hpr-knowledge-base/hpr_transcripts/hpr2907.txt

Episode: 2907
Title: HPR2907: Stardrifter RPG Playtest Part 05
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr2907/hpr2907.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-24 13:06:15

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This is HPR Episode 2997 entitled, Tardriff to RPG Playtest Part 05, and in part of the series, Tabletop Gaming, it is hosted by Lost in Drunks, and in about 52 minutes long, and Karim and Exquisite Flag, the Summer is, Lost in Drunks and Friends playtest a new, original RPG system.
Today's show is licensed under a CC-Nero license.
This episode of HPR is brought to you by archive.org.
Support Universal Access to All Knowledge by heading over to archive.org forward slash donate.
Hello, I'm Lost in Brunks, also known as David Collins Rivera, and this is Part 5 of the Star Drifter role-playing game Playtest.
Last time, we had Clat 2, Taj, Bryn, and Brian. The Brian had to leave a little early, but he had some great suggestions, and his involvement was massively appreciated.
So the characters found some cheap lodging on Jump Out, the space station called a high dock, that they woke up on, and they tried looking for work with some mixed results.
Eventually, the characters traveled from Jump Out to a much larger colony station known as Station Maltese.
Station Maltese is basically like a large city, and they traveled around, looked at things, basically got the lay of the land.
At one point, the characters were contacted about a pest control problem, which was clearly a euphemism for something, but the job offer was there, and they didn't have a lot else going on.
So the characters did agree to meet and hear all the details.
So he offered to give you passage, but you didn't take him up on it.
He does close the call unless you stop him, and a moment later, some directions or an address pops up, and it's a small restaurant.
The address is not right on that same drag, Clack 2, where you followed that lady, but it seems to be in that neighborhood.
Okay.
So we're going to have to go a little upscale a little bit, a little bit, maybe, maybe, you don't know.
Let's go check it out.
Let's check it out then.
Yeah, let's check it out. Let's just take a cab over there and check it out, and let's just go as we are.
Let's just, I mean, we're not going to come across up. I'm not going to come across upscale, no matter what I do.
Yeah.
Okay, you guys can three of you can fit in a tick tick, but I hope you're good friends, because you're sitting on each other's laps, and it will only cost one queue for this ride.
If you do that, if you grab a regular cab, it's a little more money.
It'll be a die roll.
I'll roll a die.
I'm going to roll a die.
Well, how big is the die?
It's like what's in the middle back here.
This die will have four sides, but there will be a plus one to whatever I roll.
We don't want to, just in case they're watching, we don't want to show up all piling out like the clowns in a Volkswagen.
Yeah.
That's fine. That's fine. I can ask you this though.
Why the hell would they be watching?
That guy was sure.
Have you guys done anything to get people to be spying on?
Yeah, you just shown up seriously.
I mean, I'm not saying don't.
You could do whatever you want to do.
I have no problem with that, but I, I mean, recently, you haven't done anything yet.
Now, if you agree to do things with people, that becomes a very different thing, but no one knows yet.
All right, one queue.
It isn't.
I'll even pay for it.
Okay. Wow.
A big spender here.
Okay.
Okay.
I think we later.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Okay. So they get you to this place.
It is a road off that same drag where that lady lived.
And it appears to be a small commercial area in there with more luxury goods.
And there is a small restaurant there.
It is called.
Feveras, F-E-V-E-R-A.
I mean, you don't have to write it down, but that's what it's called.
Feveras.
And it's tiny, but it looks fairly upscale.
Possibly French fusion type of food.
It doesn't look like it's open.
It is kind of early for this sort of place.
What's the name of this neighborhood or this region?
Does it have a, is there like a name of this burrow or whatever?
You would have to look up on, do you want to stop and look that up on one of these?
No, it's okay.
I'm just wondering if it was something that we would have heard of.
No, you wouldn't.
You don't know this place.
It is still new.
If you lived here, it'd be a different story.
You know, with your being a drifter, you know how to find that information,
but it doesn't necessarily mean you automatically know it.
Okay.
So you found this place, but you're early.
You're early by at least an hour.
Are there any like coffee bars or anything else nearby?
Yeah.
We'll say there's a bistro up the road.
Yeah.
Why not?
Yeah.
Okay.
Collectively 2Q in this neighborhood, 2Q.
Somebody can pay for that.
I'll spray for that.
Sure.
Okay.
All right.
Nice.
I hope you can see.
I hope you can see you guys are being nickel and dime.
Yes.
I hope you can see that.
Yeah.
How this works.
So.
And this is my attempt to emulate.
He jocks desperation.
Why he is constantly looking for work because.
You start leaching your money bit by bit by hanging out in these places.
So.
All right.
Well, an hour will go by and assuming this place is within view of the restaurant.
About 10 minutes before the hour that you're supposed to meet this guy.
A cab rolls up and the guy that you saw gets out and goes in.
And then you see a sign.
Get put in the window, but you can't really see it from where you are.
But somebody either him or somebody else.
Open the curtain and put a sign in the window.
When he went in, he went in the front door.
He did it.
And if so, he did.
Okay.
Did it look like he was like unlocking it and going in?
No, it looks the owner.
It looks like it was open.
It does look like it was unlocked.
Okay.
But it didn't appear like it was open for business.
Okay.
Yeah, I say we go.
If he's there, let's just go.
How early would we be if we go now?
Yeah, 10 minutes.
Okay.
