Starting a Red Sky Charters game

The Longshore Crew, eh? Tell us more, when you have the time.

A couple of thoughts on last night's game. The session was half character generation, half play. We redefined the members of Red Sky Charters, but kept the basic setup. The PCs are Triton Latimer, late 20s Native boat captain; Aurora Latimer, his 16 year old sister and NCG sympathiser, Thomas Latimer-Charter, a sort-of adopted Newcomer engineer in his 30s; Lex Baxter, a Cat self-taught sleuth; and Nina Zura, a Native biologist and guide.

Character generation took a bit of time, mainly because of the free-form nature of the skill sets. I think that when the full game comes out, with hopefully lots of examples, the players will have an easier time of it. We ended up with a couple of practices which I think might be helpful to others.

When picking skill sets, we found it helpful to come up with the Core (2d10) part of the set first, as this was easier for people to think of. Once that was fixed, moving to the specialism and general parts of it was easier.

The other thing we did was just not bother defining all the skill sets at the start. People could come up with three or four of them, tben hit a bit of a creative block. I said that we should leave things there, and allow people to come up with the remaining skill sets in play (they kept a few points back to allocate as well).

We didn't get as far as Tracks and Ties in the session either. I think the players didn't have the context to understand what they are and how they work, so I'll leave that for another session or two.


As for the game itself, the crew were hired by a woman to go looking for her prospector husband who was lost in a storm about a month ago. The search at the time was called off after finding nothing, but an amateur radio operator was convinced he's heard a message from the lost man. The crew sailed over to the Carib Reef and eventually lucked into finding the crash site. And that's about all we had time for.

Yep until the character generation becomes fully available it's a little "hit and miss" with skills and stuff.


I used 5 skill tracks, one "loose" background, one "loose" origin, two "stronger" skill and one "random" other (totaling 12 points across them all..). I tried to keep to the character generation in v.2 


What skills came in which track was a little more tricky, I felt there needed to be some crossover, which meant some skills that didn't quite "flow" within the tracks..

I wasn't that far out then    Admittedly, I found with the broader nature of the skill usage within the rules there really wasn't the necessity for more than 5 tracks... the points to be shared between them was a bit of a mystery though. Thanks.

Even when using v2 I tended to "alter" the power levels used for characters from the RAW anyway, attribute might be exceptional, skills might be elite etc.

Session 2 of the game was on Tuesday. The PCs investigated the camp made by the crash survivors. One was dead, the other was missing. The missing one was the husband they were paid to rescue. But night was falling when they arrived, so the PCs decided to stay on the Last Chance overnight. During the night, Sarai (the wife) jumped overboard and swam to the shore. She was eventually subdued and locked back in her cabin, but did seem to be acting psychotically. In the morning, they all followed the trail from the camp towards a lagoon in the centre of the island, but were ambushed by a pack of niño muertos. The niños captured Sarai with injuring her, dragged her to the lagoon, where she lay there for a while. She seemed much better afterwards. Then they got a message that the husband, Afton, had turned up in Heather Point. 

Despite some bafflement about the very strange events, the PCs took Sarai and Afton back to Harmony and declared their job complete.

Not a lot happened in the session, but we did break to fill out bio- and cyber-wear, equipment, and Tracks. 

A couple of playtest type comments.

It would be really good to have the Tracks information on the front of the sheet, alongside the attributes and skill sets. That way, all the numbers you need for a test are visible at the same time.

The niño muertos have attributes and skills listed. But how many dice are they rolling for skill tests (I assumed 2) and are their attributes included in the skill rankings (I assumed yes)?

The PCs were all rather well-rounded characters, but none of them had picked up any combat-type skill sets (we had a 1d10 detective and a 2d10 barroom brawler). That made the fight somewhat slow, as a lot of the PCs' attacks were missing. Looking back, I should have emphasised manoeuvres more, to give the PCs more things to do and keep the situation fluid and interesting.

Niño muertos are rock hard in a fight. Psyche 3 means they're rolling against a TN of 6 to resist Stun, so they were getting chunks blown out of them but not stopping. 

About the niños, not quite. I know why they acted like they did, but it's a mystery I think I'll let settle in the game for a bit before revisiting it.

As for the combat, it was an observation more than a criticism. Part of it is that we didn't have a long "session zero" discussion before starting the game. Part of it is that the players are still feeling their way into what the skill sets can do.

No update from the week before, as there wasn't much to report that was interesting for others. The PCs were hired by Taj, husband of Margot (the bush pilot from the original crash). He was terrified as a bunch of NGC heavies had burst into their flat and killed her. Taj wanted quiet passage to New Fremantle. The PCs established that the attack was by a renegade few members of the NGC, led by someone called Pomona. They'd just dropped Taj on in Fremantle when they got a message that Margot was alive and under the protection of Bijou, the Warden. Aurora (the NGC sympathiser PC, and wannabe ecoterrorist) contacted Pomona and told her that Taj was in Fremantle. The PCs went back to the island with the weird niños and Lesear-inducing lagoon, only to find it guarded by Natives from Heather Point. A few of the Natives swarmed the PCs' boat, spouting off about Despoilers, but the PCs managed to get a water sample.

Last week saw the PCs return to New Fremantle to get the sample analysed. It took a few hours, but eventually they found it contained some Long John, but not enough to indicate a major LJ seam nearby. It also had some unstable organic molecules, which had been described in the scientific literature; they were purported to have psychoactive properties, and were connected to rumours of nereid activity. The unstable nature of the molecules suggested they were being made somewhere nearby. 

Meanwhile, Aurora spotted Pomona near the bar in Fremantle, slipped away from the other PCs and caught up with her. Pomona talked Aurora into helping kidnap Taj and then return with the group back to Harmony. That involved a few good scenes with Aurora wrestling with her conscience. The other PCs eventually noticed Aurora was missing, contacted her, and were told she was safe and going to Harmony in the hopper. The PCs rushed back in their boat and eventually caught up with Aurora as she was persuading Margot (and Bijou) to go from the Blue Mountain saloon to a back alley where Pomona & co could ambush her. That turned into a firefight on a boardwalk, and we ended the session with the PCs about to attack Pomona's hopper, containing (they think) Pomona, Taj, and another NGC goon.


A couple of playtest things, though.

The character sheet:
* The pregen sheets in the quickstart have separate tracks for mental and physical strain. The blank character sheets I picked up from somewhere have only a single bubble for starting strain. Something to keep an eye on in the final release.

* We started using Tracks a bit in this session. Again, it would be really good if they were on the front of the sheet. I'd move the biographical information to the back. And again, the blank character sheets have Tracks giving +2 or +4 bonus, while the quickstart has them giving +1 / +2. That's something to keep an eye on. Personally, I prefer the larger swings for Tracks, but that's my taste.

* At the start of the session, we talked about Tags and using them to in things like combat scenes, but when it came to the firefight it was a standard "shoot to kill" affair. That's something I need to be more aware of next time we play.