Comet Crawl Actual Play (Patreon)

I have been quite busy this month as I worked a lot on Comet Crawl.

Here is my list of generators

Comet settlement generator 

Random scenes or encounters generator 

NPCs generator 

I recently ran a solo playtest session with a friend (via voice chat) and I was quite satisfied with the result.

My friend played  Chidi Tempel a “by the book” mechanic born in the Great Settling Era. 

Their preferred methods are fabricate and socialize while their denied method is mischief.

The comet settlement Cassiopée RW-8 received a distress message from the comet  Sagittarius-XQ4 and the Rescue & Courier Cooperative decided to send Chidi and their friend, Albion (bound d6), to link with Cassiopée RW-8 to bring them supplies of the cure for the nano plague.

Chidi and Albion left aboard the Copernica, they went in stasis sleep while their ship's AI handled the 20 years voyage needed to reach Cassiopée RW-8.

Note: player characters are people who were stuck in stasis for generations, cut away from their former life and having no ties with the present they are the best candidates for long voyages. 

Albion Chibuzo-E (era of origin: The Quarantine Era)  Ex-smuggler, favored method: mischief.  Quiet - Aromantic - Wants many children.

I rolled a comet settlement and we crafted the wounds and debts togethers. 

Comet Settlement Sagittarius-XQ4

Infrastructure: malfunctioning

Is moving away from a uninhabited enormous comet (3 social cycles away)

Is moving away from comet settlement Cassiopée-RW8 (3 social cycles away)

Nearby space: space station relay

Port 01

Locked

Port 02

Carina community

Operational, trying to provide help to other communities

Value: Industrial work

Undervalue: Political work

Wound: generation conflict, the young want to leave to link with other comets while the elders put the emphasis on helping the Cepheus community.  

Debt: the expedition that traveled to the Space Station Relay to sent the distress signal never came back. Their clans are still looking for closure. 

Port 03

Cepheus community

Damaged habitat, major structural damages, lots of casualties

Value: Entertainment work

Undervalue: Political work

Wound: Having lost 40% of their population, the population want to make a important mourning and remembrance ceremony but the council only prioritize reparation of the habitat. 

Debt: people are advocating to unlock Port 01 so that a new space habitat can receive a new space habitat. But people fear the Port 01 could have been contaminated by the last habitat that used it. 

Play started with the Copernica arriving at Sagittarius-XQ4, Chidi and Albion having been recently awakened from stasis. They requested permission to dock with the settlement. People from the Carina community responded since the Cepheus antenna is still in repair. The young operator from Carina were super excited and Chidi could hear them speculate excitingly in the background. 

Docking was complicated because of the malfunctions in the settlement infrastructure. Chidi worked with Lointain, a young chef mechanic, to reactivate the connecting dock. 

Chidi  and Lointain quickly connected and the chef mechanic invited Chidi to have a drink at their place later. 

While heading toward the council meeting, Tempel and Albion noticed that the Carina community is very traditional and clannish. Most people wear tattoos related to their clan but many  young  are starting to break with that tradition. There is also some graffiti in the corridors about linking with other comets. 

The council welcomed the two couriers, they agreed on proceeding to a exchange of their cultural libraries so that the Copernica can share them with the other settlement they will eventually visit. They were also grateful to receive a sample of the nano virus cure. 

The elder of the clan who leaded the expedition to the Relay Station asked the couriers to link with the Relay to learn about the fate of the 20 year old expedition. 

The  group of  young  who assisted to the council asked to take part in the expedition and there was a lot of agitation as some of them aggressively requested that they should be granted the right to leave the habitat. While the elders tried to shot down their requests. 

Chidi tried to calm the situation and I turned this into a conflict. 

• Chidi goal: that the  young  calm themselves to make a formal request to the council. 
• My risk: the creation of a countdown that represent the  young frustration, if the countdown reach zero it will trigger a uprising. 

Chidi rolled “succeed but risk is realized” so the  young  agreed to make a formal request but their discontent is growing up and I created a 4 steps countdown toward a uprising. 

After that Chidi and Albion encountered a couple of young engineers who asked them if they could help them reactivate a old courier ship that have been resting in a docking station for a century. They explained that the council prevent them to do so. Albion let slip that there is some old smuggler tricks that could do the job… But Chidi cut them short and explained to the young engineers that they must listen to their elder and use the official channels. This frustrated the young and I advanced the countdown. 

At the spaceship Chidi and Albion got into argument, Albion arguing that they must help the kids (because Albion come from the Quarantine Era, and remember the rise of authoritarian councils). This turned into a socialize conflict.

