Orbital Blues, a game with Spaceships!
In my last post I discussed character creation in Orbital Blues (OB), as well as Stat Checks and Blues Checks. This post is about why I want to play OB, Spaceships!
Spaceships are fucking cool
The Millennium Falcon is fucking cool! So are X-Wings, various TIE Fighter variants (especially TIE Interceptors), Corellian Corvettes, Star Destroyers. The Serenity, Miranda Class Starships, The Defiant, Crescent Warships, Battlestar Galactica, The Bebop. It's not the only reason to play Orbital Blues, or Traveler, or Night Tripper, but if you don't have spaceships, and they aren't doing dope shit, why are you playing these games? You can do all the other fun stuff from this game and mix it with giant mechs, or mega-urban high-tech lowlifery, or whatever flavor or magic and goblins and whatnot.
If I'm playing a game with spaceships, I want my players to have one, and I want it to do dope shit.
Luckily Orbital Blues knows when to have it's rules get out of the way, and when you need rules to make things cool.
Making a Spaceship in Orbital Blues
Like characters, ships (and vehicles) in OB have three stats, this time Mobility, Body, and Systems. For their vessel, the crew assigns +2, +1, and +0 to these stats as they like.
Ships are Small (snub-fighters, shuttlecraft), Medium (small freighter, courier ship, gun barge), or Large (cargo hauler, space liner). Super-Heavy vehicles like capital ships, intergalactic heavy freighters, colony ships, or space stations explicitly don't use these rules. The game instructs that "combat" with such a vessel or structure isn't really feasible and should be run more like a puzzle (see Death Star II in Return of the Jedi).
Ship creation has d6 tables for Former Purpose, Ship Origin, Ship Chassis, Ship Weapon, and Additional Features. Additionally each crew member rolls for Crew Equipment which is either stored on the ship or integrated with it's systems.
Example Ship
Crew: Shad Zain the Captain, Frankie Aran the Cleaner, Billiam Bannock the Dreamer.
Ship: Peggy Sue (97)
Body: 1
Mobility: 2
Systems: 0
Formerly: authority vessel (6) - Origin: bought at auction, a bargain (5) - Chassis: sleek, slender and fashionable. The latest model - Ship Weapon: Pulse Laser (personal - precise) (3) - Additional Feature: Functional Medbay, poorly stocked (1).
Crew Equipment: 3 System Communicators (16), Authority Monitor (Integrated, Illegal in most systems) (14), Bugging Drone (Integrated, Illegal) (4).
Space Combat A.K.A. the Reason I'm Excited to Run This Game
Orbital Blues has a lot of what I look for in a game: simple characters with space for play, an evocative implied setting, a quick and intuitive resolution mechanism, equipment, enemies, advice for making adventures... great stuff, but largely not more exciting than stuff I can find in other games.
BUT
Space combat! Like normal combat in OB, space combat uses range bands, close, near, far, and remote. Roll initiative to determine which Side goes first in the Round, each Side gets Turns equal to the highest of
- The number of Crew aboard.
- The highest combined Mobility and Systems amongst ships on that side.
- The total number of vehicles on the Side
Sides alternate Turns until they run out of actions for the Round then Initiative is rolled again. Now the fun bit, OB defines a whole slew of actions for crews to take from various stations. Helm can evade, enter or leave hazards, enter an attack run, or ram. Sensors can calibrate, lock on, target, boost range, or cut through interference. Communications can mayday, long range comms, cut through interference, and jam signals. Weapons can broadside, targeted shot, or crowd control. Repair can patch, reinforce, damage control, or emergency procedures. Crew can also support, jury-rig, board an enemy, and enter hand to hand combat!
There are so many cool, and well defined actions, and the turn structure demands that everyone do something. Ship combat will become more dynamic and engaging because players must do things beyond fly and shoot, and how they fly and shoot are laid out in evocative and varied ways. Plus there's a bunch of rules for creating potential energy in your space encounters through Disturbances: asteroid fields, ion bombardments, and radioactive debris. I can't wait!
The Asteroid Field by Randy Martinez