The Start of Good - Session 0

I feel the need, the need for speed! Not really. I feel the need to write a Solo RPG Actual Play! I want to do something in the Battletech world. I've wanted to play A Time of War for a while and while I've had a few false starts playing A Time of War solo, I believe I now have all the tools I need to play the game how I want to. The tools I plan to use are:

• A Time of War - The actual RPG. I'll make my character here and play the character-centric parts of the story using these rules.
• Total Warfare - When it's time for Mechwarrior action, I'll be using the boardgame rules to run the 'Mech combat!
• Xenos Rampant - There will be times when I want some squad based action. This game will fill that need perfectly.
• Mythic GM Emulator - My favorite GM emulator. The way it works gels with me so well. I love how Chaos can change things and surprise me, and how well it supports random events.
• The Game Master's Apprentice Deck - This deck excels when the need for a random something rises. Need a difficulty? Draw a card. Name? Draw. Smell? Card. I love it.
• The Oracle Story Generator - Five decks to generate different types of adventures! They're for fantasy, but it's not hard to re-skin them for science fiction.
• Everyone Everywhere List - A lot of pages of tables to generate random names. Thirty-one pages of tables!

There may, of course, be other tools I bring in or throw out as the need arises. This project is for me. I like writing. I like playing games. I like creating stories. I like when the story surprises me. This project is to scratch that itch.

I have been working on a character for A Time of War, but I'm not going to use him. I'm going to generate an adventure first, then see what character concept I want to make for that adventure. To The Oracle Story Generator!

The first deck I grabbed was for Contracts & Bounties! This feels perfect. I guess that means I'm playing a Mercenary. Battletech thrives in the Mercenary space! The cards gave me this adventure:

"A courageous scholar will hire you to capture and imprison a cloaker because they are revolted by it but the cloaker is protected by teleportation magic."

Yeah, that's very fantasy! I'll need to tweak it a little to get it to work in the Battletech universe. Or, will I...

"A Word of Blake Toyama hero has hired you to capture and imprison the pilot of an assassin 'mech that has been plaguing the border planets of the Free Worlds League. The assassin 'mech seems to have some form of teleportation technology that disgusts them."

There we go, that feels very Battletech. I need a name for the Blakist, so I'll turn to the Everyone Everywhere List: Felicidad Quintero. Felicidad is a woman and is a Mechwarrior herself. She is famous and a hero because (this is where I pull some cards from the Apprentice deck) "Strengthen, Elusive, Freedom." She led a coup to overthrow the Comstar commander of the base she was on and turned the base over to the Blakists. The leader allowed people to hold Blakist sympathies, but didn't allow them to "practice" their religion or follow their pseudo-religious beliefs. Felicidad put an end to all that and now they are all free to be part of the World of Blake.

I did a little looking around at the wiki on Sarna and I'm thinking this is going to be happening around 3065. Stealth armor has been around for a little over a decade now, and Felicidad is afraid that some new technological marvel is coming out. She wants to squash it before it causes a big bang, or before anyone else gets their hands on it.

So, that brings me to my character(s) and their motivation(s). I'm going to be playing a Mercenary, so money is obviously a big motivator. However, a character can't just be motivated by money! That makes for a boring character. A murder-hobo. "Will kill for cash." I'm not interested in playing a character like that for this game. So... what could be their other motivations?

This is the perfect time to roll on the Event Meaning tables in Mythic. Starting Good. Well, that sounds like they have a dark history that they're running from. They want to wash the dark stain of war crimes from their uniform. No, insubordination. Or war profiteering. I like that last one best. They looted stuff and sold it, looking to set themselves up for after the war, and got found out. They did some time in prison and are out now, returning to the only thing they know: being a Mechwarrior! And, they want to do it right, keeping to their contracts and not disobeying orders, or breaking contracts in this case.

I'm going to generate a name now. The name may suggest what military they were a part of during the Clan Invasion. Birthe Nielson. I left it up to the dice and my main character is a woman! With that name, it appears she's from the Free Rasalhague Republic. I honestly know little to nothing about that faction in Battletech. This is a good opportunity to learn more!

