Free RPG Day 2012

capi3101

capi3101

Admiral
Good Morning, Wingnuts.

Saturday, June 16 is Free RPG Day this year. For those of you who do not know, Free RPG Day "is an annual promotional effort by the North American Role-playing game industry" that's been going on since 2007. "Publishers produce quick start adventures geared toward players unfamiliar with the game system or new to tabletop role-playing games in general. The games are distributed worldwide through participating stores." It's a good time to go to your local game/comic book store to pick up some freebies if you commonly play tabletop RPGs, or to find out more about the hobby.

WCRPG is complete enough at this point that I could prep an adventure set in the WC1 era to release on or just before Free RPG Day (all the Terran capships are finished at this point and I've only got the Sivar and Snakeir-classes to go through on the Kilrathi side; only thing still missing are characters - but I can knock some out quickly, especially if I don't have to include any from the WC continuity). I'm leaning towards doing something with the Enyo Engagement, but I've also thought about possibly doing a mission from Custer's Carnival or maybe even the strike on KIS Rathak (from Taggart's Tactics).

I haven't really made up my mind on what to do just yet, so I thought I'd ask if anybody out there had a preference as to what they'd like to see.
 
Alrighty......I've got seven days to get this done.

Day 1 of 7: CONCEPT.

So, this morning I woke up and still didn't have a pretty clear idea of what I was going to build, if it was going to be part of one of the aforementioned historical events in Confed history or not. I decided to simplify matters and use the One Hundred Basic Ideas in Chapter 11.1.2, rolling 1d% to let fate decide. The result: #69 - Enemy operatives have seized control of a prototype weapon.

The thing about the One Hundred Basic Ideas is that they're meant to stimulate thought; you can either go with what they say directly or do something slightly derivative. So when this result came up and my thoughts immediately jumped to KIS Sivar (probably because I finished up the in-game stats for her only yesterday)...I had my title: "Prelude to Goddard".

With that in mind, I immediately went to the Five-Room Dungeon Model discussion (Chapter 11.1.3) and began hammering out ideas. Seemed appropriate given how quickly I'd have to have something prepared. Given that I wanted to have this as a basic started adventure and that it's Wing Commander, it seemed a WC style "pilot flying a mission" setting would be most appropriate. That made selecting features in each "room" pretty easy at that point and from there I developed the adventure's hook.

The hook goes something like this:

Dateline: 2654.312. Confed Intel has heard rumors that the Kilrathi are in the final stages of developing some kind of new weapon, one capable of incredible destructive power. A mission is launched to conduct an intelligence-gathering raid on a Kilrathi outpost in an attempt to learn more about this alleged super-weapon. The players' carrier jumps into the system, where a solar flare is interfering with long-range communications; Tactical Division thinks this the perfect time to launch the strike. The players will launch from their carrier, rendezvous with a group of Marines en route, and proceed to provide cover while the Marines conduct their raid. Once it's all said and done, everybody will fly home.

It's a fairly stock idea, I know, but it's definitely appropriate, I think. Naturally, I've got some other ideas I want to include, but I want to keep a few surprises for myself. For now, anyway - y'all can check out the final adventure next Friday (hopefully).

Comments, questions, ideas, complaints - lemme know. Tomorrow, I start fleshing out details in earnest...
 
Dateline: 2654.312. Confed Intel has heard rumors that the Kilrathi are in the final stages of developing some kind of new weapon, one capable of incredible destructive power.
Click to expand...

Is this the Sivar, or is it just a coincidence that it's another incredible weapon a few weeks before The Secret Missions starts?
 
I was thinking more specifically about the Proton Accelerator Gun, but yes - the selection of the date was done deliberately.

Does this forum have spoiler shields? I'd elaborate further but I don't want to give anything away just yet. I'm not seeing them anywhere...

Reading up on the WCPedia Warhammer System entry this afternoon; I'll probably include some of those events in the mission's exposition.
 
