down into hit points, that will need to be either healed with the medical skill
or through 24 hours of rest for a point. And if you heal up to your stamina, you can then rest and
get the rest stamina back. Yeah, I still need two more hit points. I only need one to where to get
my hit all my hit points back. So the 24 hours, do you automatically get a hit point back?
If you're resting, yes, you do. So I could just rest and be back to normal tomorrow, because after
that comes back, you know, whatever, I had six stamina, that'd be 30 minutes. I wouldn't be back to
normal. Yeah. Brin, tomorrow, you'll get a point back. You'll be within a point. Someone can heal
you. Even the basic medical will give you that point back. And then it's just an hour or two or
whatever few minutes to get your stamina back. So if you guys wanted to hang out for a day,
within a day, and then another application of the medical skill, you should all be up to
snuff as far as I know, right? No one else was hurt, I don't think, right? Nope. That is a thing you
can do. If we want to do that, I would like to search the ship during that time, see if there's
anything I can improvise some explosives out of the ship. You mean the boat? Yes, I'm sorry, the boat.
Yes, the ship is out there and you can search that too if you want to go out there in your
basic suit. Do we want to stay a day or do we want to wait maybe two days and kind of listen to
the traffic and maybe come up with a plan based on that? I think we should do the what you just said.
And then, you know, if we want to, we can go scavenge from the surface of the ship and see what we
can come up with. I was just going to search the boat, not the ship, the boat for anything that I
put together to make things go boom. So I think what we finally came down to is we're going to take a
day to rest and monitor and then we're probably going to take another day to monitor just to see
two days kind of get a full rotation to see what we can find out. So during that two days, I want to
scrounge around and see if I can make anything in the general likeness of a bomb. Okay.
And engineering general, that is the closest thing I've got. I would think that an engineer
probably could take some sort of pressurized canister of something. We'll say it's not oxygen,
because you probably want to conserve that. Probably can get a backup of a pressurized canister of
something that could go off like a grenade, one of the listed grenades. Say that that's a
possibility, but I will need your engineering role.
Dirk grenades listed. Oh, many grenades. Oh, I guess I know what else I'm buying.
Hey grenades, they are there. However, I'm not going to ask you for your role right now,
I'm going to ask you for it when you go to use it. How's that?
So I might have a bomb and it might work the way I wanted to.
You've got something. You've got a canister with duct tape on it. So that's what you've got.
If it works properly, it should be just fine. It should stand in for a nice grenade there.
So there you go. You made yourself a grenade. How about that?
It's actually hoping to make something with some kind of timer on it, but if what we can do
is a grenade, what we can do is a grenade. It might be possible to do something with a timer.
That I'll tell you what, I'll give you a second role for that and that you will be able to tell
right away if that's going to work. You don't know about the bomb until you try it, but the time
or part you can test over and over and over until you get it right. So that you can roll right now.
If you give me a plane thing, we'll say there's who knows. I mean, there's tons of equipment on
board, something like this and you can cannibalize something that would have some sort of timer display
on it that you probably do. So give me a straight up engineering role. If you're able to manage that,
then you're able to do it to your own satisfaction. So after some fiddling, I do seem to get what
appears to be a timer down correctly. Okay. So engineering is 18. I rolled a 12. Yeah.
It's no problem at all. You got it. So guys, I made something that I think is bomb and it's got a
timer on it. I was thinking we could put that back the way we came in and then go in somewhere else.
You know, the whole distraction thing. It's not a bad idea. I wonder what we hear over the two days,
maybe that'll help make a decision. Over the course of that two days, first off, I'm not going to
have your bother rolling. You'll end up healed up. Everybody who has hurt, you're fully healed.
I know it's downtime. We're not worried about that. In that whole time, you never, you know,
using the sensors, Bren, you'd be able to tell on using the both sensors, no one ever comes out.
