Bet Max Black - Stars Without Numbers & Cepheus Engine Rpg Campaign Session Report - Escape from Sador One Shot

 Tonight's Stars Without Number & Cepheus Engine Rpg fusion game one shot  was anything but serious. Tonight's session  took place within the Talon sector. The PC's awoke aboard  the tyrannical warlord & space pirate  Sador's war ship the Hammerhead. Sador is a minor pirate warlord who rules over the Malmori empire with his eye on the Talon Sector. He's been expanding his 'empire' by incorporating other star systems with the threat of the Hammerhead & his steller converter.The stellar converter turns small planets into miniature stars. 


 Yes tonight's adventure was a rip of erm homage to Roger Corman's Battle Beyond the Stars film from 1980. Sador was going to sell the PC's into slavery on Cha'alt for some extra coin for his war effort. The PC's in tonight's game were a homage to the Eighties cultclassic films  they included: 
Lt.Elmer Fudd marine
Forrest Gump - psionic marine now deceased..
Lt.Dann - Marine
Tom "Iceman" Kazansky - space ship pilot
John McClane - Space Law marshal
Jennie Grey - Psionic
Richard Thornburg, an unscrupulous TV reporter For CCS instellar space news agency
Stella Star: a young smuggler,psionic
Sador had kidnapped, captured, & put everyone into stasis for sale into slavery on Cha'alt. The PC's goal was simple escape from Sador and find their way off of his ship. The action started when a guard took Lt.Elmer Fudd's beer & the psionic Forrest Gump attacked a Malmori mutant psionic inquistor. 

Forrest died rather badly from a botched roll & things slid down hill from here as the PC's freed themselves. And four PC's died in the at the hands of Sador's elite troops while getting to an A.I. ship named Eliza. And while the player's PC's did manage to get to the battle cruiser & escape. The players want a more serious game involving Sador & the Malmori empire. 

The Malmori forces & Sador himself were done using Stellagama Publishing's  Piracy & Privateering book. And then extrapoliating from there for other bits & pieces of Battle Beyond The Stars plot for tonight's adventure. 

And they made it out alive! Found the ship but four PC's died tonight. This was supposed to be a convention style one shot adventure. And it provided me with several interesting obeservations : 

1. My hunches about both Stars Without Number & the Cepheus Engine rpg systems mix & matching of systems works very well. 
2. PC's have to work towards a very solid common goal or have a common grounding within a one shot adventure framework
3. Many of the tool boxes books of Stars Without Numbers works very well. 
4. Classic sci fi films really bring a good time to the table top 
5. Balancing random encounters isn't totally necessary the players deal with them as they play. 
6. OSR philosphy works best during play session situations. 

Events in tonight's one shot adventure are pre 'Battle Beyond The Stars' film.. So for the Cepheus Engine Rpg  & Stars Without Numbers books that are currently being used in tonight's game session: 

Hostile rpg campaign setting 

Hostile Technical Manual
Dead Names: Lost Races and Forgotten Ruins
Piracy and Privateering

The Space Patrol