The Breach 2: I'm finally back...



Hello Fellow Bloggers,
Apologies for the long time between posts, I have no excuse except the standard “real life” explanations.

Although I have not been blogging, I have been busy gaming. I just ran a 12 person Shadow Wars event. It was great! Basically, it was a huge game of Clue (or Cluedo). There were 6 games and the Kill Teams were collecting Clues instead of Promethium caches. Between games, the players did all the campaign stuff on their teams from Shadow Wars, but also executed a turn of Clue. What really seemed to get the players “all in” was the mechanism for acquiring an Operative for the next game. Since there were no promethium caches to trade in, a player would get access to an Operative if he was the first one to rebut a theory proposed by another player. THAT brought the house down.

Since we wanted everyone to get 6 games in, we didn’t use the rule in Clue, where a player who made an incorrect accusation was eliminated from the game. Instead,  players who made an incorrect accusation, were branded “An Agent of Chaos”, and were hunted by the remaining players for the remaining turns by using the “Ambush” and other scenarios that reflected their Renegade status.

In the end, we had 4 players on the run accused of being Agents of Chaos, and the mystery was solved on Turn 5.

Here are a few pics of the event…

Suspects:
Contessa Luonia Furia
Navigator Miranda Staurakia
Sub Ambassador Sulla Tigh
Governor Donnos Lackdust
Inquisitor Eustathius Guimar
Guild Negotiator  Michale Wagonleigh

Here is a pre-game shot of "Jericho Anchorage", an orbital space station (and yes there will be a follow up post on the construction)

...and a pre-game of the KCS Mary Shelly in Drydock at Temasek Harbor

An in game pic:


I made up a deck of cards and a Case Sheet for players. If you are interested in running this, let me know and I will email you all of the material to print out so you don’t have to reinvent the wheel.

Did I mention I made a shirt?




Here is the player brief and the rules:

The Breach

Campaign Background
Within Sector Six there are worlds and Sub-Sectors that remain loyal to the Empire. The Rentlaw SubSector was one of those worlds until it was torn apart by a violent uprising.  All that is left of the Imperial possessions is Rentlaw Prime.  A Diplomatic and Imperial Services task force was sent to the world to discover the causes of failure and develop plans to recover the situation.

The co-Leader of the team, Minister Rastakaur has been murdered, and the situation is collapsing. The remaining leaders cannot trust one another and the conspiracy behind everything seems to be flourishing.

Situation
Your team has been employed by one of the main suspects. Your remit is to collect evidence by any means necessary, clear your employers name, find the killer(s), and expose the conspiracy.

The Rules
This will be a one day Shadow Wars Event.  There will be 6 games played, and the rules regarding Team progression will be used.

The Murder
The teams are attempting to collect enough evidence to solve the murder. Each round, instead of promethium caches, the teams are attempting to collect evidence (incriminating files, records, weapons with DNA or fingerprints). These pieces of evidence will be represented as cards from a deck.

The cards will be a deck of suspects, weapons, and locations.

SUSPECTS
Diplomatic Special Investigator, Contessa Luonia Furia
Inquisitor Eustathius Guimar
Trading Guild Negotiator  Michale Wagonleigh
Navigator Miranda Staurakia of the Navigator House Staurakia
Rentlaw Governor Donnos Lackdust
Sub Ambassador Sulla Tigh

EVIDENCE
Operatives Cell Network
Financial Records
Weapons Cache Location
Dead Drop Locations
Planning and Timeline Files
Code Files

LOCATIONS
Jericho Anchorage, Abandoned Observatory
Jericho Anchorage, Cargo Transfer Dock
Rentlaw Prime, Governor's Offices
Rentlaw Prime, Hall of Records
Rentlaw Prime, Secret Police HQ
Rentlaw Prime, Hydrowaste Power Generation Plant
Rentlaw Prime, Water Reclamaition Facility
Temasek Shipyard, Command Bridge
Temasek Shipyard, Navigator's Suite

One card from each category will be removed from the deck and set aside. This combination of Suspect, Evidence, and Location is the guilty party and the incriminating case to made against them.

The players will start without any information and will fight to accumulate clues. For each objective secured by a Kill Team in a game a new random piece of evidence will be revealed to the owning Player. Also, at the end of the game, the winner rolls a D3 and gets to see that many additional cards. The Loser will have 1 card revealed.

Players are trying to figure out by accumulating evidence, and then using the process of elimination which card from each category has been removed from the deck and points to the Suspect, Evidence, and Location of the murder.

After each game, each winning player can propose a “theory” to the crime. One player who has seen a card that disproves the theory will show that card to the play who proposed the theory.


Also, after each game, ANY player can make an ACCUSATION, and present their solution. If they are correct, they win the campaign. If they accuse wrongly, their team is branded heretics and traitors, and will be hunted as conspirators for the remainder of the campaign!
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It's good to be back, and thanks for looking!

Comments

  1. OMG that sounds like a blast! I'd been contemplating using a bit of Clue myself. Now Jericho Anchorage looks fabulous! You definitely got my creative juices flowing. With Astropolis 2 being funded I really need to get working on some more terrain. ;) Awesome stuff as always Dubya!

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    1. Thanks Airborne,
      It's a big galaxy, and since "there is only War", I figure we should be fighting on every environment possible. I still haven't come up with something as creative as "all time" Graveskul though.

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  2. Absolutely fantastic. Every bit of it. I love the dedication you put into it, the whole Cluedo concept is pure genius. Hats off to you, sir!

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    Replies
    1. Dedication gets easier when you get to do the activity with your kid(s). :)

      Thanks

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  3. That is a great idea for some linked games.

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    Replies
    1. Clue fits really well in that a game of Clue usually lasts 6 turns and the recommended length of a SW campaign is 6 games...

      Thanks Commissar

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  4. Well, you've been away too long, but what a way to come back! Clever campaign idea, and some superb looking games! Really looking forward to your post on the space station.

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    Replies
    1. The recent time crunch/non-blogging has been driving me crazy. The good news is that there is a nice backlog of topics I can post.
      ...starting, of course, with Jericho Anchorage :)

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    2. Major, I was wondering if you'd mind emailing me your files for this: planning to use it for a Pulp Alley day at my club in October. My address is bill DOT colyer AT gmail DOT com. Thanks! Also, I'd love your thoughts: if you were to run this with Pulp Alley, would you use Sidekicks or Allies as the operatives?

      Delete
    3. File already sent!
      To answer your question about whether the Operative should be allies or sidekicks, I would make them Allies. In SW, I think the Operatives more resemble Sidekicks measured by raw combat "power", BUT based on the way dice are used, the range of outcomes is much wider. In short, the Operative may be powerful, but he also has a lesser chance to influence the game. So, Ally fits better... I think.

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    4. Thanks, good thoughts! I'll reply in more detail to your email.

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  5. Oh!!! . . . you've given me a dangerous idea. Mind if I steal your Clue inspired game idea and mess about with it a bit? Actually, I'm really stealing the Christmas Ball game, sort of, but this reminded me of that. And this, by the way, is dang lovely. Love the locations! You always build the best sets.

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  6. This is superb! Would it be possible to get the files for this? My email is wardenmark AT hotmail DOT com
    Many thanks!

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