I am still prepping my Brutal Magic Desert Campaign, which is basically prep-finished at this point, sans actually, ya know, running the game. I took May off because I was pretty busy with travel nearly every weekend but the game was mentally cooking that whole time. I am not super happy with my encounter tables but that’s something that needs to be tested in play before I toss it out. Otherwise, I will end up redoing every little bit of this campaign and never get around to playing it.

But I digress: talking about the BMDC is not why I am here, for I have been thinking about ideas for other campaigns in other systems. Is that a form of procrastination? Yes. Will I let it stop me? Never.

Sometimes it is more fun to think about a campaign than it is to do the nitty gritty of prepping it, and sometimes probably more fun to think about the campaign than actually play it. Maybe some of these ideas would totally suck – but they sure do sound cool, at least to me.

Extraction Shooters Are Really Just West Marches For FPS Games

I said what I said.

If you’re lost, an extraction shooter (or looter shooter, as they are sometimes called) refers to a subgenre of FPS video games where generally, you get dropped into a map to scavenge loot, PVP, fight NPC bosses, and ultimately survive long enough to leave the map with your ill-gotten gains before a long-ish match timer runs out. Usually, if you die your body – with all the gear you brought into the map + all your loot – can be looted by other players while you get ejected from the session back to your hub/main lobby/whatever.

With me so far? Great. If not, boo hoo I tried. Google it. If I am speaking in too vague of generalities, it’s because there’s a handful of these games with variations of the base formula but it nearly always boils down to:

1. Get in
2. Get loot
3. Get out
4. ???
5. Profit

What does that sound like? A West Marches game? Wow reader, you’re so right! I was thinking the same thing.

A friend of mine sent me a youtube video of some normie explaining to brainrotted 5E stans what a West Marches campaign is and how it works. Being based and OSR pilled I of course already knew what it was, but the point of my friend sending it to me was it came up on his feed and he was like, “wow this sounds like it would work for our group, you should put your own spin on this and run it.” So now I feel obligated to do just that, but it also got the gears turning, and this friend of mine is a big extraction shooter fan and I guess I had a Jimmy Neutron brain blast connecting the dots.

I’ve played several of these extraction shooters, to wit:

Escape From Tarkov – the OG extraction shooter, set in modern day not-Russia featuring gritty, relatively realistic combat and autistic levels of detail in gun customization. It’s a shitty game made by shitty people but nobody has dethroned the king. Janky, frustrating, and addicting in equal measure.

Hunt: Showdown – Supernatural bounty hunting in zombie-filled Bayou circa 1895. More arcade-y combat, focused more on finding the location of big monster bosses and extracting with their bounty tokens than scavenging loot. Think Jonah Hex meets Resident Evil. I love the vibes, love the “cowboy guns” which I grew up shooting irl, and love the tighter focus.

Marauders – Dieselpunk space pirates duking it out in flying submarines on the way to loot space stations. Far less popular after the initial launch, but has a cool vibe and bonus points for having space ships (and several very obscure 20th century weapons).

The Cycle: Frontier – Generic scifi. Not very interesting visually, writing was cringe, and the gunplay didn’t feel good so my friends and I didn’t stick with this one very long. Included here for completeness’ sake.

I Bet You Thought This Was About RPGs Not My Half-Assed Review Of Video Games

And you’d be right. So to get back on track, let’s see how we could turn one of these extraction shooters into a West Marches RPG – or at the very least, what mechanics we steal from these games.

I have actually done some work at some point of actually adapting EFT and am cannibalizing some of that for this writeup. Hopefully what is below makes some sort of sense. It’s an adaptation of elements of the video game to tabletop/p&p mechanics in a way that clicks, I think, and could be used in a general sense.

So how would we expect the EFT mechanics adapted RPG to look?

• Goal is to venture out from home base to scavenge goods to survive in wreck of a city
• Stars Without Number/Traveller/Cyperpunk 2020 as mechanical base
• Household goods as treasure, with inventory slot management being important
• Google Earth maps of whatever city you’re setting your game in as dungeon/encounter maps
• PC “reputation” scores for NPCs/factions affecting how they treat you/services offered
• A stash/hideout that is upgradable by using specific scavenged goods to unlock services/bonuses
• Survival mechanics (food/water, encumbrance, fatigue)
• Pointcrawl of different districts/specific buildings in the city of varying risk/reward
• Different loot pools for different places (nails & tools at hardware store point, food at market, etc)

What about Hunt: Showdown?