Day 2 of 7: DETAILS

Okay, so after my initial post yesterday, I started sitting down and trying to figure out some of the details of the adventure. The first thing I decided to do was set the system in which the game would take place. I've been using the Prophecy map as my "official" map for WCRPG, so I completely missed the existence of the Warhammer system (I'm assuming it's another one from the Handbook). Had I not missed it, I probably would've set it down there. I ultimately chose the Hawkins system in Downing/Vega and ran through the Nav Map creation procedure in Chapter 10.2.2 to build a system map. I got lucky; I had a useable system map done and ready on the first try, with just one minor variation made. It even played into what I'd already come up with as far as plot - the way the mission is set up, the player's group will rendezvous with the Marine group (the Reavers - to tie the mission in with Secret Missions - who have just come from the Warhammer system) at the Tyr jump point and head to the target from there.

Next item I decided to tackle was the number and disposition of forces at each Nav Point. I decided to use an Exeter-class Destroyer as the players' base of operations, though I have not yet named the ship - I had thought of making it Gwynhevar to put in another Secret Missions tie-in, except I later read about how the Cats hijacked it in drydock, so nix that idea. I have ten or so other known Exeters to choose from or I can go my own route as far as ship naming goes, though if I went my own route it'd be helpful to know after which Exeter the class was named. I did set the stats down for the Exeter-class earlier this week, and so that helped me determine how many quick characters I'll need for the mod; I should need no more than eighteen. Six would actually be more ideal, I think; I'll have to see just how much time I ultimately have. I've pretty much selected generic Cats for opponents. As for the nav points, it'll pretty much be a mixup of Salthi and Dralthi, maybe some Krants. I do have a spot to put in some Jalthi as well. Rocks en route and at the target.

KIS Sivar himself will not be making an appearance in this mission - no need to give the players a chance to change history...

From the get-go, I've wanted this to be a Scimitar mission, but I'm wondering if I should set it up to where the players have an option. It might mean a little more work for me; on the other hand, more people might be interested in playing the game if they didn't have to fly a Centaurian Mud Pig...

I still need to sit down and finish up the Kilrathi Star Post - it's the last missing capital element that this adventure needs (the target destination for the mission's climax). Worked on it yesterday but I hit snags when it came down to the final price. It also seems Star Posts don't carry any fighters (which seems odd but could mean I get to add another mission element, like a Fralthi or a Snakeir). I should probably clarify that the target would not be an actual Star Post; it'd probably be more like the Fuel Depot the Claw attacks during Secret Missions 1 to strand the Sivar right before they finish it off.


That's about as far as I've progressed with the mission itself so far. The other big catch of getting this thing ready for Free RPG Day is to have a simplified set of rules ready to go to include with the game (so that it's a standalone product). I've been going over some of the acquisitions I've made the last few years for Free RPG Day to see what elements are included in the official products, and at this point I think I've got enough notes to know what elements of WCRPG I'll need to include. I should only need those rules pertinent to vehicle-scale combat, the core mechanic and notes on disciplines and traits.

I have been trying to figure out if there's an easy way to move text from the wiki into MS Word or OpenOffice Writer without having to completely dewikifying the text. So far, I haven't had much success on that front. Hopefully it won't be too terribly difficult.

Tomorrow I hope to be able to discuss characters...
 
Well, so much for my running commentary on this project. Sunday wasn't productive at all; had to make up most of the materials on characters yesterday. I would call all of the pre-made characters in a state of "standby" at the moment, in that I've got their stats calculated but not formalized yet. The game will have a multi-cultural crew (just like WC1) and I will be including the basic character creation rules in with the module (it's actually pretty common for more obscure RPGs to include their basic rules with their Free RPG Day releases). In fact, other than working on characters and filling in details about the mission, most of what I've spent the last couple of days doing is determining which sections of the rules will have to be included with the game and getting them compiled. This afternoon, I hope to have that work done so I can begin work on composing the actual mission.

It's Day 5 of 7 now; I hope I've got enough time to finish before Friday. The weekend was a definite setback.
 
