Das Boot

UPDATE: this has now been released here. 

Yesterday I put up a skeleton set of rules for a long-form, real time, vehicle and crew campaign.

I was pretty happy with it, but thought that it had some holes, and additionally some elements that weren't quite performing to spec. This post is a few additions, tweaks, and changes to get things more streamlined and *ahem* shipshape.

First a statement of intention. At Your Order! was envisioned in two main modes. The first is the running of the ship over long periods of irl time. I wanted this to include non-urgent but also non-trivial decision making about where and how to task your crew. I also wanted it to feel vaguely cosy (a word that has been recently mangled in usage, but which will serve us well enough), the way that large groups of professionals doings their jobs to a high standard can feel. There are moments of peace in the greenhouses. The theatre is open on weekends - the show is a secret and rumours abound. Recon vehicles are dispatched and the brave men and women aboard exchange 'good lucks' and tired smiles. Coffee for long watches. The sky slowly, slowly growing brighter as you travel westwards, always westwards, over the days and weeks. The excitement when messenger gliders are spotted on the horizon. Tense moments watching recon vehicles, or worse, other Vehicles, lumber into visual range. The held tension in the batteries as gunnery crews wait for their orders and mouth silent prayers. Cigarettes and bitching and music and tired flirting at mess. Complicated people, jammed into close proximity, trying to keep everything as pleasant as the circumstances allow.

The other mode is immediate, brutal danger to life and limb. These slow and human build-ups, punctuated by terrifyingly lethal and intense ship to ship battles where whole broadsides reduce Vehicles to limping piles of twisted metal in seconds. Combat is fast-paced (indeed, it's instantaneous against the slow movement on the world map) and highly, highly deadly. I think that the humane elements are thrown into a type of relief in the contrast.

This is the vibe that I'm going for. To achieve said vibe:

• The running of the Vehicles needs to be complexified. Currently the only things that you're worried about are supply, ammunition, and morale, and basically everything is geared around morale bonuses. This isn't awful (the campaign structure gives heavy morale maluses the further West you go, and even small dips in morale are going to have intense flow on effects on crew efficiency), but I do think it's a little simplistic.
• To this end, I would like to add maintenance and spare parts to the list of things a captain needs to be thinking about. Once a week, every non-storage room has a 1 in 20 chance for a technical malfunction. Its function for that week is interrupted, and an officer with Engineering will need to make a check and spend d3 spare parts to get it working again for the next week.
• The captain may instead choose to task an officer with Engineering on weekly maintenance. To perform this task, the officer will need to be staffed with 5 crew per room being serviced. In this case, you still roll for malfunctions, but a malfunction simply consumes a single spare part, and does not stop the functioning of its room. 
• Spare parts can be brought into storage at the beginning of a run, like ammunition and supply, and each storage space can hold up to 10 of them. Like supply and ammunition, you may be able to scavenge or trade for more out in the world.
• Each week will also have a roll on a random thing happening table, and a weather table. These can be all sorts of things, but will impact your resources, your morale, and may in rare cases mean combat (probably being boarded by terrible things, pirates, cannibals, etc.)
• Combat can be sprung on you in real time, since the game runs in real time. If think it would be rad if captains had written-up 'standing combat orders' for their Vehicle to follow if the irl player is not contactable within a given time period (prob 24 hours).
• Players are encouraged to give over the command of Recon Vehicles to sub commanders with their own missions and agendas. I think Recon Vehicles should probably be deisgned like miniature Vehicles at campaign start to facilitate this. I think giving them 3 storage and 3 solar gliders is probably sufficient. You need to outfit them using your requisition, and crew them with one of your officers, but hopefully the flexibility makes up for it. Once they leave visual range you're relying on glider comms. Hope nothing bad happens out there lol.
• Fishing room. Like a greenhouse, but can only be used in the sea, or on the coast. A flying vehicle might reduce altitude over the sea to facilitate this.
• I'd like to further 'cosy-fy' farming, libraries, theatres, fishing, mess, brewing, etc. etc., but I will need to do some thinking on how this can be done. Very possibly the answer is 'trust your player to make it so in the theatre of the mind'. 
• I don't know how clear it was in the first post, but the idea for crewing is that you must put together a roster each week with officers tasked and given crew to manage. This is what gives the capacity to make checks, and what gives you the numbers you're trying to beat. Officers and crew can't be re-tasked over the week, otherwise players can just move 100 crew around to tasks as they roll for them. Rationalise this by saying that the logistical and organisational work is not in place for this kind of scratch work. The exception is combat missions, which can always be undertaken by anyone game - these are discreet events and rolls that happen 'outside' the usual real time play space of the game. 

Zero Points

Zero Points are sort of endless energy in very small packages. They are the tech base of the setting, but they need to be farmed. They fall very slowly from the sky, in increasing numbers as you travel west, and when they get to the earth they fall through it and become unreachable.

The hex map is divided vertically into 10 'bands', numbered 1 through 10, with 10 being the closest to the final city and 1 being right next to the solar barrier at the edge of the world.

Each week, roll 1 d10 for each band, and then subtract that band's number. this is how many zero points are falling in that band that week. Each point will slowly drift for d6+4 days, but this info is secret from players. While drifting, a point can be seen at visual range, and easily collected with a solar glider or similar. Randomise the hex and day of the week that each appears (or just choose if this is a faff). Remember that Vehicles will only see Zero Points inside their visual range. 

