Delta Drop

IC Thread OOC Thread

Bandaluri pirates scream around a moon as a merchant tries to flee. A psychic god of Anchises commands a mob to assault a rival's temple. A Hochog prince shades his eyes with one hand, an ax in the other, as he and his warband watch a gravflyer pass in the distance. The Agate Dominion drops troops onto a planet. A ship descends into a glowing fence from orbit, the atmosphere beyond the fence a churning mass of dust. A half-built cruiser hangs in the gantries of the Hypsipyle Interstellar Drive yards. A shaman with a stone-tipped spear teaches students from across the sector to control their MES-granted powers.

Characters

• Sangodele - Sadha Ex-Spec Force for Agate Dominion, played by Naed Yar

• Giotto - Ruchi gunrunner

• Ifemelu - Hesione psychic warrior-monk

• Axminster - Horchog Warrior from Ruchi

• Theo Mueller

• SWN Character Blank

Character Creation

As per the core rulebook (First Edition), with a few exceptions. 1) Roll as normal for attributes, then assign them in any order you wish. You may reroll stats if your total modifiers are negative after the class replacement. 2) Choose one Background Package, and additionally the Adventurer Package. 3) Choose one Training Package, and additionally the Adventurer Package. You may choose the adventurer package twice in a stage if you wish.

Begin with max HP for your class, including Con mod.

Starting Money

Each character gets 1,200 credits to purchase starting gear with, up to TL4. We are using the expanded equipment lists from Revised.

Pick an item up to TL4. A weapon, armor, a Tech kit, etc. Psychics have the option to pick up an item of Psitech equipment or weaponry, subject to GM veto. Something that you want to be a signature or vital gear for your character. You get it for free and it's reasonably plot-protected; don't do something foolish like chuck it out an airlock or into a volcano and you'll hang onto it.

One Plot Thing

Pick a plot-driving hook for your character. Maybe you know a secret jump route, or a military officer who needs work done off the books from time to time. Every character needs one connection or relationship that can be used to get information, create complications or hang an adventure off of in a pinch!

Style and Posting

• Tell me your intention (what you want to accomplish) and your action (how you attempt to do something).
• Post with purpose. Posts should push the action forward, uncover information or reveal something about the character. Preferably two or more of those at once!
• Banter is fine as long as things are moving.
• Avoid getting caught in the politeness spiral. Pick a direction, post it, and if other characters want to do something else, then that's rp fodder!
• I am aiming for four to five purposeful posts from each player every week. More is fine, but 4-5 is a good ballpark.
• If you are planning on an absence, please let me know.
• If for some reason you fall behind on posting, don't fret, just jump back in. Everyone goes through lulls occasionally.
• If you are no longer interested or no longer have the time to play, please let me know you are withdrawing. There will be no hard feelings, and not only is it polite, it keeps The Wyzard from blacklisting you.

Dice Rolls

Dice rolls are in the rolz.org room Delta Drop. I will be doing all the rolls save character creation (and I will roll chargen for you if you'd like), but it's all done and recorded there.

Group Assets

Common Fund

24,300 credits

Common Gear

• Portabox x5 (2 with Ifemelu)
• Rations+Water x5 (2 with Ifemelu)
• Glowbugs x5 (5 with Ifemelu)
• Instapanel x3 (3 with Ifemelu)
• Power A cell x3
• Power B cell
• Vacc Suit x2

Current Loot

• A poem in Latin that needs to be translated.
• A complete census of Fatima al-yul Province, two centuries before the Scream.
• Founding documents from Phoenix Heavy Earth, a mining consortium.
• A charter for Adara Freehold, a land development program.
• Resolution #2232, banning Dust-free communication zones.
• An appropriations bill, 3 years Pre-Scream.
• A blueprint for a folding barracks design requiring advanced pretech nano-structures and polymers. Pretech.
• A design for a Mandate guest house.
• Plans for a Pre-Scream Star Islam mosque.
• Schematics for a small round robot that cleans floors.
• Plans for a highly advanced perpetual gravflyer. Pretech.
• Production prints for a scout gravbike with armor plates and integrated lasrifle.
• A sonic screwdriver blueprint set. Pretech.
• Designs for a frontier-retro metatool.
• Plans for a mindblade and for a very complicated array that would allow a psychic choir to guide mining operations across the crust of a planet. Psitech.
• A city map of San Rafael, a ruin within the borders of modern Dominic.
• Three overlapping maps that each contain an unlabeled Mandate installation.
• A template for an auto-gunner and an auto-doc expert systems.
• One program that Giotto identifies as a destructive virus before he tries to compile it.
• A worm code that trawls for personal data.
• Three bundles of instrusive malware that can aid hacking attempts.
• Five honest to god anti-hacker program, ICE designed in the late Mandate era.
• A comprehensive set of step by step instructions for scratch building a DIY nuclear device.