• Goal is to fight your way through several points of interest to hunt for undead bosses & collect bounties
• Boot Hill as mechanical base
• Fairly-weak “mob” enemies with specific debilitating abilities (slow, poison, blind, choke, etc)
• Bosses with specific attacks/resistances/strategies to beat them; take back proof of bounty
• Pointcrawl web of small dungeons, containing either a boss or a clue to which dungeon they’re in
• Level up gives perk points used to either heal lost max health or buy perks
• Max level lets you retire PC for meta currency (lame, instead unlocks classes/bonuses for new PC?)

And now doing Marauders…

• Goal is to dogfight your crew’s pirate ship to raid & loot mining/military/civvie space stations
• Stars Without Number/Traveller as mechanical base
• Lots of spaceship combat in vicinity of PoIs
• 1-man escape/boarding pods, used for ship boarding & looting wrecks/disabled ships/PoIs
• Space stations, derelict ships, asteroid colonies as dungeons & are PoIs on pointcrawl
• Loot is building materials, food/med supplies, intel/war plans, bullion, weapons & ammo, parts
• Faction standing for trading/donating to war effort/doing missions

So There We Have It, I Guess

How workable do these seem? Are there mechanics or elements that would adapt well to other West Marches campaigns? Did this even make sense?

What I Want In A Game Pt. 1: BRUTAL MAGIC DESERT CAMPAIGN

When I was in undergrad I read some bullshit article in WSJ or BI or FT or some other Wall Street circlejerk publication about how to pick a job that was right for you. They interviewed some president or C-Suite guy about how he came to pick the job he had (lol, I know). The advice? List what you want in a job, or features or aspects you liked in jobs past, and find a position that checks as many of those boxes.

 

Shit advice if you’re a teenager who has only ever worked in fast food, but the idea (and the utter hubris the article represented) stuck with me. I have been thinking about spinning up a new campaign and have a couple setting ideas. By applying the shit WSJ job search advice to RPGs, I hope to come to a decision point on what I want this new campaign to be.

 

I wrote a little in the previous post about how I haven’t run a traditional D&D game before and am sorta looking to do that now. Let’s see if by the end of this process, it will be a setting in which to run an already-written ruleset or a setting + rules hack. Historically everything I’ve done has been the latter. Can I exercise some restraint this time around? Time will tell, but without further ado:

The Big Rules Update

 Not much to see here -- I have updated my Lightspeed D6 rules to now allow for modifications of weapons and starships with specific components, rather than flat bonuses. I made a few tweaks here and there too (I mean, how can you not?) but the main thing was making upgrades to weapons and ships crunchier.

As I told one of my players, I have essentially Tark-ified the weapons of Lightspeed D6 -- though my bigger influence for this new subsystem is the venerable Knights of the Old Republic II - The Sith Lords computer RPG. The starship components & system are a meld of Stars Without Number (I literally cannot stop adapting this game, it is so good) and an old MMORPG that is so near and dear to my heart, Star Wars Galaxies.

Have I lost you?

Escape From Tarkov is a PVP-heavy extract looter-shooter (wow, so many meaningless genre buzzwords) with a shitty interface, shittier netcode, and an absurd focus on gun customization. It was, and still is, very popular with my circle of friends. I hate it. But parts of it are great, and I will steal liberally from those parts -- such as gun customization.

Knights of the Old Republic is, of course, a Star Wars computer RPG series with two entries (we don't talk about the craptastic MMO) set 4,000 years or so before Episode I that was based off the d20 system of yore. It was a formative experience for the VPofTucson and both games are in my top 5 favorite games of all time. Naturally, it is bellwether of my view of RPGs in general and Star Wars RPGs in particular.

Star Wars Galaxies is worth a drunk or high rant or three. It was a beautifully flawed game that I sunk an inordinate amount of time into at the game's twilight. There really ought to be novels written about such a feeling -- joining as a noob an MMO that has been operating for years, filled with the abandoned detritus of max-level players who have long ago quit playing, but their desolate ghost towns still dot the map and the remaining holdouts squabble over an increasingly-worthless market share in the galactic bazaar. 

Once more, an enormous influence on me to this day and the standard by which I compare all other MMOs. None measure up whether due to: nostalgia, married-adult-employed free time constraints, or lack of chutzpah in design. 

I   D I G R E S S.

My new Lightspeed D6 rules (version 0.06) are available HERE. You will also find of course the character sheet template, and a folder containing all of the older versions of the game. I do this not because I want to be roasted for my (many) game design sins, but so that people can see the evolution of the game as I continue to tweak it. 

There are other games that I have been influenced by that do not maintain a version repository (cough cough Hyperspace D6) and I think that's fuckin cringe. If you're going to make dramatic changes to the game, at least keep the older versions publicly available -- it's a damn good thing I kept the older versions of the game that I downloaded and damn good luck they have survived a couple different hard drives.

Once more, I   D I G R E S S.