• Chidi goal: Albion will make a effort to speak during the next meeting with the council to try to help the kids via the official channels. 
• My risk: Albion will secretly slip smuggler codes to the young to help them reactivate the old spaceship. 

Result: “succeed but risk is realized” (as usual). 

So Albion agree to speak to the council just to prove to Chidi that this is a waste of time and since Albion don’t trust the council they will leak the smuggler codes. 

After that Chidi went for a drink at Lointain’s residential pod. Chidi was expecting a date but Lointain presented them to three other of their friends. I told to the player, you know that this may still be a date… Micro-humans are very comfortable with sharing intimacy with others. 

Chidi learned that some of the young are talking about printing weapons, something that worries some of them. They talked about fixing the malfunctions in the settlement infrastructure and Lointain revealed that they could use a maintenance tunnel to access the old spaceship to strip it of it component to repair the infrastructure. But the maintenance tunnels are old and may contain rogue bioroids, usually nothing to worry about but you never know…

At the end of the encounter Chidi became intimate with Lointain and Yodell, a other cute mechanic. I rolled to see who want children to figure who regularly use contraceptive medications as being bioengineered intersex people, micro humans can all get pregnant during sexual intercourses. Chidi is currently hoping to have a kid but Lointain is too busy being chef mechanic to desire one and Yodell recently lost a child and is not ready to have a new one. 

Early in the next light cycle, a AI assigned maintenance work to the mechanics and remembered to Chidi that they have a meeting with the council. 

Chidi quickly left to meet with Albion and to go to the meeting. The meeting was to download the cultural data from Cassiopée. While doing so Albion showed to Chidi that all the cultural data produced by Cassiopée's young have been dropped into a sealed archive data core. They also noticed that the cultural production submitted by the young of the Carina community have been approved for redistribution by the AIs but not by the council. That seemed strange. 

After the meeting, Albion gave to Chidi a data pod and winked at them. Chidi checked the data pod to discover that Albion secretly downloaded the cultural production from the young of Carina. Chidi was pissed at Albion but Albion had already left to give those smuggler codes… ;)   

Later the young who are making the formal request to the council contacted Chidi and asked them to give a testimony in their favor as a member of the Rescue & Courier Cooperative since their role is to link comets together. Chidi accepted and worked with them trying to build their case.

Chidi decided to share some of the cultural work of Cassiopée to the young of Carina and their mind was blow. But soon after their self esteem crashed down as they explained that no one was producing cultural work here and that the few who did never get approval for resharing by the AIs. Chidi felt bad for them and told them that Carina’s data core is full of their cultural work and that the AIs approved them for resharing but that the council blocked the AIs decisions. This outraged the young and I advanced the countdown toward their uprising.

Note: the council are blocking the cultural production out of fear that it will encourage more young to desire to leave to link with other comets. 

Our last scene was about the young making their formal request to the council to accompany the couriers during their expedition to the Relay Station. Albion arrived late but made a effort to address the council in favor of the young. Chidi testified of the importance of linking with other comets and collected a nice amount of dice (2d8 + 3d6) 

• Chidi goal: the young will join the expedition to the Relay Station and the council will consider the possibility of doing other expeditions. 
• My risk: Chidi see that council is firmly biased against the young and get a Debt about helping them to do things in their own way. 

So many dice but nothing above 4 came up: (2, 3, 3, 4, 4) 

So again we got: “succeed but risk is realized”

The council approved the expedition but refused to discuss any future expeditions.

Chidi feel that they have now a debt toward the young. 

This calmed the young a bit and I did not advance the uprising countdown. 

...

So we rolled the dice 3 times and I was quite satisfied with how things are brewing up. 

There is two interesting expeditions on the horizon: one to the Space Station Relay to find the fate of the Carina’s expedition. And a secret expedition with the chef mechanic to strip down the old courier spaceship while some of the young dissidents are trying to reach it to reactivate it using the smuggler’s codes from Albion (this will be interesting). 

Design notes:

When the Copernica arrived at destination, I realized that the distress signal was now 20 years old and that most of the young NPCs were not even born when it was sent. (3 cycles is one of the longest distances in the game).

I wonder if I should generate who sent the distress signal and then make the roll on the social changes tables. Or if what I roll determine the situation when the characters arrive at destination. 

Maybe it is more interesting to start the campaign at the home comet of the characters and to play there a bit and to later let the character leave to help a other comet settlement. This way the characters would leave behind NPCs they like. 

Playing in french is really annoying as everything is gendered and it is even harder (if not impossible) to remain gender neutral. 

We only rolled the dice 3 times during the session and I felt like it worked better.