Certainly no one shoots at you or you don't even get any sensors like a sensor wash. You don't get
anything like that either. No radar, no anything that you can tell, not that you have super sensitive
equipment on this boat, but even standard equipment doesn't show any kind of activity from this
ship. So that's one thing. Listening to this chatter, I assume you put it on loudspeakers so
everybody can hear both channels at the same time. That wouldn't be hard, you know, throughout the
ship. Everybody's listening to this. Over the course of time, it becomes clear this is another
company. And like you guys, they've clearly been hired. They're under a contract. There's a
lot more of them than you. There is a woman who's in charge. You hear her voice again and again.
And I'll give you her name because it is mentioned. Her name is Jillian. That's all anyone
ever refers to her as. She does appear to be in charge and she's kind of a martinette. She's
constantly berating these characters to work harder, to do their jobs, whatever it is, whatever
job she gets. She snaps at them a lot. You get the distinct impression that they are searching for
something. Something small. And they have been here for quite a while. In fact, sent days.
No, not quite. I was going to say. Yeah, nobody's grumbling about leaving just yet.
Yeah, but you get the impression they have been here for a while, possibly weeks. And which could
account for the amount of disassembly that you have seen. What it is, the looking for, you're not sure.
You just know that it's got to be very small. And they have not found it. There's a lot of
speculation as to who you guys are. You hear chatter back and forth. They think your security hired
by the dealership here. You get the impression that they were surprised when those guys walk through,
started carrying their weapons as a matter of course after that. And now they're pretty certain
that those guys have sent some security in to get rid of them. So they're thinking time is
of the essence here. So she keeps screaming at them, screaming sometimes at them, get their
effing jobs done. That is what you hear. Do we get a sense of, do they ever report what areas have
and have not been searched or where they're looking or anything like that? You hear different people
talking about where they are at the time, but that does seem to vary over the course of time. They
mentioned specifically what sections they have worked on. But you do, you think if you're listening
at a particular point, you might be able to figure out where everybody is because they do report
into each other. The one thing you do note is that they have welded that airlock shot. And
Gillian has ordered the other air locks to be welded shut as well. But that is going to take some time.
This is on the second day. This is after an awful lot of confusion and deliberations. This is on
the second day after everybody's feeling good. Hey folks, our contract does say we have two weeks
to get them out. So there isn't any reason other than the fact that we've had some words and
more importantly bullets exchanged. So there's no reason we can't just let them take it. We
technically do our job. And we don't have to shoot more semi-honest folk making a semi-honest
living just like us. Everybody rolls is your intelligence equal to or less.
Okay, I fail. Margot fails. Success. Oh and I altering my ballistic shield.
Margot was asleep with a 19. The one success is the only one that matters really,
ultimately. I rolled a two. The two. That's great. Actually, that's really good.
Anybody who is paying attention and of course you'll inform the others,
they a date keeps getting bantered around as to their deadline. It's a week after yours.
They have three weeks to finish their contract. Only have two.
Where answers that? Okay. So what? So you said that they talked about they welded, they welded
20 shot. They welded 20 shot and they're talking about welding the rest. Have they come back and say
that okay, 11 shot or 11 stun, 8 stun, anything like that? She has been telling people to start
working and she has told a couple of guys apparently working in engineering to work on
ones in engineering, which would be you see emergency air locks on either side of the four section
there. It's way in deck one C, the top section. Any indication of where they're staged?
Well, those guys have to be there. No, no. Clearly it's they're working there.
No, I mean, we're jilly into staged. Does she ever say? No, she seems to be moving around.