Thanks.

Been proofreading the stuff I copied out of the game. Forgot what a truly boring chore that was. On the plus side, I'm already about a third of the way through it and just got started today.
 
Day 6 of 7.

Well, I just got done proofreading the first draft of the engine section. That's actually a pretty good chunk of this thing finished and I daresay I might be able to pull this thing off after all. Next up is getting the specific mission information written. I'm hoping that won't take very long at all, since I've got most of it typed up in my notes already. I do want to take some time to put together an image for the cover; I might be able to put that together this afternoon, though it's by no means a priority at this point.
 
Just thought I'd share this with y'all real quick. Yeah, it's a spoiler, but I think I did a pretty damn good job with it...
 

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♫ So take me back to New Constantinople ♫
♫ No, you can't go back to New Constantinople ♫
♫ Been a long time gone, New Constantinople ♫
♫ Why did New Constantinople get the works? ♫
♫ That's nobody's business but those buggy jerks ♫

Gotta wonder why it's New New Constantinople and not New Istanbul (not New Constantinople).



Holy crap, I need a break...
 
Day 7 of 7, last day to work on this project if I'm going to have it ready on time.

The cover images are complete and work is progressing on the mission writeup. This morning I balanced up the mission encounters and wrote up the stats for the generic Kilrathi pilots in the mission (something I hadn't taken care of before now; I had hoped originally to have a set of opponents that could increase the challenge; unfortunately, I don't think I'll have time for that at this point. Still lamenting the loss of the weekend).

A page for the adventure is now up with the rest of the WCRPG project gateways on the main page. The wiki version is not very far along at this point but you can be rest assured that I'll be working on it for the rest of the day.

Time to get back to work...
 
Day 8 of 7. Release day. I'd better shut up and get the damned thing finished, hadn't I?

Almost there...I've got the write ups for a few nav points and the pilot profiles to compose and it's done. I might even get a chance to give a first proofread to everything from the last day or two before I zip it up and call it done...
 
Well, it's mid-day, and I've come to the determination that the pre-built pilots aren't going to be ready any time soon. I hate to take them out of the game entirely, but I'm afraid I may have to do just that - it's either that or blow my deadline.
 
Why?
I use it as well, the newer versions have a lot less problems than the previous ones and I actually prefer its handling over the new MS Word.
 
It's more of the fact I'm used to Word. There are things I can do with Word that I don't know how to do with Writer.

That particular piece of frustration was when it jacked up the hard page breaks I was adding - while trying to build the damned PDF. Got it sorted out...
 
I am pleased to announce the release of Prelude to Goddard, a WCRPG mission for up to seven players, as an offering to the WC community in honor of this year's Free RPG Day. Set a few weeks before the beginning of Secret Missions 1, Prelude to Goddard is a combination escort and strike mission against a Kilrathi Star Post. Players have a choice of ten pre-designed characters from which to choose; the character creation rules are included, so the option is there for them to make their own characters as well. Players may also get to choose what fighter they wish to fly - a Hornet, a Scimitar or a Raptor. A light set of rules is included with the game, and enough additional information has been included that players and GMs should be able to design their own WC1-era missions.

Prelude to Goddard is currently available from Lulu both as a free PDF e-book and as a paperback. The paperback costs $6.38 plus S&H; the cost covers printing only (i.e. I'm not making any money off of it).
 

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Crap! I just realized I released Prelude without a legal information page. I'd better get that corrected before too long...
 
...and last night as I was working through WC2 capships I noticed my cost calculation worksheet had left out a number of items (including a few important ones, such as ITTS and tracking computers, pod mounts and hangar bays). Means that the cost of every capship I've done up to this point is off (generally by no more than a thousand credits or so, but still off).

Let this be a lesson to you, kiddies: never push a product out the door until you're absolutely sure it's ready. My apologies to the four of you that have bought hardcopies up to this point. I plan on getting everything fixed and a new version up; I'll be sure to let y'all know when that happens.
 
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