We can go.
That shows initiative.
Yeah.
Okay.
You, you know, you go off and you go to the place.
The sign on the window just says closed for private party.
Sign says you go in.
I assume.
Check the traps.
No, we go ahead.
We go in.
Good thing you did because.
There are a whole bunch of traps I can put in here.
And I know where to get it.
Hey.
Hey.
Yeah, you open it up and it's a small place, but nice.
And there is a.
There is wait staff there.
There's two people, two young people, men and women, young, young people.
Hello.
I'm sorry, but we are closed for a special occasion.
We're the special occasion.
Ah, yes.
Uh, Mr. Schenden is waiting for party.
Please this way.
And they lead you to a kind of a small back area.
There's not a room for you guys, but it looks like it's.
A place like this.
Maybe there is a little place for maybe people who are.
Famous or just want their privacy.
It's kind of behind a beaded curtain type of thing, but it's not as tacky as it sounds.
And he's sitting there just getting his stuff together.
He had a briefcase with him and he's setting up his.
Oh, thank you.
Thank you for showing up.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Please have a seat.
Have a seat.
Um, so in terms of entrances to this place, it's just the front door.
Like what?
What are?
I'm scared.
You see the foot.
Yeah, no, understood.
The front door and a passageway to the kitchen and there is a passageway to the restroom.
You'd have to go to the restroom to see if there's an exit that way, but you don't see any other exits.
If there is another one, it might be through the kitchen.
It might be through the bathroom.
It might be.
Okay.
There's no.
Yeah.
I mean, I'll take a seat.
Yeah.
Okay.
Okay.
It's, uh, you're basically you're in a corner.
Corner booth.
To.
Please, please.
Um, uh, order anything you want.
Uh, this place is, uh, really, really quite nice.
It's, uh, it's part of a recent acquisition of Eman and associates.
Um, so I can write all this off.
So please, uh, please, uh, feel free to order whatever you want.
Um, I recommend the pan seared fo salmon.
It's the best in the star system.
Definitely better than the space bagels.
Yeah.
You do have a menu there and it's not one of these digital menus.
It's an actual printed menu.
You don't see these very often in you guys, but he does not seem to be taken aback by the sort of scabby look of.
Well, at least tattoos guy.
Hey, so I cleaned up.
Yeah, you did.
That's why.
Obviously, that's why.
Um, but no.
You had to clean up to get the scabby.
Yeah.
There you go.
All the word.
The most expensive thing on the menu.
I don't even care what it is.
Okay.
Be like a fake steak type of thing.
Really well done.
Yeah.
I assume everybody knows in the star drifter.
Pretty much all the food in space is vegan.
If that matters to you.
But it's, and it's not a moral choice.
It's just a matter of course here.
So.
This place does have a separate notation on here, though, that it is offering some kind of shell fish.
That they say is fresh in his actual actual flesh.
And I'll take that.
I'll take that.
Okay.
And uh, it's something called scallops.
Whatever that.
Never heard of it.
Yeah, never heard of it.
Yeah, never heard of it.
But it is actual animal flesh.
It is strangely not the most expensive thing on the menu.
But it is a separate notation there.
So yeah, you guys can order whatever you want.
There's some very, very fine food here.
And it does have somewhat of a French twist to it.
Who knows what else they were trying to do here with them.
I assume you all order what you want.
You can have whatever you want.
It doesn't really matter.
After you've placed your orders and the wait staff have come and gone.
And they've got brought you your drinks and they brought you your coffee or whatever.
That's when this guy seems to relax.
A little bit.
Um, let's see.
Oh, everybody roll a, a die versus your intelligence.
Social engineering counts too.
In this case, so if you have that, you might want to roll against that.
Okay.
I'd be mine by one then.
Okay.
I see nothing with the 20.
You're just looking.
Where's that food?
Where's that food?
You're at Krainin towards the.
You know, where's it?
Oh, that's something smells great.
Um, a social engineering is 18.
I rolled 11.
Okay.
Um, those of you that are paying attention to the kitchen,
you see that they're really cooking your food by hand.
It's not a robot.
So it's that's cool.
The rest of you.
You may think.
An assessment of this guy.
He seems like a nervous sort of person.
But he doesn't seem to be.
Nervous about something in particular.
He's got nervous mannerisms.
In other words,
Okay.
I'll, um, sort of.
I'll say to him.
So what's the, what's the job that you wanted to talk us to us about?
And trust us.
We've, we've done all kinds of things.
So what's the, what's the job that you wanted to talk us to us about?
And trust us.
We've, we've done all kinds of jobs.
So you can, you're in good company here.
Well, I, um, I've, I've, uh, done a little background on gentlemen since we spoke.
So I believe you, I believe you have the skills to handle this operation.
But I'm, I'm not at liberty to discuss the details until you have signed on disclosure agreement.
Let's do it.
Also, I knew anything.
Okay.
Does everybody agree, agreeable to this?
It seems to be working.
Let's go.
As soon as I read the agreement.
He'll open up his briefcase.
And it's kind of a combination of, uh, portable office with a, a digital display on it.
He's also got an ident verifier built into this thing.
He's got, looks like possibly secure communication devices built into this.
This is a high end device, but it's not an unusual one.
Many business people carry something like this.
It's effectively their office anywhere they go.
And his AI is probably built into this thing.
That's when you were talking to the AI.
It was probably coming directly from this, from this laptop or, or briefcase.
