Particle Beam Weapons & The Creation of A New 2d6 Corporate Entity

 So besides a late night MSU session last night we talked about a number of options for our 2d6 games. And once again my mind started thinking about Greg Porter's 3G3 system.  And the main reason is the fact this system has stats & development rules for one of my favorite space based weapon systems, particle beam weapons. 

Growing up in the Reagan era Star Wars weapons systems time. Particle beam weapons were talked about by our various Science Fiction wargame hounds. These were the veterans & engineers who would be playing Traveller & breaking down the themes & ideas of the game. One that popped up frequently was the idea of killer particle beam weapon sats & cannons. And these are not the usual weapons that one sees in Traveller or Cepheus Engine. 
And given the morals of the particle beam technologies it's easy to see why. When have morals ever stopped Science Fictional rpg's!? Given the nature of 3G3 & the second 3G3 systems it's easy to see where & why these weapons would come into play in Cepheus Engine rpg style game campaigns. 

Now with the recent release of Superpowered! From 

Stellagama Publishing

 & the current climate of my player's mind set. The idea of a Bond style super villain using particle beam weapons & sat's entered my mind's imagination. 

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The use of superpowered operatives within a Science Fictional or Science Fantasy setting is a powerful one for me as a DM. And the idea of particle beam weapons leveling the field is also appealing. 2d6 games by their very nature almost call for this sorta of simulation. The idea of an Elon Musk style corporate magnet with access to this style of technology is appealing as too the grey areas of the moral compass that one would have to walk. 
Maybe it's the influence of the Hostile rpg on my lizard brain imagination. But a corporate entity with the ability to manufacture, produce, and possibly launch their own patiented brand of particle beam weapons creates an interesting thumb nail sketch for a rather grey moralled corporate entity. C- Beam Technologies has a nice ring to it. And C- Beams exclusive access to thier patiented particle beam technologies creates opportunities for all kinds of havoc within our campaigns.  More to come! 

'Playing Out In The Rocks' Cepheus Engine Rpg Session Report - Missles Away!

 This week's session goes from bad to worse & picks up right with the New England Bouys handling the space pirates. But circumstances can change & this week picks right up from our last session. 



The New England Bouys had a tangle with a group of four pirate space swimmers & their crew last night. The crew of Allard Technologies Harford sent two missiles on the space pirates bio ships & scored hits! The third hid behind the wreckage of the  remains of  two fifty year old TL11 100-TON BUCCA-CLASS PROSPECTOR ships. Space Swimmers were not equipped with weaponry per say but there was a powerfule psionic creature aboard one of the ships that was destroyed.

 The Bouys have opted to check out several of the wrecks to see if there is any technology for salvage.  The last space swimmer came out & got targetted by the missile launchers finally. And another direct hit made short work out of it!
 Major General Fuller has awakened from  cryo sleep & wants to send the marines down to the station! This will cause the loss of the bonus for the boys & Allard! 

Allard has been nice up until now about most of the major ins & outs of their dealings with the marines. But they have an ace up their sleeves in the form of a deal with Petro Chemix corporation which mapped this sector before the Fall of Man. One of our player's used that deal as leverage against the marines ham stringing them on both this mission & salvage. Now the players have decisions to make for next week's game. 
So this week I've been working on incorporating some more of 3G3 More Guns systems into the campaign & everything seems to be going smoothly. 

Several of the players are questioning if this is the real Major General Fuller or not?! The question remains on everyone's mind for next week! 

'Playing Out In The Rocks' Cepheus Engine Rpg Session Report - Surprise Attack In The Asteroids!

 Tonight's Hostile Cepheus Engine hybrid game picks up immediately after last week's session here. We find the New England Bouys not in a happy place tonight. They've sent a probot on a mission to check out the alien power station in tonight's game with a solid sensor package. 