Let me know what you think about the new version and its changes to how character-scale injuries, vehicle combat, and weapon/ship upgrade components work (or don't work). Or don't, I guess. It does kind of feel like I post into a void but this is cathartic in its own way, rabid comment fanbase or not.

Lightspeed D6

Here it is, in all its glory: my hack of WEG Star Wars D6. Or to be more precise, my Frankenstein game mashed together from parts of Star Wars D6 Essentials, Hyperspace D6, the OG WEG editions, Stars Without Number, and the Cepheus Engine.

You can find a PDF of the most recent version HERE along with a template character sheet for Google Sheets/Excel and the “Planets of Kord Pria Sector,” a gazetteer of planets in which my home game is set. Go wild.


I probably should’ve released this a while ago but just didn’t bother to. My home game is in the midst of an unplanned hiatus and so the time I’d spend prepping is instead spent writing this blog post.


Turns out scheduling around adult lives for half a dozen people is a real nightmare. AKA, a tale as old as time.


A big contributor (and rather unlikely one at that) for why we are stuck where we are in the game is what the table has taken to calling “Jake’s Sidequest.” One of the PCs, J4-K3 (an astromech gunslinger droid), has a very well-written backstory which so very helpfully has given me plenty of plot hooks to work with. As unlikely as that normally would be, even more unlikely is the interest everyone else has expressed in chasing down his very backstory-specific leads.


This has become something of a double-edged sword: I have a lot of organic engagement for a mini plot in what is nominally a sandbox game, at the expense of playing far less frequently. You see, J4-K3/Jake’s player has a pretty turbulent work schedule and has been unable to play in the last few weeks. The rest of the players want to play the game, but they want to continue “Jake’s sidequest” and they don’t want to do it without him.


That isn’t his fault — it’s mine.


Because of my players’ enthusiasm with “Jake’s sidequest” I have prepped the next step and hadn’t prepped much else. Each time we have sat down to play (usually missing 1-3 people, thanks to differing schedules) I have been ready to run the next leg of the side quest and not really much else. We did one “side mission” instead of the regularly scheduled programming, but the players’ intent was to come back next time and continue the sidequest. Although I pride myself on being a good improv GM, I can’t improv my way out of group disappointment at not “advancing the plot.”


This was a ostensibly a weekly game in a Star Wars sandbox, and we had clearly moved away from both of those things. I still like the idea of sessions based around stuff people came up with in their character backstory, but that shouldn’t be the focus. I need to be flexible both in scheduling and running the game, and so I must adapt and overcome. Cheesy as that sounds.


Which means rejecting plot lines and returning to west marches. Not that this was ever really set up as a west marches game, but it’s clear to me now that’s the only way it will survive.


What does that mean for the game? Rather than trying to rope as many folks as possible into one night a week, I’m going to run sessions on Wednesday nights and Sunday mornings, the two days & times we’ve identified as working best with people’s schedules in general. Whoever makes it, makes it — and if we have at least three players, we have a session.


Hopefully, this leads to 1. Actually playing the fucking game; and 2. Moving towards a more episodic kind of structure. Less Andor, more Mandalorian.

Space Trucking

Star Wars and Firefly both have what we all need and want: space trucking. I am of course referring to flying a freighter, finding some cargo, and moving that weight. I really like the Stars Without Number way of handling trading but that procedure only applies to buying and selling cargo -- not moving it for somebody else.

So I had to create my own. With the help of a friend (and player in my Lightspeed D6 campaign) who owns a sprint hauling business, I came up with the rules found below.

This lifestyle could be yours at last

HYPERSPACE TRUCKING . . . AND YOU

Buying low and selling high is a rich man's game -- hauling goods from A to B is far less risky. Most spaceports have a Load Board that a hyperspace trucker can check, rolling 1d6 for the number of hauling jobs, with a bonus for the class of starport (+1 for standard, 2+ for stellar). Roll to generate the details of each hauling job using the table below. Subtract the planet's Friction score (see SWN Suns of Gold) and add any bonuses for the size of the planet's starport. 

2d6	CARGO SIZE	Cr/TON
< 2	Incidental. 1d6 tons	5
2-3	Incidental. 1d6 x 5 tons	6
4-5	Minor. 1d6 x 10 tons	7
6-7	Minor. 1d6 x 10 tons	8
8-9	Major. 2d6 x 10 tons	9
10-12	Major. 2d6 x 10 tons	10
> 12	Special. Reroll to find cargo size, but w/ accessorial (1-2: extra stop; 3-4: specialized equipment; 5-6 white glove delivery). Adds additional 10% to pay	Reroll +10%

A player may reroll the search on the Load Board if they wait a full week, but doing so adds 1 Friction to their next Load Board or Trade roll. 

To decide the hauling destination, I roll 1d10 (my setting has 10 systems, which works well) and reroll if I land on the planet the PCs are currently on. 

