uh oh.
Methinks Don Mondo will be making an appearance. That doesn’t sound good for my profit margins…
1 Like
OoC
Right I have to go to my bed. It might be only tea time where you are, but it’s the early hours here. The first toast and thank you must go to @patrace for spending the time to run such an excellent fun game.
The second toast goes to all the players because they made it more than the sum of its parts. Not just an exercise in spreadsheets and dice rolling.
…Though the Spreadsheets did help 
5 Likes
Okay, I’ll be the first to ask: what’s next?
I had one hell of a good time here, and I’m ready to do another one. Doesn’t have to be set in Charybdis (though that turned out to be a great place), or in outer space at all. Could be a standard sword & sandal romp. Could be a Western with werewolves. A noir mystery set aboard a submarine. I’m not picky. But I wanna play some more.
I really want to thank @patrace again, since I can’t seem to thank him enough for conceiving this, volunteering the time and effort to do it, and running it so damn entertainingly. I can understand completely if he’s too busy or burnt-out to run another one anytime soon, but y’know, the experience was so worth it to me, that I’d pay ca$h money for it, if it were allowed.
So… I’d, like, totally volunteer to run one of these if I had the least idea of how to do it. Anyone wanna take up the scepter and run with it?
Pat, can we talk you into doing another?
We lizardssss can make it worth your while…!
4 Likes
The Grey Mouser assembles with the rest of the allied captains. The bridge is full of the closest thing to trepidation Leiberians can feel. Except Marvin, he’s in a great mood. Outside of the ship six Lebierian drones circle, ready to document the upcoming mission.
Fritz reviews the data one last time before streaming it to the remaining skeleton crew. It will be a three pronged attack, one group will attack head on (lead by the Asteroid of Fucking Doom), one will flank and attempt to command the Scylla’s drones against her, and the last one hopes to approach from a low angle, avoiding turret fire, and place explosives on to the Scylla’s hull. The people of Leiberia have spoken and have chosen the explosives run for the Grey Mouser.
“It could be worse,” thinks Fritz, “I know people only watch these shows for the drama and explosions, but from our simulations we actually stand half a chance of surviving. They aren’t completely sadistic.” Fritz runs the simulation one last time. From his earlier intel mission, he had a complete layout of the turrets on the Scylla. Through stealth, tactical maneuvering, and using missiles to take out the turrets, Fritz is confident they have a good shot of surviving the gauntlet. The big danger is avoiding the Scylla’s Matter Disruptor Ray. Usually employed against larger capital ships, these massive canons would rip through the hull like it were butter. The Grey Mouser should be small and fast enough to avoid the Matter Disruptor Rays, but there are no guarantees.
Once they survive the gauntlet, they are to drop off their cargo directly onto the Scylla’s hull. Its target will be the main bridge. While a ship the size of the Scylla will have a secondary bridge, this attack should leave them in chaos and uncoordinated for several minutes, with lots of potential damage to morale.
A message comes in, the Scylla has been sighted. Fritz has the coordinates laid in, glances at the Lucky Horse Shoe, and orders the space-fold generators to engage.
The fleet comes out of FTL speed ahead of the Scylla. Immediately every one splits off into their groups and begins their runs. The Cobra II is the only other ship loaded down with explosives, but it peels off to go after the Galaxxon Sun Eater.
“Begin transmitting the drone’s transponder code.” This code didn’t seem to help much in the mission against the Marshals, but the Scylla has hundreds of drones, making the likelihood of being ignored more likely. Of course it doesn’t prevent any manual targeting.
“Captain, there are five fighters heading towards us.”
“Don’t fire unless fired upon. They may not notice us.” Frtiz’s hunch was right. The five fighters break right and head to intercept the ships on course for the full frontal assault. “It’s working,” Fritz thought. “We may just have a chance.”
“1000 space meters until we are within targeting range of the turrets.”
“Lock on to as many of them as possible. Fire an Alpha Strike as soon as we are within our weapons range.” Outside of the Grey Mouser, lasers, ion cannons and missile batteries emerge from their recessed storage within the ship’s hull. On the tactical screen the blip representing the Grey Mouser enters the yellow circle showing the range of the Scylla’s turrets. If they had breaths, they would be held right now. But the Scylla’s gun are silent - or occupied with other targets.