She seems to be moving around supervising, you know, micromanaging type, you know, the exact kind
of manager we all hate. Okay, I'm thinking we should link we should obviously we're not going to
get back into 20. I think we should go to the aft and enter in the engine room if we're planning
to re-enter that is. I kind of like Lyle's idea to a certain extent, like we could go in and be like,
look, here's the deal. If you guys are gone in two weeks, our job is done. You're like us. Let's
help you find the thing and let's get this done. Okay, if I say we don't go in and say that I say
we contact them and do that. Yes, we do that. They know we're listening in. Yeah, and we could
totally they probably know something because one of their channels went scrambled and we could
totally play up who we are and what we're doing. Like we don't have to be 100% truthful and we could
also have a backup plan. Like we do have a bomb. Maybe we could use somewhere. We have we have
a thing that might be a bomb. Well, especially like 20, we left the outer door open. So if we put
that bomb on the inner door that they welded, I mean, welds don't matter when you're blowing
everything apart, we could totally depressurize that whole part of the chip, which would make their
life more miserable. Unless they've already searched that whole section. That's true. I'm
game that if you if you want to talk and see if we can work out some kind of deal where, you know,
we just want the ship and not whatever's in there and we'd be willing to help. Let's give it a
shot. Do we know enough from their comms to maybe try to deduce through their working for
like what company they are? They call themselves block incorporated. We're blocking. I don't want
to hear about failure. You know, that sort of space. Can I do a check since we are connected to
the network through the ship? See if we've heard anything. Okay, you may do that. That's a regular.
Okay, I rolled a 12 and my skill is a, oh my god, a school.
17, so I made it. Unless there are minuses. There are no minuses in this. This is a basic,
you know, like an internet check, you know, you're googling these people effectively.
You see them listed and they have a web presence here in this system, probably with some sort of
agent or agency of some kind. That's a little shady, maybe, but that often is this sort of work
often is. You can hire them and there's a list of skills, one of which is retrieval.
Because of the sorts of things they specialize in. And a Gillian bank raft listed
presidents of the company. Would I know anything about her through bureaucracy?
It's very unlikely, but you may try it. You may, I'll give you a role. You can go, but it's very
unlikely. Did you write anything for this particular character? No, but I know who hired her.
And that's where you may know something about either her or this company.
I have a 12. I rolled a nine. No, you never heard of this company, but that's not unusual.
It's a big galaxy. So who wants to do the talking? We have a guy who was supposed to specialize in
that. Yeah, but the people who say they specialize in that never actually specialize in that.
Just keep that in mind. That's you. I know. That's what I'm saying.
You got on this team by convincing us you could talk to people.
But if your job is convincing people stuff that that seems right. So do your job.
I let my guns do my talking.
So do we want to go at it where I think helping them search probably isn't the best idea,
because I don't get them anything's going to make them suspicious.
Not we took some potshots at them, but maybe if we if we tell them that we just need or want the
ship with them off of it, I don't know. What do you get? I don't know. Yeah, I have no desire to
actually help them search, but aside from that, as long as they leave before the end of the two
weeks, our interests do not have to conflict here. Okay. Do we want to be honest about who we are?
Do we want to try to lie and maybe get more? I don't think we have to say who we are at all,
just say that we are we are tasked with getting this ship ready for sale. And that we can give
them a deadline of a day before ours to complete their business. Otherwise, we'll have to get
heavy with them or whatever. I don't know. Whatever you guys think of.
You know, why don't we make them an offer that can't refuse? Did you bring those pipes?
All right, let's call Jillian. Okay, that's not hard. Now that you've isolated the channel,
you can break in at any point. Just to let you know, by the time you do that, one of the guys
working in engineering claims that he has sealed one on the starboard side. So at least one of
the other airlocks has now been welded. They don't have any interest in using those.
That's ominous. Okay, so what do you say?
Hey Jillian, how are you? Who's this? Wow, way to be creepy.
I wasn't like. You should have just broken in and ver- yeah, started heavy breathing.
Who is this? Hey, no need to get upset. I don't just have it a polite conversation. We've been
listening to your your comms and wanted to approach you with just some information. Possibly
a way for us to both get what we need out of this situation.
But you're the tough boys that came in the other day. What do you want? Well, we're supposed to,
we were we were hired to take the ship and and get everybody off of it within a certain amount
of time. Now we understand from the intelligence that we've gathered by being here that you're
you're looking for something and it seems as though as soon as you find that something you you're
more than willing to leave the ship and we just want to try to make it to where we can get what we
need and you can get what you need and we can all walk away from this with with everything we were
all promised. You're not getting a piece of this. You want any of this? You got to fight us for it.