Ron Cobb Nostromo interior concepts from here 

They have the option of sending in a manned  Horizon Survey craft ( they want to outfit the craft with a fully updated sensor suite )  before setting foot on this alien station. A new wrinkle in tonight's game is finding out that Major General Fuller from the Marines is aboard the Hartford the city ship factory vessel. Major General Fuller is in cryo sleep at the moment. The PC's seem to trust the  brand new NPC named Akachi (God's hand) from Godstar's Million Sun's Empire. 
                                                                                                                              

The New England Bouys have aceess to a psionic circle of Grey hybrids whose contract was bought by Allard Technologies. These Grey hybrids have included the PC's within their psionic clutch & its the PC's who are considering sending two of the Grey spacers in the Horizon Survey craft to check out the alien power station. In tonight's game session the PC's ran into two wrinkles. On the huge ring of meteors around the gas giant. And second was the number of wrecked space craft from before the Fall of Man  within the ring. There's very little psionic distortion around the background of the gas giant. They found the remains of  two fifty year old TL11 100-TON BUCCA-CLASS PROSPECTOR ships. These ships are not from the Talon sector at all & originate within the campaign's sector of These Stars Are Ours Uranium Fever supplement. 
Miners have been here before but there's lots of carbon scoring on the edges of the space craft's hulls.. While there's no psionic wall to fry one of the New England Bouys two psionics. Akachi (God's hand) can't penatrate psionically either the gas giant or the alien station. Some device or artifact is interfering with his abilities. 

Needless to say the bear trap so to speak is causing all kinds of caution within the players. The players want to check out the wrecks to make sure that there are no pirates lurking within them. Or within the shadow of the wrecks orbit. 
And that' when the pirates began their attack! But these are not your typical pirates! These are a couple of  space swimmers from the Dark Conspiracy rpg's Dark Tek book! These things uncouple themselves from the asteroids & make their way towards the Hartford! All hands on deck to repel the bastards! 

'Playing Out In The Rocks' Cepheus Engine Rpg Session Report - Eye of the Storm Mission - Briefing

 In game time the New England Bouys have been in stasis for over a year in hypersleep chambers. The Buckingham the Colonial Frieghter their on makes its way towards a classified destination. They arrived tonight aboard 'the Hartford'. 

The New England Bouys are aboard the Hartford a city sized industrial complex factory on  the outer edge of the Solar System. They've been in sleep now a year or better aboard Zozer Games Colonial Freighter USS Buckingham. They've just made port to the Hartford that belongs to Allard Technologies along with a brand new NPC named Akachi (God's hand) from Godstar's Million Sun's Empire. Anela is a world that suffered a serious atomic war before the Fall of Man. 

Akachi is a 'far wanderer' a psionic with the ability to astrally travel vast interstellar distances. He has stumbled upon a stable  wrecked alien power station  in the grasp of a gas giant  that seems to hold Reticulan artifacts & valuable nuclear fuel. This data was shared with the Russians.  The in question  data was stolen back on Earth sparking a 'shadow war' in Earth orbit & back planet side. The corporations warred among themselves for rights & contracts.                                                                                                                      

Ron Cobb Nostromo interior concepts from here 

The PC's have been making themselves at home going over the data about the Hartford. Allard Technologies division is now equipping a team of tigers with modified G-11's & heavy weapons to accompany the bouys on a recovery mission inside the alien  power station. The alien power  station  is parked inside  the stable storm on a gas giant at the very far edge of the solar system. 

The gas giant alien power station  concept was  inspired by this artwork by the late great H.G. Giger RIP. Here's where Zozer Games Explorers comes in handy for many of the mission elements coming up. Most of the tigers & mission specialist equipment for this is from More 3G3.. 

The new NPC named Akachi (God's hand) has several empathic abilities that were directly adapted from Dark Conspiracy rpg's Empathic Handbook . And in fact some but not all of the adventure elements come from the Dark Conspiracy rpg game. Is the party walking into a bear trap adventure or a nega dungeon adventure location?!
Yes & no folks. There's a protodimenion gate laying at the heart of this power station but its not what you think. For now the player's PC's are getting ready for the mission. 

Review & Commentary On More Guns: Weapons for all Tech Levels for 3G3 By Greg Porter (Author), & Darrell Midgette (Illustrator) From Blackberg Tactical Research Center

"More Guns! takes over where 3G3 leaves off. It does the design work for you, and provides complete stats for over 500 guns and melee weapons for each of eight separate role-playing systems: TimeLords*, CORPS*, Torg(, MegaTraveller*, Cyberpunk(, Twilight: 2000*, GURPS( and the Hero System(. It truly is a weapon supplement from Hell.

