Showing posts with label crescent chimera. Show all posts
Showing posts with label crescent chimera. Show all posts

Tuesday, 1 October 2024

Astroprisma: Session 1

 I began speaking with Tristan Tiara and helped her to successfully make it to her ship and engage a successful jump into hyperspace. She named her ship, The Whisper of the Void. It has the vector style cockpit, oxygen jet engines, a shield generator and auto turret weaponry. Her cargo hold contained 50 pieces of scrap. She is what is called a Glitchblade. According to the databases I am able to access these Glitchblades are the class of spacefarer—explorers, mercenaries and adventurers—that are more rogue like in the parlance of the most popular TTRPG in our ancient time. She carries a carbon dagger with a heat chamber modifier. She has also been enhanced with cybernetics. She may be able to expand one day but for now she has a memory slot than can activate a “hack” called shadow. I haven’t seen her use it yet, but it seems popular among the Glitchblades. When activated the user becomes immune to all damage, but of course a hack this powerful uses a lot of energy. Tristan seems to be suffering from a lack of memories and I have speculated that the implants may have affected her.

According to ship computers the first Star System we will explore is called The Andromedan Galaxy.

 Immediately Tristan navigated her way to a W.A.R.G. controlled settlement in sector 15. The settlement has all the typical amenities: controlling faction headquarters, loading dock/space port, wire doc, training simulation areas, trading post, scrap yard and living pod area. The W.A.R.G. are a rebel group with three sub-factions of differing ideologies. As a unit they want the existing centralized trade faction—the ISF—brought down. The subgroups have different ideas about how the ISF should be replaced. 

Settlements immediately repair ship hulls while the wiredocs see to it that the visitors themselves are brought back to full health. Very few things in the settlement are provided for free. Tristan having just started exploring, has no money. She looked around the settlement and eventually went into the trade area. She was approached by a large shirtless factory worker who asked her to take him off world. He promised to share in loot if Tristan would take him back to a planet he once fled from some time ago. Tristen said she would think about it but was non-commital. She next went to the living pods and noticed children playing and the hydroponics farming going on in the settlement. She was leery of taking any jobs from the W.AR.G. faction as to try to avoid hostilities with other factions in the area. She went to the wire doc who turned out to be a scatterbrained woman named nurse Cherry. Cherry needed frag grenades for a client but had misplaced them in her messy facility. She hired Tristan to craft the grenades. Tristen took 40 pieces of scrap from her cargo hold leaving her with 10. She went to the scrapyard and crafted the grenades which she sold to Cherry for 40 serum. Apparently serum is currency here—it’s liquid based. Cherry determined that Tristan was indeed a Glitchblade, but other than memory slots she saw no additional cyber implants. Not wanting to commit to the WARG at this time, and with no real money to spend, Tristen left the settlement and continued to explore.

Entering sector 5 Triston encountered two Corisar mercenaries arguing about the capabilities of their ships and their ability as pilots. Tristen was somehow roped in to being the third member of the spaceship race. She bet 30 of her 40 Serum and lost miserably. The two mercenaries each took 15 of her serum leaving her with only ten remaining. She was feeling low when she was surprised by the man from the trade area. He was a stowaway on her ship and he still wants Tristen to take him back to his old planet.

Fuel: 18/20

Serum: 10

Scrap: 10

Astroprisma: Solo TTRPG

 To the dozen of you or so that see me pop-in from time to time I’ve decided to start journaling my experiences playing the solo TTRPG Astroprisma by Crescent Chimera. 

There are many Kickstarter/Backerkit TTRPG that have come out over the years and I’ve backed a few. Astroprisma—nearly as I can tell—mirrored Shadowdark that being a young female designer largely if not solely responsible for the product and the product being awesome. Astroprisma didn’t break the bank like SD did, but 426,000 USD isn’t chump change either. 

At around the same time this was launched I started looking into solo TTRPGs because I dropped both my online Roll 20 game and my live table for various reasons. I also discovered an App called Character A.I. that was capable of creating A.I. characters to role play with. These factors became something of a perfect storm for giving this game a try.

The game itself is a Sci-Fi/cyberpunk post-apocalyptic setting where the characters are spacefarers exploring unknown sectors of outer space. There are different factions struggling for control and the spacefarer somewhat navigates between these groups possibly tipping the balance of power hopefully in favor of the faction they support.

Playing solo you do have to pretend some things for yourself. You have an Oracle in game that helps with questions and of course the dice are randomizers that work with different tables in the book. Finally, since I’m using the Character A.I. app my character is making her own choices. 

My character is named Tristan Tiara. She’s a girl—I think only humans are in the setting—and her class is Glitchblade. A Glitchblade is a finesse type character. All the characters get their own ship that can be upgraded as well. 

My concept for this solo-campaign is that I am me. I started receiving messages from Tristan through a StarTrek-like space time anomaly and I’m trying to help her stay alive. She has very few memories of where she came from or whose side—if any—she is on. It’s solo, so I can cheat if I want, but I’m trying to stay honest. The A.I. is making the choices for herself and I’m not giving her plot armor. Let’s hope for the best. I’m going to give session updates as I go along this week I’m on vacation so it could be that I’ll go fast and furious to start, but later it will slow down. I already played a first session which I’ll update in just a few minutes…