You come on in here and you talk to me that way. I'll put a bullet in your head.
Whoa, no fighting now, aren't we? I mean, is that how you run business? Is that how you've been
profitable? Block ink has been making a profit since day one and I do it on the blood of my enemies.
Are you my enemy? Talk to me now. I called you trying to set up a deal so we wouldn't have to be
enemies. We've got a little piece of business that we have to solve here. We've been working
very hard and you are not getting a piece of it. If the piece that you're talking about is the
thing you're looking for, I'm not interested in that. Not even a little bit. Oh, yeah, sure. That's
how you knew all about it. I don't know all about it. I know enough about it to know that it's
something that you haven't found yet. Yeah, what do you know? What do you know? Talk to me. Tell me
what do you want from me? I get enough boys to cut down any amount of people. Who am I talking to
anyway? I'm not deliberately to discuss that right now because that's it doesn't put me in a good
position. Why would I put myself out out there for you? I'm trying to make a deal to
get you what you want. I don't know why you're being so hostile towards me. Maybe because you want
I mean, I can literally make a phone call make this ship disappear. I've kept your cover. Oh,
is that if that if that's what you can do, then why don't you go ahead and do it? Now you don't want
that. I don't want that. This is where we're working. That makes this my place of business. You come
in and start shooting at my boys. That's not happening again. You are not coming near us. I'm
actually not talking about coming near you. We're wanting to give you the space for you to do your
job. Well, then go away. Well, our contract says we can't do that. So we're kind of at the
impasse. I don't care about your contract. I have a contract and I will fulfill it. You don't
seem to be doing very well at it currently. Well, maybe because people keep coming in and bothering
us. She does have a point. I have a man down. He's of no use to me now. He's been shot of really bad.
Thanks for that. He wants to put some lead into you guys. Well, he actually did. Let's keep it
real. He did. Neither one of us got out of this exchange unscathed. We're trying to keep that from
happening. What do you want? I put it on the line. What do you want? I told you because I am not
giving you a piece of this job. Like I said, don't want to piece your job at all. But I do have to
I have a deadline and I'm sure you have a deadline as well. I want to see if we can make it work to
where we both meet our deadlines on time. What's your deadline? I go ahead and tell her that I don't
know exactly what it is. Yeah, what's it's yeah, at this point, it's about 13, not 13. It's about
11 days at this point. She's like, well, I got a full week beyond that. If this has been any
indication, I'm going to need it. Look, we are really down to the wire here. I cannot be bothered
with you people. You come in here again. I'm telling you, we're going to shoot you. We're going to
kill every one of you. I've told you more than one time. I'm not interested in coming on your
ship. That's not a thing I want to do. All I want to do is make sure you can get what you do need
and I can get on there after you leave. That's it. That's all I want. That's fine because at the end
of my deadline, if I haven't found what I'm after, that's it. My job is done when we don't get paid.
All right. Can you can you begin to see how desperate this is? Now, I just I understand one
of our company had our company has been putting all the money up front for this. All right. We had a
little bit of of advanced money to handle travel to the system, but that was it. The rest of this
operation is entirely on us. We are going to be in a hole if we don't come through. Hey,
why don't you work out some way? See if she would allow us to help out because she could either
accept or help and try to get things done or she could have us fight against her. And that's
just the hard fact of business. Yeah, or at least just I'll just say this. I ask her is I
understand I run a business. You run a business. Talk to each other's business people. Look,
I want you out because that helps me. It also helps you. Like, what can I do to help you get what you
need so I can get what I need? You can come up with what we're looking for. We're looking for a
data block. It's about the size of my fist. Is it something I would be familiar with? Yeah. Yeah,
everybody everybody in this future is familiar with data blogs. They can they can come in anything
ranging from even microscopic size all the way up to well, not much bigger than a fist. A fist
is a big one. That's a lot of data or highly encrypted sometimes military or just really secure.
You can civilian data blocks can be very, very secure if you're willing to pay for nice one.
