Fiery Trial questions

Greg Smith

Mongoose
I have started to run the first module of the Fiery Trial which is a great book, but it has raised a few questions.

Why is Levana forbidden to human explorers? And is it just humans?

Who are the Descari? And if they're xenophobic, why do they have a deal with the Drazi.

Isn't 500 credits a rather small amount to pay for a sixteen day hazardous mission? It will only buy a month's stay in downbelow with a poor standrs of living!

I probably should have forseen these, but it's been a while since I ran a printed module.
 
I agree with your comment about the pay being very low.

A PSI Corps teep can make up to 1,000 Cr for one scanning job.

I raised the pay for each job by a factor of 10. So the first job was 5,000.

I still think it's a little low when compaired to what a PC could make with a Profession check described in the book for two weeks work. Espically when you consider the risk factor.

I would also recommend you make some maps for encounters. I missed that in the module and the lack of scale on the maps they did include.

Sidney
 
Thanks, I think I'll do both those.

Did you notice there was no map of the Narn base in module 4?

I've looked on the net and can't find any reference to the Descari. My players asked me who they were and what they looked like. I responded with "I dunno". :(

Then ad-libbing I said "They're a minor League world." My players said "So they're xenophobic, but joined the League. Riight"
I responded intellegently by saying "Um."
 
I've looked on the net and can't find any reference to the Descari. My players asked me who they were and what they looked like. I responded with "I dunno".
Should have looked in AoG's "Showdowns-4". "The Descarii are a xenophobic race of large, ape-like creatures. Ther evolution in a predator-rich environment has installed a sense of racial paranoia toward other species. Aliens simply make them nevous, and while they tend to wards belligerence, they have a great fear of the unknown..."
Nothing more I'm afraid, though there are a few unnamed aliens running around int he show who match that description... and I do hope some day Mongoose will release an "players manual", with all the "official info" available to anyone in the B5 universe, including a bit of info about each race, With an picture you can point at when asked that question.

Then ad-libbing I said "They're a minor League world." My players said "So they're xenophobic, but joined the League. Riight"
I responded intellegently by saying "Um."
Well... they aren't, not really (or at least not accordingf to AoG BG fluff).
History time... The Narn once tried to invade their howeworld of Bestine in 2214, and almost succeeded - they only failed because they had underestimated how many fighters, armed shuttles and small spaceships the Descarii had on ground bases - their scout ships didn't detect and orbital installations, so they went in with a small fleet expecting a soft target, only to meet hordes of atmospheric craft rising from the ground to deal them a death of a thousand paper cuts (and the descarii salvaged some narn tech from the wrecks, upgrading their own ships and starting to build an real space fleet).
Later the Descarii made contact with other League races, and were impressed by the honesty and piousness of Markab traders & ambassadors - so much that they almost were about to join the League... but that was in 2230, when the Dilgar were tearing through league space, and about to hit descarii territory. While refugee ships were evacuating millions of descarii their young fleet assembled to hold off the inevitable assault as long as possible. When the Dilgar finally entered Bestine, that proved to ba two hours, as the Derscarii ships just couldn't match the battle-hardened Dilgar fleets in any way, they were outnumbersd, outgunned and outfought; and the Dilgar made another easy conquest.
Fortunately for them, the EA joined the war shortly afterwards, and pushed the over-extended Dilgar back, thus liberating the Descarii worlds before the Dilgar could do too much damage. Still, the descarii distrust had been amplified by those events, and they were as xenophobic as ever, with the committees that emerged from the devastation of Dilgar invasion as the new leaders of their race making every effort to build up their fleet as to prevent them falling prey to aliens ever again.
They came into conflict with the Gaim around 2251 when they destroyed one of their ships that had been sneaking around descarii borders as "object lession", but had underestimated the gaim's military strength or will to fight. The war between those two went on for a while, with the gaim defeating descarii forces and conquering their colonies... but falling short of taking Bestine - they did make an successful landing, if you can call 80% losses among the first wave of assault shuttles successful, Still, their ground troops were expendable anyway, and their initial losses did pinpoint the location of the descarii ground defenses... so in the end the Gaim landed enough troops to raze a descarii city. However, their own losses were considerable, especially among their space fleet, so that strike basically proved they had founght the war to a stalemate - the Gaim had lost too many ships to take Bestine, and the Descarii had lost too many ships to mount an credible counter-offense.
In the end, the Gaim seemingly carves in to the diplomatic pressure broungt on them from neighboring league races and agreed to a peace settlement, giving back T'lad'tha and some paying reperations while the descarii had to limit their fleet presence in other systems - their primary goal of establisheng their position as a power to be reckoned with had been archieved anyway. And the Descarii were once more unsure about aliens - the Gaim had attacked them, yet the League had spoken for them. They have established lines of communication with some league races, yet haven't committed themselves to signing a membership treaty (and won't join the ISA either, at least not until they see it work for a while). Soo... while they are in the midst of League space, and are usually counted as League race by outsiders, they aren't really one...
 