An alarm goes off, signaling they were now within the Grey Mouser’s weapons’ range. “FIRE!” Bolts of crimson and blue tear through the vacuum, finding their marks on the Scylla’s turrets. An armada of missiles launch, raining down like hellfire.
“We have direct hits on thirty one turrets!”
“That should even up our odds, get us close to their hull. Skim through the gauntlet. Prepare to release the cargo.”
Tactical and navigation coordinate flawlessly. They zip through the burnt out turrets and dodge the blasts from the active ones.
“We’ve taken minor hits to the shields. Still at 85%.”
“Stay on target!”
Fritz is starting to feel optimistic. The Scylla’s bridge was fast approaching on the on the logistics screen. He knocked on his chair for luck, a habit he picked up hanging around humans for too long. He nervously glanced at the horse shoe, hoping what ever magic it possessed would continue to work for them.
Fritz focuses on the gauntlet schematics when something catches his attention. Up ahead there appears to be movement. A cannon emerges from the hull of the Scylla. “That wasn’t in the intel! Evade! Evade!”
The Grey Mouser pulls up and swerves right, hoping to hop over the cannon and to continue the assault. But the cannon was much more nimble than they could have imagined. The Matter Disruptor Ray strobes before a giant bolt of energy hurls toward the Grey Mouser. I direct hit! It actually shears through the front half of the bridge. Controls were dead. Fritz couldn’t find the links to his crew. They were spinning away perpendicular to the Scylla’s hull, flailing into the arch of turret fire.
Fritz looks at the horse shoe, somehow still on the wall, with contempt. “Damn it. This is all your fault!”
A dozen laser blasts stream towards the tumbling Grey Mouser. One punctures the hull in cargo bay 3. The explosives detonate, causing a chain reaction through the other 5 bays. The Grey Mouser disappears in a ball of light.
System: ON
Press F22 for access to BiOS
Rebooting…
RAM Check: OK
Neural Storage Net: OK
Loading SIOS… COMPLETE
Encryption: CONFIRMED
Uploading Conscience Data File: 43532.356.752.8.T
Uploading…
Uploading…
Data Integrity: 100%
Engaging Physical Systems
Sensors: OK
Motor Services: OK
Nano Bot Hive: ACTIVATED
Coolant Systems: OK
Sleep Status: AWAKE
Neural Net Activation
Searching…
Leiberian Neural Net Found
Connecting…
Coneccted
“Welcome to the Supreme Intelligence. Ver. 483.45”
Topic of the Day: “What’s with the food on airlines?”
Welcome to Life, Captain Lord Fritz
Fritz regains consciousness in a small brightly lit room. He is laying on a reclining chair. He tries to turn his head and lift an arm, but they refuse to obey him. The most he can manage is a little twitch of the hand.
There are two other Leiberians clad in blue exo-skeleton in the room, talking over something on a data pad. One of them notices Fritz’s hand movement. “Good to see you awake, Lord Fritz.”
“I… … I… I… wwwrrrrrr… weeeerrrrr… rrr… I… I… I…” Fritz tries to set up, but only manages to have his chest spasm.
“Please, it is best if you lie still and remain quiet. It will take some time for your neural synapsis to sync up with your new body.”
“Grrrrrr…rrrrrrr…AAAAAAAAAAAAAAA… Mmmm… ooowwww… rrrrrrrr…”
“Unfortunately the Grey Mouser has been destroyed. According to the data we recorded you were doing so well until that Matter Disruptor Ray popped up out of nowhere. It crippled the ship and left you as easy fodder for the laser turrets. What are the chances of that?”
“CCCCCcccc…rrrrrrrrrrrr…uUUuUUUuuuu…”
“Your crew? We received every one remaining on your ship just fine. Their new bodies are being replicated. Currently they are communing with the Supreme Intelligence and will be uploaded in to their new bodies soon.”
The door at the end of the room slides open. In glides the tall, female form of a Leiberian wearing a purple exo-skeleton with a reflective face plate. “Ah gentlemen, I see our new hero has been restored.”
“Yes, sir. The upload went well with 100% data integrity. He is currently going through the syncing process, but we expect a full recovery.”
“Excellent.” She turns to address Fritz, “Hello, I am Admiral Ivrian. You sure have made a name for yourself both in Charybdis and back home on Leiberia. The Supreme Intelligence has been very impressed with you and your crew.”
