SWN Delta Drop

Watch this space.

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.

Character Creation

As per the core rulebook (First Edition), with 3 exceptions. 1) Roll as normal for attributes, then assign them in any order you wish. 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. 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.

House Rules

Up-jumped Weapons

Much of Phoenician technology is transitional, and the common practice of up-jumping is part and parcel of that fact. 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.

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.

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.

Grey Market Sales

Selling semi-legal, mildly-irradiated tech isn't as reliable or smooth as selling new product from an established vendor. There is a very real market for this kind of stuff, but it relies more on personal savvy and good business instincts than normal shopping procedures. This can go two ways.

• Way 1: You vendor this stuff for 20% of its base value and we all move on. No fuss, no muss, not much profit or xp. I expect this option will be more useful for disappointing finds.
• Way 2: You work the market. We start selling at 50% of base value and make a contested Business roll. For every point the market wins by, I take an additional 5% off the base price. For every point the PC wins by, I add an additional 5% to the base price. Win or lose, I roll on a trouble table for possible complications that will further reduce profit unless we do an adventure to stop it.

This is basically a cut-down version of the Far Trader rules, meant to deal with small, diverse cargoes in a different grade of market.