Thanks Shadowscout! That's great.

It kind of sucks to have to rely on information from another game line to be able to give players the information they need, especially a defunct one. If there was a picture of the Descari and a breif description that would have been sufficient. The same too with the ships that aren't in the core rulebook.
 
Thanks Shadowscout! That's great.
Always willing to help. :wink:

It kind of sucks to have to rely on information from another game line to be able to give players the information they need, especially a defunct one. If there was a picture of the Descari and a breif description that would have been sufficient. The same too with the ships that aren't in the core rulebook.
Well... I expect given time Mongoose will bring out everything that was in B5Wars in their own supplements, probably with slight changes to mesh with their stuff (and hopefully correcting some of AoG's bigger errors... we'll see come the Mongoose ShadOmega... :wink: ).
But for now it may be a little problem for those not already in possession of B5W stuff. I myself think it's great that Mongoose takes the work others did before them and uses it for their game, not like some other licensed games where Everything you read in "Company one's" supplements was completely wrong when "Company two" took over the license, and "Company three" who also had tzhe license for computer games made another completely different work, as did company four who also made a computer game... from ships to racial BG, just about everything. It Really made me mad, especially once the official guys started saying "no, it's all non-canon, we'll contradict it at our leisure" (and later even started contradicting their own earlier shows). I still like a few bits and pieces of the BG, but Sheesh...

And it isn't as if AoG's work is forever lost... you can still get some suppleemnts here and there, and more importantly, you can get other people to give you a bit of RPG-relevant info. Though if you Really want to flesh out your BG, it'd be a good idea to go supplement hunting... even the short racial history sections in the rules compendium will give you a lot to work with... and there are a few pearls hidding in several other supplements too (the Dilgar stuff {Dilgar Invasion & Showdowns-4} is absolutely Vital for anyone trying to make a campaign for that time period. The Life story of Jha'dur alone is worth bying S-4! And all the minor races that pop up in AoG's stuff, like the Descarii... really nice to flesh out the BG of any adventure. And I won't even mention how good it looks if you play space encounters with AoG minis... oops, now I did mention it :p )
 
ShadowScout said:
Well... I expect given time Mongoose will bring out everything that was in B5Wars in their own supplements, probably with slight changes to mesh with their stuff (and hopefully correcting some of AoG's bigger errors... we'll see come the Mongoose ShadOmega... :wink: ).

That would be good. But in the meantime when something is mentioned from their works, a little more info (just a paragraph) would be helpful and maybe a picture.

But for now it may be a little problem for those not already in possession of B5W stuff. I myself think it's great that Mongoose takes the work others did before them and uses it for their game, not like some other licensed games where Everything you read in "Company one's" supplements was completely wrong when "Company two" took over the license, and "Company three" who also had tzhe license for computer games made another completely different work, as did company four who also made a computer game... from ships to racial BG, just about everything.

I agree.

And it isn't as if AoG's work is forever lost... you can still get some suppleemnts here and there, and more importantly, you can get other people to give you a bit of RPG-relevant info. {snip} And I won't even mention how good it looks if you play space encounters with AoG minis... oops, now I did mention it :p )

How many relevant supplements did AOG do?

I've been toying with buying some miniatures from e-bay. You've just made it more difficult to resist. :)
 
How many relevant supplements did AOG do?

Well, that mostly depends on what one considers relevant.