Ivrian sits on the bed and leans in, “You do realize since you have returned, your experience cycle is over, and you will begin a cycle of Utopia here on Leibera.”
“UuuUUUU… TTTTTTT… OoOOOOOooo… ppPPPeeeeeee… aaaaaa… nnnnnnn… nnnn… nnn… nnnnnnn… ooooOOOOOO”
Ivrian strokes Fritz’s head. “I know. I know. I am like you. I talked to the Supreme Intelligence and made a case for you to renew your experience cycle, It agreed. We began construction on the Grey Mouser II yesterday. If you want her, captain, she is all yours. Your entire crew will have the option to renew their experience cycles as well.”
Fritz wasn’t sure his audio sensors had heard that correctly. Everything was still hazy, like he was thinking and moving in slow motion. Could this news be real? Was he being given a second chance? Using every ounce of mental effort, Fritz forced his hand into a thumbs up position.
Ivrian patted his chest, “I thought you would like that. Take a few days to acclimate your systems and come visit me in my office so we can go over the details.”
As Ivrian gets up to leave, the two other Leiberians excuse themselves, “Please remain still during the syncing process. We will continue to monitor you and be back shortly.”
As the three proceed down the hallway, Iviran asks them, “So did you tell him about his First Officer? What was his name?”
One of the techs looks at the data pad, “Lt. Marvin. And no, the syncing process can be delicate. Undue stress can hinder the mind mating to the body, and in some cases personality disorders may form. It’s best to let him fully recover before giving him the news.”
“I see. Is there an analysis on why Marvin’s upload failed?”
“Oh, it didn’t fail.”
“Explain.”
“It didn’t fail - it was never begun. In fact Marvin’s neural net responds for several minutes after the Grey Mouser’s destruction. When we pinged him, he responded, but via a Coalition’s network It is very possible he is alive right now, but unable to connect to any network that would allow him to respond to us. We have sent a ship to comb the battle field, but there has been no sign of Marvin.”
“Damn. I am sure that will hit Fritz hard. Let me know when he is fully synced, I will be the one to deliver the news to him.”
“Yes, sir.”
Something is wrong. This is the first thought Marvin has as he watches lasers tear into what’s left of the Mouser… from the outside.
Marvin realizes he has been rapidly expelled from the craft under extreme force and is drifting into heavy turret fire. He thinks of his fans, they would want some last words - “Never pre-pay a bar tab. Bad luck.”
Then the Mouser’s cargo bay was hit, starting a chain reaction that has the ship disappear in ball of light. The shockwave of energy streams towards Marvin, still strapped into his bridge chair, pushing him away from the Scylla. From this vantage point Marvin can see most of the battle.
Another bright light eclipses the Scylla, as the near by Galaxxon Sun Eater winks out of existence. This causes a panic among the commercial vessels. They aren’t equipped for a battle like this, and they aren’t getting paid enough to die. One by one they pull to a safe distance to engage there warp engines and space-fold generators.
Above Marvin cruises a large terra-forming vessel, slowly heading towards him. “Like a bug on a windshield. How fitting. Come and get some, you sons of bitches!” But the ship silently passes a few meters above him. “Damn you! Take me! Take me, damn it! It’s not fair! I want this!”
The ship’s pulse engines flicker and die. He sees the FTL space-fold generators beginning to strobe and pulsate. In a blink the ship disappears, taking poor Marvin, who was in their gravity well, with them.
The terra-forming ship reappears light years away and falls into orbit around a small, blue green planet. Marvin floats helplessly as the ship disappears in the distance.
“Well. Isn’t this ironic. An android with a death wish who has some how avoided it despite his best efforts. That figures. I can’t do anything right. Why even try at all. I guess this is what I get for hanging the captains lucky horse shoe upside down.”
Marvin tries to estimate his speed and trajectory around the planet. Going out as a shooting star sounds poetic. But as best as he can tell his orbit is very stable. “Well, this body probably has only 100 to 150 years before the lack of maintenance would cause a serious system shut down. This unshielded radiation from the sun might speed things up. I guess all I can do now is wait. That’s ok, I can wait. Good things come to people who wait. I guess I’ll start keeping a record. Let’s see, what is today? Ah, Thursday. Well, hang in there, Marvin, Friday’s coming!”