She's got to have a right hand, someone who is there with her through thick and thin. This person will be a man by the name of Roger Foley. He'll need a motivation to, so rolling on the Event Meaning tables gives me Carelessness Travel. He wants to travel the galaxy, and what better way to do that than by hitching his cart to a driven mercenary?! He doesn't care what he does in his travels, he just wants to travel. That's fun and will be an interesting addition to the merc unit.

This might actually be a really cool origin story for whatever this merc group turns into. A couple of 'mechs roaming about, pulling odd jobs and paying for service when they have cash to do so. They'll build the merc unit as they go along and hopefully eventually have something they can call their own. That sounds like fun, doesn't it?

While I'm in session zero, I should probably set the ground rules that I'll be operating under:

1. No sexual violence.
2. No sexism/racism.
3. No violence against children.
4. Yes descriptions of violence.
5. Yes adult language.
6. Yes to romance, if it ever comes up and feels right.

I do not believe this project is going to be anything amazing or something that will gain much of a following. But, it seems like fun and I'm going to do it for me. I'm sharing it on this site because I feel like I want to share something creative, and where I create the most and the best is in the roleplaying game area. It's what I do, and I think I'm pretty damn good at it. I think my players think so too. That, or they're very good and protecting my fragile feelings.

I do need to figure out what our unit is going to be comprised of. I'll need two 'mechs for these two chuckleheads to pilot. There are campaign rules in the Total Warfare book, but they're overkill for this project. I will use the rules for rolling to see what I can get, though. Not knowing exactly what I'm going to get is a surprise, and I love surprises in my solo games.

For Birthe, I'm going to try and get her one of my favorite 'mechs: a Rifleman! The Master Unit List gives me an option between the 3N and the 5M. I want the 5M version. Rolled for it and I got it! Birthe drives a Rifleman RFL-5M. Roger wants to drive something a little lighter, I think. He is a wanderer, so he wants more mobility. A Phoenix Hawk sounds like a good 'mech for him! There are two variations available on the MUL: the PXH-1 and the PXH-3M. I examined both on Sarna and that 3M is looking mighty sexy! I'll roll for it. Boom! Got it.

Those are two great 'mechs and I think this is going to be a great start for the game. I don't feel like going through the whole lifepath character creation so I'll use the archetype for Birthe and customize her.

I hope you've enjoyed this world-building post and hope you'll return for furture installments of this very young project. Thanks for reading!

record scratch Hold the phone! I just realized that I didn't create a world or star system for this game! And, I want to! The Campaign Operations book has some rules that I like using to make a star system and worlds around it. Creating them this way adds more surprises to the game and creates other places that may be of interest.

I have to create the star type first, and I'm going to be rolling on the Life Friendly column. What would be the point of generating a star system that wasn't life friendly if I want to play stompy 'Mech stories on the planets that orbit it!? The roll gives me a G2V star, which is just like Sol! There is probably some prime real estate orbiting this star.

The star has 12 orbital slots, which means this system could potentially have a lot of interesting things in it. Let's generate what's in each of those slots and see! Since the star in this system is the same mass as Sol, there aren't many calculations to do, just copying orbital placement numbers from the table to the worksheet. I won't bore you with those detail. But, the bit that is interesting is the Life Zone! The inner Life Zone for this star system starts at 0.66 AU and ends at 1.34 AU. That means I have two orbits inside the Life Zone: Orbit 2 and Orbit 3!

The next step is to generate the objects that are in each orbit. This is more dice rolling and consulting a table to see what's there. I'll just list what ends up being in each orbit.