Their space flash drives, Todd. She's talking about sweet. It's yeah, yeah, something that holds
beyond any I mean essentially storage is no problem for data storage sizes. It's just not an
issue in this future. So this thing can either hold all the data or maybe it's just got extra
protection to it. Sometimes these things are armor coated and that makes them big. That's sort of
thing. So but she told you what about the size of her fist. She says well, I can understand why
you're having problems because it's a big old chip and that's a little thing you're looking for.
But I don't I don't know how I can help you come up with it, especially since we've already said
you don't want us on the ship and and I I understand that and I can I can live with that. But I need
if there's a way for me to help you find this, I'm willing to do it. We were just rolled a
dial and she thinks about it and thinks about it and thinks about it and says all right, well,
you don't come on the onboard the ship. We're agreed, right? I think that's an agreement we can both
come to. Okay. The one place we have not looked yet is outside. We were told early on that that was
very unlikely that this thing was secreted outside. It was thought that this person probably didn't
have an opportunity to do that without drawing attention. We were told not to bother with that,
but we haven't looked out there. You're outside. You look outside. If you see something,
you let us know. We'll go get it and then we'll leave. If you take it, we will hunt you down.
I am not joking about this. Is this something that we're going to have to like have a hard suit
to do or is this something that we could just do from the boat? Depends on how close you want to
fly with this boat. Hey, Brent, how you feel about giving this thing? How good's your piloting
skills there, Brent? I'm really taking a shot, but I'm thinking that since we have a couple
that we go back and we get some real suits, I don't know how much real suits are. They might be
expensive. Is that something that they would have on board the ship? You have emergency suits here.
I'm thinking it might be, maybe ask and see if they have any and maybe they'll put it in the airlock
shoot it out for us or something. I don't know. You didn't see any. The airlock you were in,
it was all torn apart. There probably was a space for them there, but there weren't any in that one
airlock. So on this space boat, how good are the scanners? They won't be able to find something like
that stuck on the side of, you know, basically it's a metal block on the side of a metal ship. You're
probably not going to be able to scan for something like that. There are too many protrusions and,
corners in this and that you would never be able to find that with the scanners on this ship,
without very specialized equipment, very unlikely with the scanners on their own visually,
possibly. So what do you think, guys? Swing around the outside, see if we can see it and
if we have to go out in the soft suits and see, you know, confirm it and then tell them where it's
at. Seems reasonable to me. So how good are the computers on the ship? Because I'm thinking that
even today, computers can scan something and indicate it may not be able to tell what it is,
but indicate if we put in, okay, I'm looking for something of this parameters and
put it into code. If there's anything that remotely looks like that, that it will just trigger
and highlight it and we can take a look at it. It's not going to be as cool as having a sensor
to find an exact thing, but it could do a shape and size match for something.
Possible or not possible? In theory, it's one of those in theory, but practically from a practical
standpoint, you would have to write this software, you'd have to debug it, you'd have to test it,
and then you would have to try to apply it, see if that works, make any of your adjustments,
et cetera, et cetera, and all of that would depend on knowing exactly what you're looking for
and what the parameters are. She told you you're looking for a piece of metal, a size of your
fist on a ship that is 92 meters in length, 30 meters in width, 35 meters in height.
I would say from a practical standpoint, you're not going to be able to do it with the equipment
you've got and the skill level you're at, but you can give it a shot and I will give you a
die roll. Roll an amazing number, it may change everything. If you wish to spend, this will be
spend about two hours. I would ask, I would see if she would be willing to give an accurate
description so that we could try to do a search using the limited scanners. Yeah, I was going to
ask for it when we, like if she had specifics on exact size and shape, that way we could use that
as parameters. This is agreeable at this stage. She gives you a model number, not a model number,
but like if I were to say a particular style of thumb drive and you can look it up on eBay or
something like that to see what this thing looks like. She gives you the name of this type of thing
because that's what she was told and because you are plugged into the network, you are able to do
in a research to get this. This will require a die roll. It will take a little time.
Next time the player characters have a job to do just so they can do their job.
Will the tentative ceasefire hold? See you then.
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