7 Likes
OOC
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaand just as I predicted, I’m dead last among the ships who made it to the last mission.
ETA - Thank you again for patrace’s initial idea and willingness to crunch all these numbers.
And thanks to the players who made it special.
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@patrace That was super fun. Thanks for being a great GM.
Somehow I knew, I knew when you said one ship had survived with one HP, that it was me. I got Pete to load the asbestos panels on extra-thick…
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HEAR HEAR!
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I’m not sure if this will animate automatically for everyone, click on it if it doesn’t.
(also I know I didn’t get everyone… in particular I was going to do Marvin but then I found out he didn’t die and also he isn’t at the party)
7 Likes
It’s 2 am and I’ve finally had a chance to take a break from tending and sit down at my terminal. Thank you all for the votes. The TARD-iss will live another day! All drinks free tonight, drink them all. Pour them big, pour them small. Oh and if there are any cute androids who wish to join me in the aft hold, see you in five minutes…( wink wink)
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I would also like to thank @patrace for deciding to do this, and for doing it so well - I was kind of wary and didn’t know what to expect at first but it got really compelling and fun pretty much immediately. That’s largely because besides the work running the numbers etc., you gave us the glue that held our somewhat-disparate characters and stories together by shaping the missions and the overall story in a way that gelled all of our nonsense into something coherent.
There was talk in the rules thread of coding up some solutions to make this easier and I’d be interested in working on that; it would be fun and rewarding to contribute something to the open-source Discourse platform and (assuming it’s done reasonably well) BB seems like a place that would be happy to enable our added functionality.
If that ever comes about it will take lots of planning and quite some time to do, though, and like @Donald_Petersen suggests I’d like to do more games sooner than that.
Since I’m replying to you, I’ll address you directly now 
If @patrace will share the secrets of how the mechanics work (I’m sure it’s not outrageously complicated but clearly neither of us knows anything about it) I would really enjoy working with you to come up with something and to share the burden of running the game. I know you’re super busy 
at WB all day, and I have lots of free time right now. I mean, we’re kind of rudely assuming he doesn’t want to do it again himself but as you say, perhaps he’s busy or burnt out.
This game universe was clearly perfect for the BB crowd, and there’s no reason to not do more with it, but I’m sure we could put our own unique spin on it (if we didn’t do something different entirely… but the idea of having a vehicle of some sort instead of upgrading a character like in a normal RPG is part of what I liked a lot about this… could do something similar in other contexts, of course).
On that note, another thing I’ve been thinking about is that the reason this was so fun is that we weren’t a bunch of dorks seeking out a message board to RPG in (and then take it really seriously)… we’re a bunch of dorks who just happen to be hanging around here for other reasons.
2 Likes
Epilogue
We are seventeen standard days into the War of Charybdis. The people are coalescing, finding their shape amid the chaos of war, a galactic nation forged in the fires of a great revolution.Fighters defend Charybdis and smugglers embark on dangerous transport missions. Medical facilities are overrun, filled with the dead an dying.
The smell of blood is in the air ...the smell of freedom.
**Nurse Squill:** He's up and moving again, the first thing he did was pull the plug on his painkillers.
**Dr. Slike:** The limbs are regenerating at a normal rate, I think we should remove the feeding tubes.
**Nurse Squill:** Have you noticed, he has a resemblance to...
**Dr. Slike:** Shhhh... Quiet down Gretchen, he's just another patient. He came in without an identity and we aren't going to get involved in anything over our heads.
**Nurse Squill:** ...But the hat.
**Dr. Slike:** Gretchen, you have a family, I have a family. This isn't something we're going to discuss.
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Yub nub!
1 Like
END CREDITS
Ha! What a great adventure that was. You took what I envisioned as Lemonade Stand in space and made it a thousand times more interesting and entertaining. I'm just blown away by the writing, animation, community, and everything else you brought to the table.**Thank you from the deepest reaches of my spaceheart.**
There are several people who are interested in doing something like this again, Donald suggested a Werewolf Western!!? Not that you need my blessing or that you even have to ask but you've absolutely got it! Go be creative and make something amazing!
If anyone wants to talk about what worked and what didn't, I'd be happy to chat sometime.