• Orbit 1: Asteroid Belt
• Orbit 2: Giant Terrestrial - Diameter: 17,000 km, Density: 3 g/cm³, Day Length: 14 hours, Gravity: 0.7 G
• Orbit 3: Terrestrial - Diameter: 6,500 km, Density: 4.5 g/cm³, Day Length: 24 hours, Gravity: 0.4 G
• Orbit 4: Giant Terrestrial - Diameter: 18,500 km, Density: 3 g/cm³, Day Length: 18 hours, Gravity: 0.8 G
• Orbit 5: Gas Giant - Diameter: 110,000 km, Density: 1.6 g/cm³, Day Length: 8 hours, Gravity: 2.5 G
• Orbit 6: Gas Giant - Diameter: 105,000 km, Density: 1.1 g/cm³, Day Length: 12 hours, Gravity: 1.6 G
• Orbit 7: Gas Giant - Diameter: 70,000 km, Density: .9 g/cm³, Day Length: 12 hours, Gravity: 0.9 G
• Orbit 8: Gas Giant - Diameter: 100,000 km, Density: 1.1 g/cm³, Day Length: 16 hours, Gravity: 1.6 G
• Orbit 9: Gas Giant - Diameter: 100,000 km, Density: .8 g/cm³, Day Length: 15 hours, Gravity: 1.1 G
• Orbit 10: Gas Giant - Diameter: 120,000 km, Density: .7 g/cm³, Day Length: 9 hours, Gravity: 1.2 G
• Orbit 11: Ice Giant - Diameter: 35,000 km, Density: 1.7 g/cm³, Day Length: 13 hours, Gravity: 0.9 G
• Orbit 12: Gas Giant - Diameter: 90,000 km, Density: 1.4 g/cm³, Day Length: 14 hours, Gravity: 1.8 G

Uh... that's a lot of gas giants! That makes me think that there must be some kind of gas mining going on in this system. Maybe. And, it's odd to me that not a single planet has a gravity higher than 1 G. Did I do it wrong? Yes. Yes I did. Now I have to fix all the gas giants. There, fixed them.

In case you haven't realized it yet, there's a lot that goes into generating a star system in Campaign Operations. Lots of rolls, lots of details. Most likely won't come into play, but I'm one of those gamers that enjoys detail. And now, it's time for another bit of detail: moons. Only giant moons will be of a size to become inhabitable bodies, so I won't generate any additional details for any moon that's smaller than that. Of course, by default, moons are not inhabitable, but I think we'll pull a little Star Wars here and make any that show up potentially inhabitable.

• Orbit 1: No moons.
• Orbit 2: 0 giant moons, 1 small moon.
• Orbit 3: 0 moons.
• Orbit 4: 0 giant moons, 0 small moons.
• Orbit 5: 0 giant moons, 5 large moons, 1 medium moon, 10 small moons, no rings.
• Orbit 6: 0 giant moons, 1 large moon, 1 medium moon, 16 small moons, no rings.
• Orbit 7: 1 giant moon, 0 large moons, 1 medium moon, 23 small moons, has rings.
• Orbit 8: 0 giant moons, 1 large moon, 1 medium moon, 13 small moons, no rings.
• Orbit 9: 2 giant moons, 2 large moons, 4 medium moons, 14 small moons, has rings.
• Orbit 10: 0 giant moons, 3 large moons, 2 medium moons, 14 small moons, no rings.
• Orbit 11: 0 giant moons, 0 large moons, 7 small moons.
• Orbit 12: 1 giant moon, 5 large moons, 0 medium moons, 18 small moons, has rings.

I've gotten to the part where I'm supposed to roll on a bunch of tables and do a bunch of calculations to determined habitability, atmosphere type, luminosity, etc. Honestly, doing all this doesn't interest me, and if I decide that I need to know some of those details for other planets in the future, I can always come back to the tables and make the rolls to determine what their details are.

Right now, I have two planets in the habitable zone. I want to know about those planets.

• Orbit 2: 30% water coverage, Tainted atmosphere, High temperature, Highest life form: amphibians.
• Orbit 3: 20% water coverage, Tainted atmosphere, Medium temperature, Highest life form: amphibians.

Lastly, my system needs a name. I think the Everyone Everywhere list can be of help here. Randomly rolling on that gives me a Jewish (American) name: Blumenfeld. That's the system name. Let's say the system was named after the first family that went to colonize it, and each planet was named after one of the members of the family in age order. That's a big family, but they were colonizers after all!

Blumenfeld System

1. Hiram's Belt
2. Jacob
3. Elam
4. Josetta
5. Divsha
6. Mina
7. Amos
8. Martel
9. Noah
10. Miriam
11. Dalia
12. Carmela

All right, that's an end to this post. I'm not going to add anything else to it. I have a star system! That was a lot of work. The story is going to stay in this system for a while, I think. There are plenty of objects in the stellar system to play on, and lots of stories that can be told. Being a mercenary band starting out and staying in a single star system makes sense to me. Gotta start small! My next post will be session 1 of my actual play.

Thank you for reading.