Their variants books are pretty much useless for RPG-ers, cause they contain mostly rule additions and new ship versions (they can be useful for hardcore gamers, who want to surprise their players with an variant though, but are low priority for most RPG guys). "Ships of the Fleet" is just that - a collection of ship BG and control sheets; nice to have a bit of BG for ship classes, but not really neccessary for roleplaing... The "Tactics Guide" is also rather game specific... everything else though contains at least enough BG fluff to make these races come alive in a campaign.

The "Rules Compendium" has all the basic B5W rules, but also some BG info for the major governments, and the AoG star map (agreed, the new one is now "in effect", but still...).

"Wars of the Earth Alliance" had some info on the EA/Minbari war and the EA civil war, but is almost impossible to find, and not even correct anymore, as most new Minbari ships were redesigned after it's release (they look a LOT better now - check the minis!)

"The Dilgar Invasion" and "Showdowns-4" covers the dilgar war, with a complete history of how it went, descriptions of the major races involved not already mentioned elsewhere (Dilgar, Alacan, Balosians, Descarii, Markab, Llort) and of course the ships of these days.

"The Coming of Shadows" is old and hard to find, but covers the Shadows and the Vorlons, and their conflict withing B5 time, while "Wars of the Ancients" gives you tons on BG about the other first ones, and what went on when the Vorlons were still young.

"Militaries of the League..." is just that - the first (hard to find) one covers Abbai, Brakiri, Drazi, Gaim, Pak'ma'ra and Vree, while the second has Cascor, Grome, Hurr, Hyach, Ipsha, Kor-Lyans & Torata. "Showdowns-2" has a bit more stuff for the MotL-1 races, while "SD-7" a lot more for MotL-2 races and a small section for the Yolu too.

"Raiders, Pirates & Privateers" covers the Llort, Raiders and their oppoennts - police forces of several races as well as the human "Belt Alliance". There was a second one under production, released as download in their final days, which covers more non-human raiders & freighters, as well as the Deneth.

"Wars of the Centauri Republic" and "SD-8" take a look at the "Lion of the Galaxy" during their prime, when their empire spanned as much space as the whole "B5 map" and they were about to clash with their first truly serious opponent, the Orieni Empire. Hard to get nowadays, even though it was one of their latter ones.

"Showdowns-5" covers the Narn/Centauri war (actually re-covers it, as there was the 1st Edition "War of Retribution" which is and has been out of print for a while... SD-5 may be better anyway, even though it doesn't give you all those nice drawings), and the Corillani who were caught up in it.

"SD-3" does a peek at new crusade-era EA ships, the Streib, a little war between raiders and Minbari client races and one of the Ancients, the Kirishiac Lords, but not enough of any of those to really warrant getting it for a common RPG guy (well... except maybe the Kirishiac...).

Finally, "SD-6" covers some of the minor wars within the League - the Descarii/Gaim conflict as well as Drazi vs. Brakiri and Balosian skirmishes.

As for getting them... ask Agent-1, he's privately selling lots of B5W stuff he picked up from several distributor's back shelves. Better choice then e-bay any day IMO, as long as his supplies last...
The old post-closing AoG website is still up, you can review their stock list to see what they made (and get an idea of how all those ships are supposed to look), and you can still send a message to Agent-1 under agent1@agentsofgaming.com.
 
Okay, now I have a shopping list. :)

Out of interest does the AOG star map include the planets form Fiery Trial that aren't on the map in the RPG (Levana, Ulata, Orema, Yolanda, Djinn) ?

Thanks again.
 
Out of interest does the AOG star map include the planets form Fiery Trial that aren't on the map in the RPG (Levana, Ulata, Orema, Yolanda, Djinn) ?