• Stims
  • One of Lifter, providing short term flight.
  • One of Shrinkwrap, providing an emergency vacc suit.
  • One of Nimbus, surrounding the user in a halo of controllable lights, images and patterns.
  • One Sunscreen, rendering the user immune to environmental heat and resistant to plasma and las weapons.
  • One of Pisces, allowing the user to function deep underwater.
  • One Bathory, granting the user a week of youth and good health.
  • One Sanctum, allowing the user to temporarily detect and evade mental attacks.

• The small, shielded container is perhaps the most difficult to suss out. With time and effort, the crew gets it open. Inside are eight transparent canisters filled with a deep gray, metallic sludge. It dawns on the group that these are containers of dormant dust.

Antares

Antares is an old shuttle, but you own her free and clear. Designed to look like a triangle with the points cut off, the underside of the hull is covered in streamlined compartments. The exterior is light gray and utilitarian, with no decoration save a few indented lines tracing across the outer panels. The interior is cramped, the spinal hallway narrow and the crew rooms little more than closets with bunks. Each cargo compartment has a boarding ramp, and the cockpit is fairly open, more like a civilian helicopter than a fighter jet. Antares' lone common room serves as a head, mess, briefing room, emergency medical and back-up bridge, though not all at once! Engineering has a spike array positioned to either side of the main fusion core, and a fuel bunker in front of each drive. The server room sits off the common room, just before engineering.

Antares Stats

Shuttle

• Speed: 3
• Armor: 0
• Hit Points: 15
• Crew: 1/10
• AC: 9
• Power: 3 (2 Free)
• Free Mass: 5 (0 Free)
• Hardpoints: 1 (1 free)
• Hull Type: Shuttle

Fittings:

• Spike-2
• Atmospheric Configuration
• Fuel Bunker x1
• Cargo, 4 tons

Delta Drop Sector Map

Delta Drop Gazetteer

• 0002 Antiphas
  • Arctoris- TL3, several million population, the planet has no surface atmosphere and everybody lives underground in massive caverns. The Hochog are from here as well, and the locals produce (and sell) the only anagathics in the sector.
• 0003 Diores
  • Aizkom- Postech, less than a hundred thousand people, the world is a trade center sitting at the intersection of a number of markets.
• 0007 Clytie
  • Anchises- Postech with limited pretech production, population right at a billion people, ruled by an unelected bureaucracy and infested by pre-Scream psychic god cults.
  • Ruchi- Postech, a billion people, Ruchi is focused on trade and diplomacy, and stays out of sector conflicts except to discourage atrocities.
• 0008 Agate
  • Astrid- Postech, several hundred thousand citizens, they head the Agate Dominion and pursue aggressive expansion across the sector.
  • Shadha- Enlightenment with telegraphs, roughly a billion people, Shadha provides ground troops to the Dominion and much of the population lives on floating cities.
• 0104 Vasiliou
  • Avelianous- Postech, population nearly one hundred thousand, the locals are locked in some sort of political struggle with one another and are suspicious of outsiders.
• 0105 Al-Fayyoumi
  • Cabrero- Postech, less than fifty thousand people, ruled by warlords. Not very many spacers go here.
  • Tabatabai-al-rhul- An outpost of Cabrero, charged with recovering pretech artifacts.
• 0106 Orrego
  • Clytemnestra- Postech with pretech specializations, population a bit over thirty thousand, they maintain heavy industry to produce their advanced goods and were conquered by the Agate Dominion over a decade ago.
• 0109 Suhailah
  • Diroe- TL3, over half a million population, the world is radioactive and the Agate Dominion has banned travel to the surface.
  • Some- Postech, around forty thousand people, this desert world vassal of the Agate Dominion practices advanced eugenics.
• 0202 Azaria
  • Eleaphonor- Postech, a hundred thousand souls, they live in a giant mausoleum.
  • Geaxi- Postech, a hundred thousand souls, their world is a monument to hubris and nuclear devastation.
  • Koffa- Primitive, two hundred thousand souls, these altered humans were cursed and broken by their neighbors decades ago.
• 0209 Akil
  • Epistrophes- Postech with specialties, population over two hundred thousand, they are ruled by religious figures.
• 0302 Juarez
  • Hallfrid- TL3, several hundred thousand people, they practice intensive mining.
• 0304 Solomos
  • Hesione- Medieval, population over seven hundred thousand, this cold ocean world has been colonized by its neighbors.
  • Iamassa- TL3, six and a half million people, this heavily policed world trades favorably for pretech and is tightening their grip on their primitive neighbors.
• 0307 Hlif
  • Hypsipyle- Postech, population roughly two million, Hypsipyle Interstellar Driveyards is headquartered here.
• 0404 Arcesilids
  • Ingibjorg- Wild West tech, nearly eight hundred thousand people, the locals have given in to barbarism aboard their flying cities.
• 0409 Karamanlis
  • Khatami- Stone Age, about fifteen thousand people, women rule here and run the only true psychic academy in the sector.
• 0501 Gamez
  • Latsari- Postech, several hundred thousand people, members of the Allied Worlds, the bubble cities of the frozen planet are gripped in the throes of civil war.
• 0506 Anwar
  • Maitryi- Postech, population over two hundred thousand, Red Cross Christians make pilgrimage to the ruins of their founding ship here.
• 0602 Jamilah
  • Tecmessa- Postech, a couple hundred thousand people, member of the Allied Worlds, religious strife is barely kept contained by the state.
  • Maria- Postech, population about one and a half million, nanite Dust seperates the nations of this world, as does greed for their recent holmium rush.
• 0604 Smita
  • Megara- TL3, well over eight million people, they dabble in varieties of tech both impressive and worrisome.
• 0607 Plastiras
  • Nestor- TL3, population at roughly twenty thousand, these people are cursed by freakish weather and geology.
• 0701 Gainko
  • Nouri- Postech, about four hundred thousand people, the Allied Worlds have their capitol here.
• 0705 Unn
  • Polanco, Late medieval, half a million people, these people fight the incredibly hostile plants and animals of their world.
• 0706 Dimitris
  • Radwha- Postech, population at about a million, the world is wracked by earthquakes and the locals maintain a truly vast library of knowledge.