He brings up a standard NDA agreement on the screen of this thing.
What it basically, you know, you can read it or a standard procedure on this sort of thing.
It's very common, especially in your line of work.
NDAs are exceed, exceedingly common.
And it's not unusual to hire the services of a legal AI.
Essentially, he's got the NDA.
You can then take it and push it to a legal AI over the network.
That will assess it in about a second and a half or less.
And then give you, yeah, that's good.
Yeah, it's not good.
Or give you the whole thing in layman's terms, whatever it is you want.
That'll cost you, that will cost you.
That's not free.
But that can happen.
It's very, very common way to do business around here.
So it will cost me what?
Well, that's a die roll.
Want me to roll a die?
I'll roll a die.
Legal services being what they are.
It will cost you.
I can't see that without my glasses.
It will cost you 10 Q to have that done.
I lean over to Taj and I ask him or not Taj.
Sorry.
I lean over to Dev and ask him what, if he can tell what kind of NDA,
like is this a stock like off the shelf NDA or is this custom written by this company?
Like, can you tell with this bureaucracy?
I wonder.
It's a good use of bureaucracy, perhaps.
You could roll a die for me.
Very nice.
Nice job.
That's a little too rich for me.
So I will do my best to read through.
Okay.
I don't even look at it.
I just say I can, can one of us pay for it?
And it's the same contract for everybody.
That's true.
We could split it.
Dev, did you, did you want to roll versus bureaucracy?
Oh, I did.
It was, it was horrible.
You don't want to know.
You, you rolled.
Okay.
You failed that.
So you can't tell.
I mean, it looks like it looks normal, but they all do, you know, without actually understanding it.
Okay.
All right.
Yeah.
You could just go ahead and sign it.
And it will cost 10 Q.
You guys can, you know, spread it out amongst yourselves or whatever.
That's, that's fine.
And that.
That's a very legal way.
I.
And I'll wait for it.
Okay.
You know, it's like, put a boop.
And what the layman's terms, it'll come back.
And it seems extremely standard.
This is a very common sort of thing.
In other words, it does seem up and up.
Yeah.
I sign it.
Yep.
Okay.
Ah, very good.
Okay.
Um.
So, uh, let's see.
Hmm.
See.
Uh.
Sorry.
I'm reading my notes.
Okay.
I'm reading through the adventure.
Yeah.
I'm sorry.
I'm reading through the adventure.
I'm going to do some more reassuring of him.
Okay.
There we are.
Okay.
Do you need a hug, bro?
Yeah.
Right.
Okay.
Um.
My company.
We are in the middle of some acquisitions locally in the system.
Um.
This restaurant is one and we're purchasing a wide variety of businesses.
Uh, one of these is a, um.
Well, it's a, a, a scrap dealership for space vessels that's, uh, somewhat deeper in the star system.
Um, now this is a deal that is, is ripe and ready.
We're, everything, everything is signed.
It's absolutely legal.
Um, there's no problem at all.
I can give you the information.
You can look that part of it up.
There's nothing illegal about this at all.
Um, not, not, not, not, not, not at all.
There's just, well, there's just one hitch.
Um, you see, these are space vessels.
And, um, in order for any kind of transfer of the assets of this company to go through, uh, the assets have to be free of any legal claims.
Well, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it seems that, um, when the deal was being finalized, they did a walkthrough of all the vessels.
Now, that's very standard.
It's, it's a, it's a common thing.
Uh, they have to be sure there's nothing dangerous or damaging or, you know, so any kind of problem.
Any kind of problem there.
Well, they went through one of these.
All of them are fine, except for this one ship, this, this, this one piece of garbage that's just floating there.
They go there and there's squatters living there.
There's people living there.
I mean, I don't know what's with people.
They don't want to buy homes.
They want free homes.
And they move into these places.
See, the problem is there's, there's, there are, there are issues of, of, of, uh, how, how would you say?
You could say that squatters have certain rights in this star system.
Depending on how long they've lived there and other problems.
In other words, we can't buy this company because they can't divest themselves of this ship.
This ship can't change hands.
It can't be moved because there's a question of legality regarding the residency.
And well, we, I'll be, I'll be playing.
I'll be playing my job involves purchasing these places and getting rid of things we don't need.
Divestment.
That's, that's part of my job.
And I, I want to get rid of all these junk things.
I want the company, but I don't want the assets.
I want to get rid of these.
And I can't.
There are people living there.
They weren't living there.
Be a very different story.
Uh, wonder if you understand what I'm asking.
Yeah, you need us to get rid of these books.
Yeah, if you could, if you could.
And, and, you know, I don't need any details.
I don't need any details.
Uh, however you decide to handle a problem like this, that's it.
You, you, you guys are the professionals.
You people, you, you know your jobs.
I would never assume to tell you how to do your jobs.
That's just not the kind of guy I am.
You want, you would know your jobs.
You'd know how to handle a thing like this.
And you'd know how to solve this problem.
In fact, I don't want to know any details.
Plausible deniability.
It comes down to this.
However you handle it, so long as the authorities don't get involved.
Doesn't matter to me.
What happens to the ship?
Doesn't matter to me.
So long as, you know, I mean, if you blow it up, they're going to notice.
But, you know, it doesn't matter.
It's junk.
We're getting rid of it.
I need to get rid of it.
If I can't get rid of it, I can't buy this company.
It's my job.
I don't do this.
I lose my job.
