Vortex
Mongoose
After over two years of reading over 15 B5 book, I finally started my first game Friday and it was a great success!
I started with a bang as many have suggested and it worked just fine. I went for the direct approach: hostage situation on a starliner. The PCs got together because the terrorists wanted the telepaths out of the way before moving. One PC was a telepath, another was the Centauri bodyguard of a prophetess NPC. The all got tied up in the room where they keep animals during the flight. The third PC, a lurker stowaway, was hidden in that room. That's how they got together.
They managed to do the intelligent things. They used the environment: Tools to free themselves, monitors in the security office to know how many terrorists there were, bedsheets to tie up the thugs the dazed in the infirmary, etc. There was only a single firefight and it consisted of a single gunshot. This is mostly due to the fact that I purposefully created a situation where public safety was at stakes and the P12 mindshredder could use her powers pretty much as freely. I did that to give my 1st level PCs a chance against 12 enemies including 3 3rd level characters.
In the end, the terrorist leader escaped the ship with the shuttle and the PCs got to command the ship because most of the crew was incapacitated. They managed to damage the shuttle and the leader surrendered.
The last minutes really felt like the end of an episode with the comic touch when the lurker announced over the ship's PA in bad English with his French accent to a Centauri Noble he had never met: "Hey Duke! Your lady's all right, she's in security. You can go get her." Just before an hyperion came out of hyperspace to take the terrorists into custody and bring the ship to earth.
One thing I'm very glad about this game is the fact that I clearly established Martian independentists and rogue telepaths as bag guys. I don't know if I'll turn this around eventually or not but having a different approach from the series gives me possibilities.
I'm really looking forward to the next session where they will be assigned (for show) to the security of Babylon 3, still under construction…
I started with a bang as many have suggested and it worked just fine. I went for the direct approach: hostage situation on a starliner. The PCs got together because the terrorists wanted the telepaths out of the way before moving. One PC was a telepath, another was the Centauri bodyguard of a prophetess NPC. The all got tied up in the room where they keep animals during the flight. The third PC, a lurker stowaway, was hidden in that room. That's how they got together.
They managed to do the intelligent things. They used the environment: Tools to free themselves, monitors in the security office to know how many terrorists there were, bedsheets to tie up the thugs the dazed in the infirmary, etc. There was only a single firefight and it consisted of a single gunshot. This is mostly due to the fact that I purposefully created a situation where public safety was at stakes and the P12 mindshredder could use her powers pretty much as freely. I did that to give my 1st level PCs a chance against 12 enemies including 3 3rd level characters.
In the end, the terrorist leader escaped the ship with the shuttle and the PCs got to command the ship because most of the crew was incapacitated. They managed to damage the shuttle and the leader surrendered.
The last minutes really felt like the end of an episode with the comic touch when the lurker announced over the ship's PA in bad English with his French accent to a Centauri Noble he had never met: "Hey Duke! Your lady's all right, she's in security. You can go get her." Just before an hyperion came out of hyperspace to take the terrorists into custody and bring the ship to earth.
One thing I'm very glad about this game is the fact that I clearly established Martian independentists and rogue telepaths as bag guys. I don't know if I'll turn this around eventually or not but having a different approach from the series gives me possibilities.
I'm really looking forward to the next session where they will be assigned (for show) to the security of Babylon 3, still under construction…