Advancement

Everybody advances on the Expert xp chart.

Skills

Skill points gained per level are doubled. The skill caps remain the same.

Experience

Every 50 credits earned from adventuring translates to 1 xp for each character. Equipment or other loot kept by the characters is not counted. Experience will also be awarded for various milestones and on completion of certain actions and achievements. Milestone and achievement awards are received in full by each character.

NSP Milestones and Achievements

House Rules

Up-jumped Weapons

Up-jumped weapons are simply TL 1-3 weapons platforms built using TL4 materials technology. The effect is that these items count as TL4 for the purposes of overcoming advanced armor or resisting effects. An up-jumped shotgun is not slowed by plate, while an up-jumped knife is capable of wounding even a warrior in powered armor.

Up-jumped weapons cost the corebook prices. TL 1-3 weapons that have not been improved in this manner cost 10% less.

Grenades

Underslung Launchers: Can be fit to rifles, combat rifles, combat shotguns, mag rifles, spike throwers, laser rifles and plasma projecters. If you knew what a shear rifle was, you could hook one up to that too. They have a range of 150/350, add +1 encumbrance to the firearm they are mounted to and have a magazine of 3. Reloading the magazine takes one action per grenade. You can't put a throwing grenade into a launcher, and you can't throw a launcher grenade (well, you can, it just won't hit hard enough to go off).

These are cheap, at 300 a pop. Launcher grenades cost the same as regular ones.

Ricochet: Grenades launched from either a dedicated gunnery weapon or an underslung launcher fly much faster than thrown ones. When they bounce, they bounce further. Misses deviate by 1d20 meters.

Indirect Fire: This, in addition to the blast radius, is what makes up for the deviations and 'soft' damage of launched grenades. When fired, you can take a -2 modifier to the attack roll in order to arc the grenade over hard cover, into a trench, etc in order to place a hit or deviation on a target that would otherwise be safe. There still needs to be a path for the grenade to follow in order for this to work.

Ricochet and Indirect Fire apply to the Multiple Grenade Launcher (MGL).

Keep in mind that grenades can kill your friends, that the enemy gets a Luck Save to halve the damage taken, that the damage does not ignore vehicle armor, that tanks are immune to grenade fire, and that ACs below 6 reduce grenade damage by one for every point they are below it. Grenades can do some serious stuff that other weapons cannot, but they have some significant downsides as well.

Weapon Rails

Firearms have attachments for accessories. Pistol weapons can support 2 attachments, carbines and submachine guns can support three and longarms can support 4. Attachments are things like scopes, bayonets, underslung grenade launchers, flashlights, cameras and flare launchers.

Scopes

The scopes that come with a weapon let you fight out to their ranges, but they have crappy detail resolution and suck in the dark. Better scopes cost 100c, and if you don't move, they reduce the long-range penalty from -2 to -1. These also let you make out details well. Low-light capability can be integrated for an additional 200c. Scopes are helpful, but you can't really run and gun with them.

Grenade Launchers

See the grenade section.

Linguistics

The Language skill can be used to translate foreign languages and alien writing systems. The difficulty varies based on the amount of time used, the size of the sample and the amount of computing power at your disposal. Working from first principles, translating an isolated line of alien script in an hour with a notepad is much more difficult than translating a set of books in a day with a dedicated computer station.

After a working vocabulary has been developed, translation is mostly a matter of time and does not require rolls (most of the work can be offloaded to a computer). Working translations can justify an increase in the Language skill and developing them can count as training time, but translation rolls do not substitute for actually knowing the language. There's a significant time delay between encountering text and understanding it. A character could try to translate a recording, but real-time conversations are much too fluid and rapid to make the attempt.

Raw data pulled from computers never needs translating, but text and audio files might.