It's that simple.
So what qualifies as getting rid of the ship?
I mean, if we just physically...
No, no, you don't need to get rid of the ship.
Just the people.
Get them out of there.
If you get them out of there, their claim.
Any kind of legal claim of ownership, of squatters rights, it's gone.
Got you.
You get rid of that.
And then the ship, there's no question about who owns the ship at that point.
That's basically what it is.
It'll be owned by the dealership.
And the dealership can sell the whole thing to us.
You know, we can buy the whole thing.
I'm telling you, the paperwork is all set.
It's just this one little problem.
Now, this deal has to close in three weeks' time.
I have three weeks to solve this problem.
I can't emphasize how important it is to me.
What are you paying exactly to get this problem taken care of?
Okay.
Well, that's a very good question.
It's a very good question.
I will pay you your company.
I will pay the Dodgers 15,000 Q to handle this problem for us.
That's not, that's nothing.
I mean, that's a joke.
You're joking, right?
I'm not joking.
And that's, that's what's my budget.
I'm sorry.
For this, for this kind of job.
This kind of job.
It's, I'm not telling you what you have to do.
I mean, we would, we would normally get at least 21k for this.
These are, these are hippies.
These are hippies.
You just go in and tell them to the very good operation.
I mean, we would never take less than 21 for this.
I'm sorry, but I'm budgeted for 15.
It's just how it is.
I think what my associate's trying to say is that this has a high possibility of becoming ugly.
And that's something that we, we may not be able to avoid.
And that may cause us more consequences down the line.
And so we want to ugly, ugly is up to you.
It's how you decide to handle it.
If this is going to, if it turns ugly, that's, isn't that a fault of yours?
It's not not necessarily.
People look to have their own.
If you can't do it for 15, honestly, if you can't do it for 15, I have to look elsewhere.
It's, it's all unbudgeted for.
I can't do more than that.
This is a fly.
How many of these hippies are there?
It's unsure.
They did a walkthrough.
Some people showed up.
There, you know, it was just some, the, the, the, um, dealership workers went through and they said some people showed up.
It was, and said to get out, told them to get out.
They weren't expecting anybody.
So they were terrified.
And they left, but they did say that it looked like they'd been there a while.
Can you give us the name of the dealership?
I can.
And he does.
It's nothing you've heard up before.
It's, um, starline scrap metal.
What, what, what if we tried to work something out where maybe it's not cute, but maybe some of the things that your business could provide that, that our company may use in the future.
Such as, I don't know.
You, you offered to, to transport in and out of the system and things like that.
That's something we may use from time to time.
Is that something that we could maybe get into part of the deal?
I'll tell you what I can do.
Um, I can offer you passage, a ticket out.
We do have a service.
Basically, it's like this.
All right.
When this job is done, I need you to leave the star system.
Well, if we, if you put us, if you give us a ship to leave on, and I mean, give us a ship, then we will, we will leave the starships system.
And we would consider the gift of a ship to be the rest of that, that payment.
You would never ask him that because ships cost millions and millions of you.
You would never ask him that.
But, um, I can offer you passage.
Um, I can get you a ticket, a cold passage.
Um, that's not a problem.
That's a thing I can throw in.
Look, I'll do this.
I'll do this much for you.
But this is the absolute.
I can do 2000 Q up front.
And this is, I don't know you guys, right?
I've looked into you, but I've never worked with you before.
But I can do 2000 Q up front right now.
I can transfer this right now.
That's as good as it gets 2000 Q up front.
Make it three, three up front.
One can't, they can't go that far.
I can't do it.
It's easier math if you do.
Perhaps it is, but I can't do it.
1200.
Actually, four, they're four of us.
So the two would be fine.
This is if I can talk to you.
I tell you what, I got a P.
You guys talk amongst yourselves.
He gets up anyways.
Goes to the bathroom.
Because we have Brian's character too.
Yeah, it's true.
Yeah, I don't have a copy of his stats.
I will replace him with another character.
If you want that right now, I can do that right now.
NNPC.
Yeah, I mean, he was another drifter.
I know that.
So he'd be probably fairly similar to mine.
Okay.
So he had lots of guns.
Yeah.
He told me he had lots of guns.
Yeah, this drifter doesn't have lots of guns.
Well, I mean, none of us do now because all those security checks.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, that.
But you can, you know, you know where those are.
So that's true.
Who's that?
No, that's a different character.
Well, I guess we're taking this job right guys.
I mean, it's what we, it's, it's, it's the, it's the thing that we need to take.
So we'll take it.
I just, I feel like he's lowballing us and trying to screw us over.
But yes, I agree.
But getting the passage.
I mean, we could literally walk through it with the credits we have and pay off the hobos and get passage.
It's true.
Okay.
Let's, yep.
All right.
You're talking since.
Let's do this.
Okay.
And just to let you know the character who is with you.
His name is Sirk.
He is a drifter.
You know, I'll pop that right in.
And that's, and he's been with you all along.
Amazing.
You just noticed him.
But he's been there all along.
And he agrees with you because he's an NPC and doesn't lead the, the story the way you guys do.
So.
Yeah.
So when the guy comes back, we'll, we'll agree to all of his terms.
Okay.
Well, but I'm going to act disgruntled.
I know that.
I'm going to, I'll continue the face of like, we're being screwed over.
Okay.
No problem.
I love how your skill said it's just a neutralized man.
It's amazing.
Okay.