In addition, the conversion rules for each system have been expanded for even more detail, with numerous examples and technical notes to provide inspiration for your own designs and conversions. Now it's even easier to do it all, with 3G3 and More Guns!"

 More Guns: Weapons for all Tech Levels for 3G3 By  Greg Porter (Author), Darrell Midgette (Illustrator) is one of those books that  took years & years to locate. This book finally came into the collection after a trip to Florida where two copies came home into the archives.  More Guns: Weapons for all Tech Levels  is another of those books that was way ahead of its own time in many respects. The rpg landscape of '93 was a lot different then the hobby is now in many ways.  More Guns: Weapons for all Tech Levels  is a product of its time. There was no OGL or D20 revolution as the moment that this book came out. The 3G3 system especially this book is one of Greg Porter's strongest design & writing works. Because  More Guns: Weapons for all Tech Levels is broken down into  three major sections - Archaic Weapons, Modern Weapons, and The Future. And its done in such a way as to hit all of the rpg systems that the book is designed to catter too. TimeLords™, Cyberpunk 2020®, GURPS®, Hero System®, Megatraveller™, Twlight: 2000™ and Torg® are all serviced within this two hundred & thirty two page book. What's ironic is how 2021 is celebritory year of Hartford Connecticut's Samual Colt the inventer of the Colt 1873 Single Action Army Revolver.  More Guns: Weapons for all Tech Levels for 3G3 By  Greg Porter not only covers this weapon. But gives several systems to handle it within the Archaic Weapons section.

 A system perfectly tuned to handle Victorian Era or the Wild West for Cepheus Engine rpg. More Guns: Weapons for all Tech Levels is also a perfect add on for running an adventure like Michael Brown's Twilight Trails The Timber Beast. Because its simply take More 3G3 & the adventure with Cepheus Engine then play. All of the weaponry is at the DM's finger tips. 

The archaic era section is clearly etched in with fire arms that are very much suited for other Cepheus Engine Wild West games such as Independence Games Rider Wild West system & setting. More 3G3 gives enough of a range of historical guns to cover almost any eventuality of historical gaming for the 1900's. 

More 3G3 really excels in the Modern era section which is perfectly suited to Twilight 2000 and contemporary Eighties or Nineties  style games. And it does this by both introducing period weapons & guidelines for creating those weapon types harkening back to Guns!,Guns!,Guns!, but also covering a plethora of weapons material within its pages. A common critism leveled at More 3G3 is "As with 3G3 (Guns, Guns, Guns), not as "realistic" as it tries to be. Stats for several of the systems included doesn't match the right numbers. Good, but could have been better' from the comments on the More 3G3 section of Rpg Geek. To which I say to Hell with it because it suits my campaign purposes. I mean the More 3G3 covers Civilian Pistols, Machine Pistols, Civilian Rifles, Military Rifles, Shotguns, Machine Guns, and heavy weapons. 

Let's talk about Baggage Books Empire of Time again here with the Future section which also covers Civilian Pistols, Machine Pistols, Civilian Rifles, Military Rifles, Shotguns, Machine Guns, and heavy weapons. And the reason for its inclusion with Empire of Time is the 'Guns That Never Were' section. 

More 3G3 is perfectly suited to alternative timelines & worlds because of its 'Weapons that Never Were' section  which makes this perfectly suited for alternative historical periods. But periods that have never been or fragments of time periods as well. This is a concept that appears with DC1 Proto-Dimensions Sourcebook, Volume 1. So More 3G3 is ideally suited for the Dark Conspiracy rpg. 

If More 3G3 works for Dark Conspiracy then its gonna work very well for the Hostile rpg setting. The guns can easily be used for a wide variety of colonies, setting, and more. The stuffy horror filled interiors of Hostile's star ships are not the ideal places to hear the ring & report of the guns of More 3G3. 

If you can't tell More 3G3 is a favorite of mine & its got a very clear place at my table top. Given that its ideally suited to our on going campaign. 

More Guns: Weapons for all
Tech Levels for 3G3 Is Available Right Here