'Playing Out In The Rocks' Cepheus Engine Rpg DM Workshop & Session Report Two

 So Greg picked us up for tonight's Cepheus Engine rpg driven campaign using Zozer Games Hostile rpg setting. This game session picks up right from where we left off last time with the New England Bouys. The boys have got the lap top & 'Topper' their asteroid farmer/tech op is breaking into it in tonight's game but found the C4 booby trap that was left in the housing with a couple of lucky rolls. The party is  still aboard playground at this point & was looking for a job. They found it.. Tonight's game was far more Eighties action round robin then anything else. 

Whist their hacker worked on the lap top, the rest of the party went to get the finger like computer unit checked out by 'Playground's computer market & used asteroid artifact market'. Some of the artifacts found among the asteroids near the psionic storm wall  have a psionic  resonance & sell for big bucks back Earth side. Mindy Loo Woo is a fourth generation asteroid miner with some inhuman characteristics ie Reticulon & a nose for alien artifacts. 

The PC's are eager to find out what the finger is but Mindy  Loo Woo is more then willing to act as a middle man & fixer for the player's party for a fee. They don't have the cash but bargain for a future artifact or two with a few successful rolls. They are introduced to a William Bobby Allard & his wife Susan Allard representatives of Allard Technologies. They are willing to take the artifact off the hands of the PC's for a few hundred. But the PC's have cracked wise to this. They want Allard Technologies to pick up their contracts & put them the company  asteroid or comet  claim work.



 Allard Technologies is an old NPC hub of mine & comes from Mercenaries, Spies, & Private Eyes rpg's supplement Stormhaven.  Allard Technologies has its fingers into every science fiction & old school Traveller rpg game that we've run since the Eighties. They've been the upstart corporation going back decades. There are some solid legs that Stormhaven has that lends itself to everything from straight up Call of Cthulhu Pulp to Eighties inspired action film material. As a campaign setting set piece the booklet packet is invaluable. And now doing a retro sci fi  styled campaign Stormhaven once again is making its shadow felt. This is a slice of Eighties awesomeness done by Michael A. Stackpole with art and maps by Barbara Armata, Liz Danforth, Jennell Jaquays, and Steven S. Crompton. This is a classic & classic for a reason. Five stars & I've been using Stormhaven for decades. Its never let me down. 
. There are several  things that have been done for tonight's game: 

1. Two relatives have been added in acting as agents. 
2. The Tigers the private corporate security force for Allard Technologies have been updated into a private army for the corporation armed with G11 automatic rifles modified for space & near planetary side combat. 
3. Allard Technologies have their own system space craft to deal with in system issues. Allard Technologies is a smaller upstart corporation.  

And at this point an Assassin's squad shows up from the Nakatomi Corporation & things go from bad to worse as  the head street samurai unleashed a monomolecular whip turning several by standards into Jello. The PC's ended up saving the Allards & then the Tigers security force  stepped in to back up the PC's. 'Playground security' showed up & the assassin squad backed down. The Allards were forth coming about who these forces belonged to. The PC's went back to the Allard Technologies space craft to iron out details. 

Recently  DM Greg's wife gifted me  Zozer Games Orbital 2100  setting book & Mars Mission this was after reading a comment by Hostile rpg author Paul Elliot on Drivethrurpg; "In a way my later setting HOSTILE is the Orbital setting, 125 years later ... but with the caveat of hyperspace and anti-gravity" 

Orbital 2100 fits Allard Technologies Eighties inspired future history & why the company is so invested in the happenings of the solar system. Allard Technologies investment & man in the Martian colony was paramount when the psionic storms hit the solar system cutting everything off. Its only now that Mars is going to be explorable again. 

The second half of this equation is Outpost Mars as source book for Orbital 2100 & Roughnecks.. That's right there's a pyramid mine on Mars & its Allard Technologies whose rivalry with the other corporations erupted into shadow warfare out in the Asteroid zone on the psionic storm zone. 



The New England Bouys did prove themselves tonight with a salvage mission for Allard Technologies. A cache of modern weapon cargo units were salvaged near the asteroid field & that's when Rick's miner had a close encounter with in the players words,' Something with eight legs, weird ,& very pissed off'. The miner survived but with the loss of a limb & his temporary sanity..  The weapons in question are modern & came directly out of  Zozer Games  Modern War: Conversion System. 

Allard Technologies owns Golden Weapon Systems Restoration a 20th & 21  century military restoration & weapon systems distribution outfit that specializes in selling weapons throughout space & this includes the These Stars Are Ours Cepheus Engine setting sectors. 
 The psionic debris field that created during the A.I. Wars known as 'the War of Miracles' that separates the old Earth empire from the setting of 'These Stars Are Ours'.


Iron Man Hanigan Rick's PC has a brand new cybernetic limb tonight & is recovering in an Allard Technologies facility. Next week the PC's pick up with the Russian spacers about what's on the lap top.