If you agree, he's like very, very good.
He produces other forms.
You have to sign it as a contract.
But before you sign, he says, no, understand.
I'm going to give you all the information you need to get this job done.
But I will not talk to you again.
Do not contact me.
If the job gets done, I'll know it from the scrap dealership.
So let me know.
And at that time, I will transfer the money the moment I find out about it.
And of course, if there is a problem with the money at that stage, by all means, contact us.
But otherwise, you will get your money and you will get your tickets out and you will leave this star system.
Is that a thing with that we are all agreed on?
Yes.
Yeah.
Excellent.
Excellent.
Any produces the form?
Let's assume that the service for the legal AI would include anything in this deal.
So you can pipe that off and send it back.
And it's exactly what he just described.
There doesn't seem to be anything shady in the wording or any of that.
So if you are all agreed, then you all have to do an identity and then sign it and you're set under contract.
Remember, you have a deadline of three weeks.
Cool.
Yeah.
Okay.
Okay.
Well, that was very good.
And my meal, I just had the salad.
It was very, very good.
I have other meetings to get to.
Please feel free to stay.
I hope that this all works out really, really well.
Please, I recommend the tiramisu for a dessert.
Feel free.
It's all paid for in the problem at all.
It's a ticket waiting for you to go back to the high doc.
If that's where you need to go or any other, any other high doc, you know, that's only one of many.
You can, you can go wherever you have to go.
Good luck.
I appreciate everything you're doing.
He leaves.
Brin or, or Dev, do you want to look up e-men and associates and do a quick little check on who we just got contracted to?
Sure.
I'll take a look.
Okay.
Well, it seems a little late in the game for that.
Yeah.
One of the best.
Yeah.
A little buyer for more.
Yeah.
What skill are you going to use to look up e-men and associates?
Computers.
Computers.
Okay.
Please really die.
What's a computer?
Twenty-sided.
Every skill is 27.
No, no.
What's a computer?
Because I, obviously, I know I just know what what is when I roll a 20, you know.
What you, what, I mean, e-men is a public company.
All you get is the usual, you know, company blather and the, you know, the website type of crap that, you know, go, go company stuff.
And we're here for you.
That sort of crap.
Is it, is it something we would have heard of even without checking?
Is it that, is it that name?
No, you've never, you've never heard of this.
So they have a website.
It's all we know.
Well, they got some kind of web presence, but it's, it's, it tells you nothing more than what this guy did.
Okay.
Anybody else trying anything?
Does he, does he given a address for their headquarters or anything?
Like they're where they are located?
It does.
For the station.
Yeah, for the station.
It does have a, a location.
It's got a location address.
I think it'd be worth just sort of doing a quick, quick drive by just to see if it's a PO box or if it's an actual, like a rental office or like.
Okay.
Let's do it.
Okay.
That's going to cost you.
What sort of cab are you taking?
Taking, taking, taking to keep one again.
Yeah.
Okay.
I'll pay it since this is my.
Okay.
It'll only be my idea.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It'll only be one cue.
And you're all crammed in there.
Are there legs sticking out and everything else?
Getting all friendly like circus music in the background?
I'm sorry.
Say that again.
Is there circus music in the background?
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
It is kind of ridiculous, actually.
Let's put it this way.
Let's have a game consequence for this sort of thing, right?
You can all travel that way.
You do get looks, but you know, people do it because it does save money.
If there's any trouble along the way, you guys will be at penalties to deal with it.
Okay.
Just to let you know.
Let's just state that right now.
Okay.
So you there is no trouble along the way this time.
And you do get over to the address and it is on that main drag, but not near the elevators where you came in.
It's, you know, as the main drag goes all the way around the station.
So it's on probably about two thirds of the way through on the other side of the station.
And it's a big and, you know, big office area.
And you find it and they're part of a large office building on a higher floor.
You know, you see the directory there in the out in the lobby.
Okay.
That's pretty much all I wanted to know.
I just wanted to make sure that it was an actual place, but it seems that sounds fairly legit to me.
So yeah.
Okay.
Cool.
Yeah.
Rent in a building like this would be expensive.
So it must have some money coming in.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Exactly.
Yeah.
Okay.
I'm happy.
You've got enough to pay us is what he was checking on.
And because this is your first job, you're not sure if 15 grand is a good deal.
It might be a great deal.
It might be.
You don't know.
You don't know.
Because you always hear all these stories by all these companies and they always say how much they made and this and that.
Don't have a lot as a company.
You don't have a lot to gauge it by so.
Maybe he was lowballing you.
Maybe it was a great deal.
Just letting you know.
So what are you doing now?
I guess we should go gather our gear and get to the job.
It sounds like a plan.
Yeah.
There's no point in putting it off.
Okay.
He did not include expenses for this job.
Something that was not included.
Didn't say 15 grand plus expenses.
The only thing he's offered you is a ticket out system.
Just so we're all clear.
Yep.
I tried.
School of hard knocks.
Okay.
Hey.
At least you got to grand up front.
He did do that.
He did it right then and there.
You have a company account that this money goes into.
So there's two grand in the Dodgers account.
So you somebody keep track of that.
You know, I assume from this stage on anything you guys are being charged.
It's going to come from that or.
I guess unless you tell me differently.
Okay.
Let's track that.
I'm doing all mine on a spreadsheet anyway so I can just add that in.
That's not a problem.
Okay.
All right then.
He did also give you a ticket back to jump out.