DETAILS, DETAILS

PCs hauling goods are paid by credit, per ton, per day. Each hauling job anticipates a day loading cargo, a day unloading cargo, and however many days at a hyperdrive speed of 2x it takes to go between systems. 

Failure to deliver goods on time can lead to penalties such as docked pay or no pay at all -- early delivery warrants a bonus. Additionally, shipping brokers pay for docking fees (though not fuel).

If the PCs are smuggling (either illicit goods such as spice or like real life smuggling, untaxed goods) the payout is 3x - 5x more than the above board stuff -- but the GM should come up with complications that fit the circumstances of the job.

INSURANCE

Nobody is dumb enough to trust their valuable goods to a bunch of greasy spacers without some form of collateral. PCs hauling goods must put up 2d6% of the value of the cargo as insurance.

 

This implies, of course, that you know either the specific goods and values thereof, or have a value of cargo in mind. Naturally, this will probably far eclipse the pocket change of the party, forcing them to take a rather usurious loan from a Hutt loan shark...

HAULING HURDLES

Space truckin' ain't all sunshine and roses. Every time the PCs take a hauling job, (you, reader-GM) roll 1d6. If you the result is a 1, then something happens to harass or harangue the haulers. When that happens, roll on the table below:

ROLL	HAULING COMPLICATION
1	Hyperdrive breaks down, TN 20 to fix, 1d6 hours
2	Inspection by Imperial Customs
3	Loading/unloading delay
4	Timing issue re: holidays, unable to unload on landing day
5	Pirates show up and attempt to steal/hijack/extort
6	Given false info – cargo bound for wrong planet or crates empty
7	Double brokered – broker gets paid for delivery, PCs don’t & get ghosted
8	Illegal cargo – cargo is restricted on target planet/smugglers secretly hid spices on ship
9	Incorrect labeling – cargo turns out to be something else that is hazardous/refrigerated
10	Hitchhiker/stowaway – someone has snuck aboard ship either willingly or unwillingly

FOR EXAMPLE

The crew of the Two for Flinching, a YT-1300 freighter, are perusing the Load Board at a spaceport on Khoraj. The spaceport is Standard class (giving a +1 to the roll) and the Friction score for Khoraj is 2. The captain rolls 1d6-1 and the result is 1 job.

So they roll 2d6 twice basic details -- landing 4 and 9. This is a minor job, 40 tons (4 on a 1d6x10), worth 9cr per ton. We know we are on Khoraj, so they roll 1d6 on Khoraj's cargo list to see what they are hauling: Atmospheric Filtration Systems (base value of 5,000cr). They roll 2d6 to determine how much they need to insure: 7%.

The GM rolls 1d10 to determine what planet they must take the cargo to: 3, Ensello III. Consulting the map of the Kord Pria Cluster, we know that Ensello III is 12 hours away from Khoraj at a 1x hyperdrive speed. That means that at the 2x speed the job anticipates (which matches the very standard 2x hyperdrive equipped on their ship), the crew of the Two for Flinching can expect this trip to take approximately 24 hours at a standard speed. 

With 40 tons of Atmospheric Filtration Systems at 5,000cr per ton, the crew of the Two for Flinching must insure 7% of 200,000cr for a grand total of 14,000cr as an insurance premium. This being a three-day trip (one to load, one to travel, one to unload) the expected payout is 40cr x 9cr x 3 days, for a grand total of 1,080cr for the trip. 

They decide to go ahead and take the job. The GM rolls to see if there's a complication -- getting a 1 on the 1d6 roll, the GM rolls 1d10 on the Hauling Complication table. With a result of 4, it turns out that the day they are supposed to unload is the Ensellan Geyser Equinox, a day where just about everyone has the day off. If the crew of the Two for Flinching learn this ahead of time, they will likely feel pressured to take some hyperspace shortcuts...

CONCLUSION

So folks, there you have it. I cobbled this together from Stars Without Number and Classic Traveler, with plenty of real world information thrown in too. A canny observer would note that this kind of work pays peanuts in comparison to the risk and insurance costs; that canny observer would be right. 

Upon realizing this, I very nearly went back to the drawing board on the payouts. However, I had an epiphany: this is all working as intended. Being a trucker in space is not the path to exponential financial growth just as it isn't in real life -- the real big bux comes from the buying low and selling high.

This system does little more than cover the costs of traveling between systems, but does so in a way that injects some excitement in the form of hauling complications, new connections with NPCs, introduction of new plot hooks, etc.

It also dovetails nicely into my rules for hyperspace travel, which allow navigators to chart a faster path at a higher risk of failure, provoking a roll on a hyperspace mishaps table, potentially making what would be a fairly mundane activity very, very interesting.