Our players both chose to make a custom Equipment package, specifically in response to the 3 item limit. One player (Big) had a specific frustration of the certs being restricted during character creation; the same player was also the one who suggested the Batcave rule for items over the limit, which I feel to be a good idea in general.
Big McLargehuge Venusian Medical of the Solar Patrol (Cou/Per Specialty)
[*] Cert - Equipment Waiver (Kits)
[*] Equipment: Headphone, Forensics Kit, Artificial Eye (camera, infravision, microvision, radiovision); Medicine Kit left in the locker
Fridge Largemeat Venusian Security of the Torchmen (Combatives Specialty)
[*] Cert - Efficient (Orgone)
[*] Wand Mod - Power Crystal Boost
[*] Equipment: Augmented Eye (Telescopic, Microscopic, Low-Light), Personal Shield Generator (Rtg 2), External Power Supply
Given their mission and dossiers, they had a momentary question of what they can even do, but ultimately decided to go to the scene of the crime and use Forensics on Cadet Lepus’s office. They figured out that Cadet Lepus had written his destination on a food pill wrapper for others to see, but failed to realize that others would have trouble reading his handwriting (doctors look like computers in comparison) and his office was such a mess that it would’ve been overlooked if it was on an official, novelty-sized memo. With their destination and hop aboard their ship to Mars.
We ran into a potential problem with the transit time of their ship from Luna to Mars, namely Stress Tests. The guidelines don’t clearly designate where “Space Ranger transit time” falls on the chart - it feels like it’s either 1 week or 6 hours based on the description. If it’s 6 hours, then many PCs will find themselves gibbering wrecks. If it’s 1 week, then it’s only going to come up if they’re traveling to Jupiter and beyond. In either case, the question also came up as to whether this is even a concern, as it also looks like they could just treat the transit as one of downtime by cracking open the ship’s datacrystal player and reading some comic books. I ruled, this time, that they had to make the check every 9 hours - 6 hours of stress, followed by 3 hours downtime to reset the counter.
Upon arrival in the gravity well of Mars, they began switching over to the cavoritic polarizers when suddenly their ship sensors were picking up the heat signature of a chemical rocket and Big’s radiovision was picking up a signal from the same direction. Due to Fridge’s advanced U-R Lore, he recognized the signs to be that of a space mine - a dormant missile triggered by close proximity to cavoritic fields. And so began initiative - Big performs a Rating 2 Open Gate around Fridge, who himself uses Visualization to generate an Orgone beam outside of the ship and toward the missile that itself hurtles toward the ship from Very Long Range to Long Range. Realizing they each have 2 action points to spend, they put their collective 4 AP into piloting the ship away, letting Fridge perform the Pilot skill. They outpace it from Long to Very Long doing this - and I add to my own notes to later write down standard speeds for a missile and a Ranger ship to make AP comparisons, as well as communal limits on a ship’s movement when its occupants perform the Pilot action. I will also have to assign hit boxes for a typical Ranger ship - fortunately, I don’t have to worry about it, as Fridge blasts the heck out of the three boxes possessed by the missile/mine.
They begin their descent and land just past the hill to the dig site in Cadet Lepus’s notes. There, they find a dust covered camp, the fire pit long dead, several dead giant horned lizards stripped of meat, a small mound of dirt with a rock & inmate’s hat on top, and a cave about 4m away. Some digging, and they find a news crystal (Space Ranger internal bulletin, one of the notes is the assignment of the new warden for the Gaoul), a cracked cadet’s badge, and inside the cave is a crate that had been unearthed and put back in the hole with a light amount of dirt scattered over it. They deliberate some, with Fridge making a question of whether they’re vulnerable to being ambushed, but only gets a 2 on Combatives before two martian farmhands pop up with gravpistols and stern words to put their hands in the air.
This is where initiative begins, and they deliberate a fair bit on what their APs should be spent on, ultimately deciding on moving for cover and using their wands. After we declare, I rule their ambush lets them “act” first, to which they both get a single hit each on their Shoot/Hold action - and since the rules are unclear here, I let the PCs know this outcome, so they just ignore them and continue with their original actions and let them shoot wildly. Big moves into the cave, back against the wall, and turns on Open Gate around himself. Fridge dives for cover and uses the Beam of Light function, this time using Visualization to have the beam emanate from partially inside one farmhand and toward the other. The subsequent Combatives check is pretty high, and he deals 4 wounds to each of them. The next round, they are convinced pretty handily to throw down their weapons and surrender.
Digging up the grave to confirm it to be Boston, they also discover that Boston had died from giant horned lizards. Questioning the martians, they find out they were paid by a U-R agent to grab a crate in the cave (the stolen pistols were to be used for digging and self-defense). The location was written down on a message tube, which the PCs scanned to find out it was a reused message, the original one being from Cadet Lepus requesting permission to defect and offering a bountiful quantity of Hy-C to seal the deal. Stashing the farmhands with space zip ties onto their ship, they quickly fly over to the town. Seeing nothing weird, they walk the two martians to the sheriff’s place, and while mentioning their concerns, their conversation is interrupted by a shouting Cadet (“I made a mistake! Help!”) who has managed to disable the cloaking field around himself and Dzheyn.
More combat this time, where Fridge generates another Beam of Light to cut the ramp of the Union ship at the base while Big seizes control of Dzheyn’s wand (Silver Key function) and Forrest elbows her hard enough to get out of her grapple. She attempts to stun with her mutation, but then Fridge spends max sagans on an Odic beam (20 dice!) and blasts her into a coma. As this is a playtest, we close the curtain at this point since the epilogue isn’t going to matter with characters who aren’t intended to see play in future sessions.
Response
They like the game as a whole, and would not turn down the offer to play it again. We both feel it could use some formatting changes for ease-of-reference, but that’s probably more relevant to me for assembling it into a book.
They have some concerns with how Rocket Tag the game is, and do feel that Visualization is essentially THE skill of the game; especially with the ability to generate wand functions from elsewhere (what happens if you have the Vril beam emanate from inside an engine? what even is the range of Visualization's ability to offset a wand function?).
They’re not super satisfied with the initiative system. One player from a combat-only playtest declared he would never use Predict, for fear of the mere possibility of the DM declaring it happening after the action it’s being used against and therefore wasted. The player for Big suggested using Star Trek Adventure’s system; with the first person always being one of the players (party decides amongst themselves), barring extenuating circumstances like an ambushing martian farmhand, and afterward each side alternates who acts until everyone has gone.
Neither player feels overwhelmed by the choices, having just chosen their preferred beam functions to default to and slowly expanding the ideas as the session progressed. It was the point at which Fridge cut the ramp that it dawned on him that his wand held incredible versatility
The player for Big decides that a cheat sheet would be helpful, so he’s created one. If I ever end up going farther into this system, I’ll likely make a prettier one, as well as a character sheet.