Because he was assuming you were coming in system or like as he stated,
he had a flag of your company name on jump out.
So he assumed you were coming from there.
So he had a round trip ticket set for you.
So there is a ticket there waiting for you.
So that will cost you anything to go back.
But of course the cab ride will.
That's another cue.
I'm already getting sick of right around like this.
And I'm not even really riding around like this.
So a real cab, I assume.
Okay.
A real cab is going to cost you three.
Okay.
It's deducted from the company queue.
Get back to the elevators and you get back up to the hub.
And from there you find your dock for the shuttle.
And you wait a little while unless you stop me.
If there's anything you guys want to do while you're here on the big station.
Tell me.
Do we need to get any supplies or anything like that?
Things that we might need?
So I don't have a comm unit.
So I don't know if we're going to ever split the party.
That's probably something I should probably have.
But otherwise I think I'm okay on like.
I've got a grenade and a rifle to my name.
I don't know if I should get more now.
Can a radio headset connect or come or link up with a comm unit?
Yes, it can.
Oh, cool.
It has no visual.
That's fine.
But it can.
Well, let's put it this way.
The comm unit can link up the radio headset.
Not the other way around.
Good enough.
But yeah.
And the range on that is the radio headset.
The range is, I think I had it at 200 kilometers.
Is the range on that?
That's correct.
That's point to point.
And it can be a communications device.
It can link into the network as well.
So you can call anybody through the network as well.
It's like a cell phone.
Basically, it's like a cell phone.
And you'll have that.
If you buy one of those locally, you'll have that with you.
And that's not a thing you have to.
You don't have to keep that in your locker.
You can walk around with one of those.
Is there anything else we should have?
Trying to think here.
I mean, I.
A lot of us independent how we're going to try to go about doing this.
Yeah.
And I don't feel like we're going to know how we're going to go about doing it until we're over there.
I mean, I would rather not like extinguish people.
Because I feel like they have right.
A right to be there, but.
But we're getting paid more than them to get them off.
So that's kind of like.
Yeah, I would like to find a nonviolent solution.
So we can go over.
We can do a recon.
Get the lay in the land, figure out what's going on.
And then make a plan from there.
We do have three weeks.
We're not.
We don't have to do it right this.
That's a good point.
Yeah.
I remember when we jumped into system, everyone we were certainly mostly dropped into the system.
You said that there was a lot of like used ships and salvage and stuff around, right?
Yeah.
Yeah, there is.
Yeah.
There's quite a few.
Okay.
Is one of the things this star system is known for is dealing in.
There are used ones available that actually function, but most of it is scrap.
Most of its junk.
But yeah, yeah, that's one of the things this star system is known for.
Strangely, you know, because you wouldn't think necessarily that a mining and heavy metals industry
would have that, but it's all a side effect of that because the ships just get the crap beat out of them.
Just thinking maybe if we could find something to offload these people might be an option.
Yeah, that's a good idea.
I want to remind you guys now that this is a playtest.
I am play testing the rules.
Say any further, but please understand that that's what I'm doing.
It's as much heads up as you're getting.
Buy ammo, buy ammo, buy ammo.
Yeah, really.
I never said that.
You understand?
I never said that.
I'm the guy without a combat skill in the weapons, so let's go.
Okay, you you want to go to a place where you can purchase weaponry.
Yes.
I understand it.
Yes, that is there are plenty of places where you can do that.
All right, basically anything on the list is available if you've got the money.
The way it normally works is you purchase it and they will ship it to your locker up on on the other station.
That will take a day or so, but that's that's part of the cost.
It doesn't cost you anything extra.
And from the locker, you can then take it wherever you're going if you're leaving the station.
Because if you are leaving, if you're leaving jump out and say going here,
you can bring your weapons here, but then you got to stick it in a locker again when you get here.
But that's, you know, if you were moving here, you'd want your stuff close.
So that's how that would work.
They'll ship it to whatever locker you want and it'll be there waiting for you.
And that's part of the cost and it's whatever the prices are listed.
Of course, if you wanted to take it with you,
finagle something like that.
Walk out the door with it.
So what do you guys have as far as weapons?
We've got a rifle and a mini grenade.
I don't have any armor, but yeah, I think I'm just going to go in with a rifle and some,
I'll probably purchase some extra ammo.
Yeah, I have a pistol in two clips magazines.
How are you want to describe them?
For the sake of this playtest, don't worry about extra clips.
You have all the bullets you're, you're ever going to need in any kind of fight.
Okay.
We're not going to count, we're not going to count that in this, in the playtest because it,
it gets a little maddening after a while if you're counting every bullet.
So we're just going to, you've got everything you need to do what you got to do if you've purchased it.
So, yeah, any equipment, any armor, any weapons that are on that list,
they are available for you to purchase.
I'm going to pick up a pistol, the firearm one, just to have.
Okay.
I can actually take that out of my account because I still have that much money.
That's fine.
That's fine with me.
I am not keeping track of your money.
And I just have the extensible ballistic shield.
There you go.
There it is.
And he writes, curb this on it.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
It's an old game.
I have that too.
Yeah.
Okay.
That's cool.
I wanted to layer armors because I was expecting to get the fight.
Yeah.
The regular one works just fine.
Um, in fact, it's a little tougher, but it is awkward.
So.
Yeah.
Maybe I'll get a, um, oh, no, it won't, never mind.