Nope, as the Mongoose map, major systems only.
Hey, they had to squeeze it one one page, you can't expect them to be able to do all those hundreds of minor sytems that branch off cul-de-sac wise from the major ones... (though who knows - maybe one day someone will. However, I prefer the flexibility of a "just major systems" map; that way you as GM can always add systems as needed... need a new world? Just imagine it and say it can be reached through Tiree - since minor worlds aren't on the map anyway, noone can say otherwise...)
Actually Mongoose's map is more accurate, as the AoG map is older, and thus missing a few not-so-important systems that were mentioned later in the series (like Daltron or Zander).
On the other hand, I'm not so sure about Mongoose's map showing Z'ha'dum - I always had the impression it's a loong way and many jumps further from the "known space" of B5... well, I'll just take these routes as "going into the direction" and not direct connections to the big Z. And I know there's somethinmg wrong with it around their "Gigmos" - an unnamed world and a suspicion that It might be Gigmos, while the dead world currently having the name next to it being some other system (as "gigmosian ceremonies" were mentioned in the show, and not by an xenoarcheologist... so I presume they're still kicking). Hey, noone is perfect, and I hope Mongoose will bring out an corrected version of their nice map sometime (maybe even in poster format, so I can mount it on my wall...)

And one day I might do my own map following Mongoose's work too, because while their's is really nice, it can't be easily printed; I'd like to have a pdf-file, white background with black lines & stars... and I did that once already with AoG's map. (Though who knows - maybe they'll do it for me before I get around to it)
 
Can i ask which AoG suppliments actually have illustrations of the ships in them?

Well... mostly the older ones I'm afraid; all later supplements have only the front page...

But for an overview:

"Babylon 5 Wars" (the orignial rulebook, black & white pix from the show)
"The War of Retribution" (1st Edition, some show pix some CGI, lots of drawings; artwork and ship profile views)
"Babylon 5 Wars - second Edition" (the book from the 2ndEd basic box; CGI ship views and art pictures)
"Atlas of the Earth Alliance Wars" (CGI views & pix, disregard Minbari section, their ship designs were later changed - and got a lot better, jsut look at the minis!)
"Militaries of the League 1" (half CGI, half drawings, ship views and one artwork page per race)
"Coming of the Shadows" (all CGI, views & pix, though some ships with incorrect fan-built meshes because a small corporation like AoG couldn't afford the show meshes)
"Rules Compendium" (mostly old artwork from fan CGI artists, but at least two pix also showing AoG-made ships)
"Dilgar Invasion" (all CGI, some pix and lots of ship views, with GREAT meshes built for AoG. Forget "Into the Fire" Dilgar - go for AoG's "fork of death" ships :wink: :lol: )

...and after that artwork is front page only, as AoG had to stop using so much artwork to save money so they could stay in the black. Pity. Though most of the covers still are really great, as they continued to get CGI guys to make them meshes of AoG-designed ships... just not so many any more...

Of course, for ship views nothing beats a well-painted "full scale" miniature. And you can still get those... and who knows? If all the RPG-people start screaming for pretty, big minis (and are willing to put their money into it too), maybe the line can eve be revived one day...
 
ShadowScout said:
Though most of the covers still are really great, as they continued to get CGI guys to make them meshes of AoG-designed ships... just not so many any more...

Though of course, most of the later (FA sized) miniatures were all mastered from CG meshes :)

ShadowScout said:
Of course, for ship views nothing beats a well-painted "full scale" miniature. And you can still get those... and who knows? If all the RPG-people start screaming for pretty, big minis (and are willing to put their money into it too), maybe the line can eve be revived one day...

Amen to that. Now if we could get some 28mm in there as well...
 
IIRC Harlequin/Icon miniatures did some character figures. The were very expensive and poorly mixed, ie you would only get 1 main character per box with some generic others.
 
IIRC Harlequin/Icon miniatures did some character figures. The were very expensive and poorly mixed, ie you would only get 1 main character per box with some generic others.
Harlequin - they lost the license whejn they became Icon. The minis were quite nice, especially the later ones (after theri sculptors got the hang of it). And the mixed package wasn't that bad either - most of the "generic" minis would be actually better for a RPG - how often do you meet Ivanova or Kosh anyway; while a "generic" trader, drazi or security guard, well...
Sure, they were a bit pricey, but that was their marketing strategy - limited production for collectors only, not massed minis for gamers. So they had to bring in their production costs through price instead of numbers sold.

