Tell us how your Campaigns are going, also get and give advice

[Dalillama]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

When you have persons uninterested in capturing a ship (relatively intact or not) but rather only interested in getting past a guarding ship this design goal is unhelpful.

The expected course of action would then be to either outmaneuver the other ship or, failing that, repel their boarding effort and escape. Ship weapons are mostly for fouling enemy rigging, thin out their crew, and otherwise impede them. Then of course there's also wee small "fighter" type ships that only have a few HP, those can be shot to pieces. I feel that the material would have benefitted a lot from explicitly stating these underlying assumptions somewhere, so that people would know what playstyles it supports and what will call for modification of assumptions and/or encounters.

[Dalillama]

Originally Posted by Dalillama

I just ran the first session of a Road Hogs/After the Bomb campaign using the RAW 1980s-era Palladium proto -Megaverse system.

Several sessions and some changes of players later, the original crew have been joined by a squirrel with aspirations of knighthood from a small woodland community who learned the arts of civilization from a cluster of reenactors who fled to the woods in an effort to escape the plagues, and a coyote agent of the Sacramento government here to help the resistance

Having arrived at their goal, they have found that the commander is an arrogant bully of limited competence, and his guerillas mostly little more than cutthroats. Neither the duck who hired them nor the money he promised were in evidence
An owl flew in from Crater lake claiming that the Duck Town contingent plans to blow a dam upriver, which will kill invaders and enslaved locals alike. The Crater Lake village is run by a pacifist bear who goes by "Dr. P". Meanwhile, a genial Alsatian the PCs befriended disappeared while scouting, and the PCs decided to go look for him and probably transfer their cargo to Crater Lake instead.

They located a Road Hog patrol who had both the missing scouts and their missing paymaster and hit them in a surprise two-pronged raid, leaving half the enemy dead and the remainder grudgingly allowed to surrender, save one who's hiding in their armored truck. The patrol was equipped with some very high-tech gear that can't have been manufactured anywhere the PCs have heard of but looks brand-new.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Dalillama

The expected course of action would then be to either outmaneuver the other ship or, failing that, repel their boarding effort and escape. Ship weapons are mostly for fouling enemy rigging, thin out their crew, and otherwise impede them. Then of course there's also wee small "fighter" type ships that only have a few HP, those can be shot to pieces.s.

I found no rules in the 5e version for outmaneuvering a hostile ship. If another ship wants to close to boarding range there appears to be nothing you can do about it.

This includes "repelling" the boarders. You can only fight those boarders.

If another ship wants to ram you can only hope they fail the special "To Hit" roll.

No rules about partial damage effects to ships.

No ships in the 5e version that have less than 200 HP except for small boats.

[RyanW]

We are just starting up a DFRPG game using Delvers to Grow and a customized race list in which all races are either 0 or 25 points (so that you can just take a race in lieu of an upgrade module).

This is intended as a demonstration, since one of our players has never played RPGs at all, and another played D&D years ago but never GURPS. After a few sessions, we'll decide whether we want to continue that as a more lasting campaign or switch to something else.

[Dalillama]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

I found no rules in the 5e version for outmaneuvering a hostile ship. If another ship wants to close to boarding range there appears to be nothing you can do about it.

This includes "repelling" the boarders. You can only fight those boarders.

If another ship wants to ram you can only hope they fail the special "To Hit" roll.

No rules about partial damage effects to ships.

No ships in the 5e version that have less than 200 HP except for small boats.

Yes, well. Spelljammer is a really nifty setting with a lot of potential, but I've spent 33 years now being disappointed by the implementation, and that doesn't look like changing anytime aoon. It's never actually been very well designed to simulate the kind of storylines that the flavor text indicates are normal in the setting. Even the old War Captain's Companion rules left something to be desired, but building on those could've made something prettu good this time around. My other main beef is that there's enough interplanetary/interstellar trade to support a significant amount of piracy and generate several types of hulls purpose -built for the spacer trade, but there's nowhere in the setting material for the trade to go to or from.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Dalillama

Even the old War Captain's Companion rules left something to be desired, but building on those could've made something prettu good this time around.

The mission statement does not appear to have involved building on 2e rules. Discarding those rules en masse and changing a bunch of names at random looks more accurate.

They didn't even implement 5e rules by theory. It should have required Proficiency in Vehicles(Space) to pilot a spelljammer and that might at least have given you something to roll against but no mention of that either.

[sgtcallistan]

Hmm... our SF 'Far Horizons' game has reached a predictable crossroads.

Having established a world that some politicos supported as being 'too far out to police' (they kept the budget for outer worlds defence) has resulted in someone wanting to take it away now that the heavy lifting is done.

This actually caused a rift in Alliance politics, and may result in our superior (we discovered a robot shipyard) ships being discovered by our elders and betters.

With families and dependents to defend, it seems our band of adventurers may have to fight to keep what we've found and developed.

We might also need to mint our own currency, so guess what occupies most of our attention?

[Dalillama]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

The mission statement does not appear to have involved building on 2e rules. Discarding those rules en masse and changing a bunch of names at random looks more accurate.

They didn't even implement 5e rules by theory. It should have required Proficiency in Vehicles(Space) to pilot a spelljammer and that might at least have given you something to roll against but no mention of that either.

Fortuitously, someone in a Spelljammer discussion group I'm in elsewhere has just now published a 5e update of the 2e ship combat rules on the DMs Guild. To be found here if you're interested.