No, actually, yeah, what, what's a flack, uh, flack vest?
That is basically a bulletproof vest, but yeah, I wouldn't count on it to actually stop bullets,
but like fragmentation grenades.
It's a little better in the future.
They are better.
They are what you would call a bulletproof vest.
Uh, they absorb damage.
They don't necessarily stop it.
But they absorb some damage.
So.
Yeah, I think I'll just go in as is.
Take my chances.
Okay.
He's taking his chances.
You guys.
That was an evil grin.
That was an evil, evil chuckle.
That was a thing.
Yeah, I didn't laugh.
Not me.
So you guys do have two grand or little less to purchase stuff for the company.
You know, you can do that now or you can go like you, you did say you could do whatever you want to do.
So you're done here and go back to jump out and get your stuff.
I'm good with that.
Yeah, all right.
I'm going to, I'm going to spend company money on this flack vest.
Hey, you've got a flack vest for two, for 400 Q.
But it's brand new.
It's got that, that, uh, new flack vest smell.
So it's a nice thing.
Great.
Right.
And if you get shot, it will take two points right off the damage right away.
And it doesn't interfere.
It doesn't.
And that's.
That's the, um, the PR.
PR value.
That is.
That is.
Detective rating.
Okay.
Okay.
And then SR is.
No, yeah, SR is structural rating.
So if you get, uh, you get shot, say for six points, it'll take two points.
So you only take four points, but those two points come off the SR.
So now it only has 18.
And, you know, it can only take so much damage before it's garbage.
Yeah.
That's got you.
Okay.
Cool.
Okay.
So you, anybody else buying anything?
I'm good.
Yes, that's a no.
Okay.
Guess that's a no.
All right.
You guys can head to the shuttle bay.
If you want or the shuttle depot or something the hub.
And you guys can get back by probably.
I would say it's after the beginning of third shift.
I don't know about you.
I think it's probably a full day.
You guys might be tired, but that's up to you.
Yeah, we can.
I think we can.
Take a nap or sleep for the night and then head out to wherever the ship is in the morning.
Yeah, that sounds reasonable.
I don't know.
Glad to.
You want to go break something?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Maybe.
No.
I'm good.
Okay.
No problem at all.
You don't have to.
You guys can stay up.
There's plenty of coffee around.
Tons of coffee in this place.
So coffee's free at this.
Not quite a flea bag that you're saying.
So.
All right.
So the night will pass without incident.
Except that there is an angry message in the morning by that sweaty fat guy saying you missed
appointment and you guys can, you know, get lost.
He doesn't want anything to do with you.
So.
Has it been four days?
Oops.
It's been two days.
He said it was only two days.
Oh, okay.
Day six.
Yeah.
So he he was annoyed, but whatever.
It didn't look like he bathed in that time for what that's worth.
So.
I mean, we barely did.
So.
Yeah.
But you guys are back and you've had a night's sleep.
We'll say that that's probably going to cost you guys about four of you.
It's probably going to cost you a total of eight Q flea bag sort of accommodations.
You've had up on high dock and food and all that other stuff.
And that can come out of the company.
This is a company expense.
So.
It's up to you.
Cool.
Now I'll take it out of the company.
Thank you.
So.
You can go and confirm that you're purchased the the flat vest is in your locker.
It's waiting for you.
You have the address.
They would be stellar coordinates, not stellar, but space coordinates for this junkyard effectively.
What else would you call it scrapyard of some sort space?
And it is probably about seven hours deep into the system.
But that's not unusual.
The system is there are no major settlements.
As I've said, there's no major settlements deep in the system, but there's tons of work.
There are people all over the place.
But there are no shuttles that go there.
It's not a regular route or anything.
I was just thinking and this may just be because the like a rule sets are like the rules not being developed for it.
Like there's no way to purchase like provisions.
Like if we were going to go over and then stay.
What do you mean like a camping equipment?
That sort of stuff.
No, I don't have rules for that.
But if you want to do that, we can totally that's a die roll.
I'm going to roll a die.
I can totally do that.
Okay.
We'll call it collectively the kind of provisions that you're going to act.
It's going to cost 12Q apiece, but that will be a week's worth of provisions.
Because I'm thinking if we get stuck there, we've got it.
If not, it may be good for bribery.
So that will include food and food preparation.
Some stuff like a disposable stove and that sort of crap.
It doesn't it doesn't include anything like a tent or anything because you're not outside.
They would be thinking like MREs or something like that.
Yeah, that's what this would be.
Okay.
Yeah, I think that's probably worth worth stocking up on provisions.
So you said 12 per right?
12 per person.
That seems a little steep to you guys.
Yeah.
You know, you've seen it for cheaper than that, but that's the price you're seeing.
If you want to spend half a day, you could probably get it cheaper, you know, hunt around, find something.
It depends on what you want to do.
Also, you know, give you an opportunity to do any last minute errands or anything like that.
Because this is the time to do all that stuff.
Yeah, let's just go ahead and get those provisions.
But in terms of any other thing that we need to do, I can't think of anything for myself.
No, I think we just need to find a way to get there and it's going out and see what we're doing.
Okay, to that end, to that end, what do you want to do?
So I guess we need to, so you're saying we need to hire someone specifically to take us out there?
Either hire someone or hire a boat that you yourself.
Well, we've got a pilot.
Yeah, I think that sounds like the way to go.
What's the cost difference?
Yeah?
Okay, I do have a written down.