Of course, it'd have been nice for them to have completed their run, and not stopped in the middle - this way you have tons of EA minis, yet only few of the other races (and not a single Shadow, much to my chargrin).
However, if Mongoose or some associated company were to pick up those molds and start distributing the minis in solo blisters, they'd have a good stock to expand from.
Dunno if that'd be possible, with licensual entanglements, but one can hope and dream...
 
ShadowScout said:
The minis were quite nice, especially the later ones (after theri sculptors got the hang of it). And the mixed package wasn't that bad either - most of the "generic" minis would be actually better for a RPG - how often do you meet Ivanova or Kosh anyway; while a "generic" trader, drazi or security guard, well...

Weirdly enough, their "generic" figures were actually pretty much all directly from the show. Notably "Security Guard" from 5101 is a botched Zack Allen (right rather than left handed), and the rest are based on

ShadowScout said:
Sure, they were a bit pricey, but that was their marketing strategy - limited production for collectors only, not massed minis for gamers. So they had to bring in their production costs through price instead of numbers sold.

Mind you, there was quite large scale over production of these miniatures - I have at least one of each of the boxes, but got most of the sets at about the £7.50 mark rather than RRP of £15.00


ShadowScout said:
Of course, it'd have been nice for them to have completed their run, and not stopped in the middle - this way you have tons of EA minis, yet only few of the other races (and not a single Shadow, much to my chargrin).
However, if Mongoose or some associated company were to pick up those molds and start distributing the minis in solo blisters, they'd have a good stock to expand from. Dunno if that'd be possible, with licensual entanglements, but one can hope and dream...

I'd think they'd be in a similar situation to AoG in that the destruction of the moulds and masters would have been part of the licence - certainly Black Tree (who Icon became) stopped selling the line around the beginning of November last year (they'd not produced new figures for about 18 months before that)...

A clean break might be nice though - quite a few of the miniatures were very poor likenesses (though weirdly Marcus looked nothing like the actor, yet captured the feel of the character beautifully). Sinclair and Bester were particularly bad.
 
But wierdly Icon/Harlequin/Black Tree Design still sell Dr Who miniatures, despite having lost that licence.

Back when the figures were first available, I would have bought a box or two if it featured the main characters, cbecause there was no RPG. Now I'd probably want some generic too.
 
Note about those "generic" ones... they are ALL from the show, the "generic" ones are only those guys we see only shuffling around in the background.

As for "Doctor Who"... hell, who cares about Those license holders - they couldn't afford any special effects, so they also can't be expected to afford lawyers, while WB has a Lot of lawyers just waiting for someone foolish enough to give them a chance to justify their paychecks... :wink: :p :lol:
 
Greg Smith said:
But wierdly Icon/Harlequin/Black Tree Design still sell Dr Who miniatures, despite having lost that licence.

Mind you, that's the BBC Enterprises (who'll still be collecting royalties on these - Black Tree just can't produce new ones) who have a different view to Warners (who, on termination of the B5 licence have insisted upon destruction of masters and stock).

It should also be noted that Black Tree only stopped selling their licenced Lord of the Rings range as such when GW picked up the film licence. They still sell them as "Legends of the Realm", pretty much as GW previously reused their former LotR range as generic Warhammer figures when they previously ended their licence back in the mid to late eighties.

ShadowScout said:
As for "Doctor Who"... hell, who cares about Those license holders - they couldn't afford any special effects, so they also can't be expected to afford lawyers, while WB has a Lot of lawyers just waiting for someone foolish enough to give them a chance to justify their paychecks...

BBC Enterprises are actually pretty tenacious with persuing licence infringement (coupled with the estate of Terry Nation...), especially with regard to Doctor Who (the annual income from that alone, even now, would be enough to fund the last 10 season's of the show...), but they do have the attitude of "more is better (and more for us!)". The American networks are more concerned with exclusivity it would seem.
 
In module 1, the PCs are recruited to help find a group of scientists who sent a distress call several weeks ago.

It takes 8 days to reach the planet.

The lead scientist's last notes were dated 6 days ago.

There are two dead guys who have been dead for five days.

So the researcheers sent a message out before they were attacked. And the players departed two days before the scientists were attacked???? As one of my players commented, "that's b*****ks". :x

I'd like to offer constructive criticism, but I can't think of anything now.
 
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