I'd love to run another game of my own, and probably will, but it might be a while. I've got a lot of work ahead of me these upcoming months and this was a complete lark. A time devouring spacelark.
Thanks to the Boing Boing crew for making the world more interesting and for drawing together such talented, brilliant, and creative people. Thanks to my mom and dad for buying me a C64. Thanks to Marian for her patience and support and music. Thanks in a big way to Aaron Suring, A.K.A. Ranger Sura Slaal, A.K.A. The super nice quiet guy who helps me with all my crazy projects.
Thank you!!!
Ok. That's the end credits. Goodnight.
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Oh.
Bollocks.
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OOC - That was thoroughly enjoyable, and brought home the real potential of the bbs system, as opposed to the old inline comments. The powers that be should show you some love, given the community gelling effects of this little exercise.Glad I kept my stub. I’ll be off to claim my winnings later.
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Ideas? Oooh! I has lots!
Steampunk? Mash-up of The Difference Engine & The Chaos Engine? Jules Verne, HG Wells?
Superhero/villain - never played it but I’m thinking something like what I’ve read of City of Heroes?
Generic sub-Tolkein, D&D rip-off. Always good, plenty of material out there
Hammer Horror/Universal Monsters
Western - a lot of what we just did was practically a western, could easily translate to something similar in the old west. Upgrade your horse? Oregon Trail? How about a zombie Organ Trail (already exists…)?
Pirates - Monkey Island, The Pyrates!, PoTC?
Crime/Noir - think Goodfellas, Scarface, GTA, Miami Vice? Anyone wanna be Sam Spade?
Period Sci-Fi - Mars Attacks! XCOM in the 60s?
Swords ‘n’ Sandals - Iliad, Odyssey etc?
Middle/Dark Ages - Arthurian knights? Ivanhoe? Robin Hood?
Vikings - usual pillaging etc, chuck in some Norse mythology?
H Rider Haggard, King Solomon’s Mine style?
Edgar Rice Burroughs John Carter-y stuff?
Fables? Everyone picks their favourite fairy tale character?
Cyberpunky stuff? Neuromancer, Matrix, Deus Ex? Cybernetic upgrades?
Mad Max post-apocalyptic style?
Spies? James Bond, Austin Powers, No One Lives Forever? Plenty of scope for double and triple agents with private messages; anyone want to defect? turn whistleblower?
Maybe something like Tad Williams’ Otherland - our avatars could jump around all sorts of virtual worlds (i.e. all of the above…)
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I want to thank you all as well. I know you didn’t see much of me the past few weeks since I’m more of a lurker than anything else, but I have been helping Patrick out some on the back end of the game and it was fun to see the whole thing evolve.
I know Pat has said it, but as someone who has seen him in person the past couple of weeks, I can fully corroborate how much he has enjoyed doing this. The time commitment has been much larger than original estimates, and not just because of the number of people that signed up. As much as you tried, there was no way he was going to let anyone out back-story him in his own game. And how much the story has changed over the course of the game has been remarkable too. It’s pretty cool to see the process of telling a truly interactive story, one that your choices and narratives completely changed.
I also want to own up to some of the faults in the game. I suspect that a lot of the errors in numbers along the way were due to my incompetence. I’ll try to do better next time. Speaking of, I am pretty sure that there will be a next time, but I’m going to try to keep Pat from running one anytime real soon as I need his help over in Alaska Robotics land!
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Thanks so much for your contribution as well! I’m glad you two seemed to have as much fun as we did. And I was supremely tickled at how collaborative the whole thing became… as the overall narrative built, everyone’s disparate stories began to fit together more and more closely, without one instance of anyone contradicting anything that someone else put in before. Quite a canon we built!
Speaking of Charybdis… since a couple of us are interested in doing another game sooner rather than later, @patrace, would you guys have any objection to us continuing the Chronicles of Charybdis, as it were? We could very well end up doing something completely different (I do so love werewolves and the Old West), but since you’ve built us such a rich and tempting galaxy to play in (one that might afford us a slightly easier entry than building another fictional game-world out of whole cloth might), it’s quite a tantalizing prospect for us to dive back into Badass Space Dragon itself right away.
But BSD is your baby, and I wouldn’t dream of being all Gus Van Sant on your Psycho, if you take my meaning… especially without your blessing.