That's not a die roll.
All right, hiring a shuttle boat, someone to fly it is expensive.
Because part of that is your paying for insurance and all sorts of stuff.
So if you hire someone to fly the boat for you, it's 600 Q.
You can rent one for 300.
Cool.
Yeah, we'll just rent for 300, right?
Okay.
And it does require piloting space boat cert of at least one.
Can you get that?
No, I have start jump.
No, that won't do it unless you can finesse it somehow.
So that minus two depends on what you're rolling.
What are you rolling?
You have a skill of some sort.
You could try social engineering.
You could try lying.
You can try.
I get where you're going.
No, I don't have any of that stuff.
I'm kind of straight list.
Okay, hang on.
I do have all this written down.
Basically, it's not legal to rent this unless you have a certification as a pilot for space boats, right?
It's like if you go to rent a car, they look at your driver's license.
They want to see that.
You will be able.
You know how to fly this thing.
You know how, but it's not legal.
Oh, okay.
Well, I would like to...
I've got social engineering.
I could try to...
Yeah, I could try to roll on that.
Yeah.
I could cost you a little bit extra.
You know how to grease the wheels.
But give it a shot.
13.
Oh, I miss it by two.
Oh, man.
I'm sorry, but the law is the law.
Yeah, I mean, but...
What do you mean, really?
Is it really the law?
I mean...
Can we work something out here, man?
Can we do something?
I don't know.
I think we probably could, but maybe you could roll a dive for me and we could see?
I don't know.
So I have an 18 in social engineering and I rolled a five.
You got it.
There you go.
Yeah, no problem.
18 in social engineering.
That's really good.
Yeah, it's beautiful.
He pays us.
Yes, he does.
Well, not quite.
You still...
You know, it's going to be 300Q.
That's what it costs.
And maybe a hundred to lubricate things a little bit.
So a total of 400Q will get you this bow.
Any sort of, you know, moves the paper work off to the side.
He brings you a look at this beautiful bow.
All right.
All right.
So these, the boat that we're renting, that's, that is considered not a ship.
Correct.
It is not a ship.
Ships.
Star jump.
Boats.
Okay.
That's what I was asking the dude for not.
Yeah.
I didn't realize the difference in terminology.
But okay.
No, I understood.
No problem at all.
But both of them are highly expensive.
They're all very expensive.
But I mean, no one's just going to get, well, I don't know.
Maybe you could have gotten one of these junks out there.
It's possible.
You could have dealt for, but it would call some of these things is going to cost you more to fix them.
Then it would be to buy new.
So.
Yeah.
But no problem at all.
Yeah.
I mean, it's, it's early days on all this.
So it doesn't really matter.
But yeah, you can't, this thing is rented for a week's time for that price.
You, you know, you can fly all over the place.
I'm not going to go into, you know, fuel cost.
We're going to assume you have all the fuel you need to get the job done.
So go back and forth, tool around the system, whatever.
Plenty of fuel.
Plenty of fuel.
And because you're piloting, you have a pilot star jump.
Correct.
Correct.
Piloting star jump.
You can fly this thing if there's a problem while you're flying it.
Like you get shot at or meteors coming at you or something like that.
Then we'll need to do some dioroles and there'll be some minuses and stuff involved.
But if there are no problems at all, we don't even need to roll die.
You can pilot this thing.
Just fun.
Okay.
Whereas, like if I said, say you had piloting space boat and I said,
well, there's a meteor on core, you know, coming at you.
You can say, well, I'm just going to change course.
I don't need a diorol for that.
But for you, I will because you don't have that specific training.
If that makes any sense.
It does.
All right.
So he shows you to this thing and it's big enough for you and probably upwards of a dozen more people.
Lots of room in this thing.
Plenty of room for your equipment, your provisions, everything.
It's no problem at all.
Getting this thing settled, getting your equipment over there, getting, you know, all of this stuff moved.
It's going to take you probably until the end of this day.
It's probably getting into third shift again.
You can press off now.
Wait until the morning.
Whatever you want to do.
I say we go now because it's going to take seven hours.
Can we?
We can probably.
Well, I was going to say sleep alone.
I mean, so is it he has to physically pilot the whole way.
There's no autopilot.
No, no, he could set it to autopilot.
Of course, he's not expressly trained in setting autopilot on this sort of vessel.
So does he do it right or not?
I don't know.
Maybe it'll be a die roll.
I vote we sleep on the way basically.
But that's assuming that you're comfortable setting out of autopilot.
Bren.
Hmm.
You would know in advance if you can set it properly.
I'm not going to say like, oh, you ended up on Jupiter.
No, it's not going to be that way.
You'll look at it.
And can I figure this out or do I have to pilot this thing by hand?
Yeah.
You'll know that in advance.
So if you want to give me a die roll now, there is a minus two on this.
Okay.
Yeah, I'll give you that a roll now.
Let's see what we got.
Got a nine.
And your skill level is 17.
17.
Very good.
You have no problem at all.
Yeah, you could set this thing.
You feel confident about that.
Okay, let's roll or fly.
Fly.
You guys are set.
You ready to go?
Yeah, we got our weapons and stuff, right?
Like from the.
Yeah, you got everything.
That was part of that whole day.
Okay.
Everything over.
Your weapons, your armor, your everything.
Yes, then we're ready to go.
Next time, the characters get started with their new job.
And they have a deadline.
Perhaps with the accent on dead.
See you then.
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