A Zero Point can be exchanged for a single point of renown when you return home after having completed your missions. They can also be installed into special rooms and kit built with salvaged old technology. Beam projectors are one example of this tech, and there are strange and ancient combat vehicles, reanimators, cloning vats, instantaneous comms, and other wonders salvageable from the ruins of the past. A Zero Point used this way cannot be exchanged for renown on return. 

Exterminator Orbs

An elegant weapon for a more civilised age. D6 of them appear at the burning horizon each week, and then always travel directly east. Small Orbs travel at a rate of 2 hexes per day, large orbs at 1/day - randomise the hex and day they appear. As explained in the last post, anything caught in the same hex as a small orb, or within a range of 1 hex from a large orb, is annihilated.

Sample Weekly Encounter Table for Tracked Vehicles - I will eventually do a d20 (or d100?! I am not good at tables lol) for each of flying, land, and sea vehicles. 

1. Infestation. Rust Leeches have been discovered feeding on the mechanical subsystems. D3 rooms suffer mechanical failure, and you must lead a combat mission against the vermin to eliminate them. On a successful check you clear the infestation without casualties, on a failure you lose d6 crew. 
2. Artefact of Hate. This ancient technological monolith imposes -3 morale to everything within 1 hex of it. It can be destroyed easily enough with a single round of battery fire, but can also be taken back to the last city in one piece for 3 renown. Its effects persist while it is in your hold, and it takes up 3 storage spaces. In addition, each week that you have it on board you must restrain 2d6 crew in the brig (reroll this number each week, and free the last batch). If you don't have a brig, you instead lose 2d6 crew to vicious fights and suicides.
3. Cannibals. Your vessel is attacked at night by cannibal raiders. They kill and start to eat d6 of your crew before you can muster an effective defense. Lead a combat mission against them to drive them from the ship - on a success you lose an additional d6 crew, but successfully drive them away. One a failure you instead lose 2d6 crew, and there is a 1 in 2 chance that the cannibals will attack again in d4 days.
4. Chlorine Fog. Your visual range is 0 for d4 days. Gliders cannot fly in the dense, poisonous air, and Metabolic and Recon Vehicles must 'baton down' against the toxins. If your vehicle includes an observation deck you instead have a visual range of a single hex; your crew make use of crude periscopes. 
5. Terrible Dreams. Your crew are all having the same dream: of the burning edge of the world, of fire and madness, of the screaming of the people who lived before, of two suns, one beneath the earth and one in the sky, both huge, pressing terribly at the thin, fragile zone where life is possible. You suffer -2 morale for d6 days if you have a Therapist officer on board; if you don't this is -4.
6. Behemoth. One of the terrible insectoid Behemoths of the poisoned world erupts from the earth and charges you, intent on tearing your Vehicle to pieces. You get a single round of battery fire against it before it smashes into you. If you can deal d4+1 'rooms' worth of damage (this roll determines it size), you kill it before it reaches you. Otherwise it destroys d6 rooms, with one of these annihilated, before you can destroy it. You kill it in either instance, and if you bring back the remains to the final city you will gain 1 renown. If it was a Behemoth with five 'rooms' worth of hp, you instead gain 2 renown. 
7. Ancient Redoubt. This immobile fortification was abandoned decades ago. In contains 10 supply and 50 ammunition in 6 underground storage rooms, and 10 standard batteries above the ground. If manned it would make a fearsome strong point. In addition, roll on the Ancient Tech table. 
8. Engine Flux. The Metabolic Engine needs to be powered down for d4 days for safety reasons. An officer may check Engineering to make this roll 1. If you do not wish to power down you may instead lose d10 crew and take a permanent -2 to morale. 
9. Targeting Array. You discover one of the command bunkers of the ancients, still intact. It is infested with terrors and slow mutants - you may choose to lead a combat mission to eliminate them. On a success you lose d6 crew and take the site. On a failure, you lose 2d10 crew and fail to secure it. You may choose to roll again if you wish. Once the site has been cleared, you may use it to input the coordinates of any hex on the world map. One hour after you input the coordinates, anything on the hex is destroyed by tungsten KEMs dropped from geostationary high orbit. The satellites still have d4 payloads in them, but this number is hidden to the player, and the array gives them no confirmation of firing.
10. Locusts. A horde of chlorine-eating insects each the size of a horse that covers the ground in a migrating swarm. You must 'baton down' for d3 days as they wash over your vehicle like a sea. You have no visibility, though you can still move if you wish. You cannot launch of receive gliders or recon vehicles. Each day you are beneath the swarm, you must fight d3 simultaneous (ie the same officer may not run more than one of them) combat missions, as the locusts force their way through bulkheads and weak points and madly scramble through the interiors. One each success lose d3 crew, on each failure lose d6 crew and destroy a random room. If all your combat missions are successful, gain +2 morale for the week. 

Still to come:

• Full encounter tables.
• Ancient tech table!
• ... more fluff? A cosy greenhouse plot minigame?!
• Tell me in the comments or on Discord if I am missing something obvious 8)

More Ghibli, of course.