I’ve been designing  my homebrew SciFi setting for awhile now.  I’ve worked on it solo and opened it up to sandbox sessions with my players.  It’s turning into quite a robust universe.

The Empire is a big play ground complete with nobility and political intrigue, interstellar warships waging galactic scale battles, and merchants just trying to score a deal.  The story I’m telling is a unit of Rangers out on the far frontier sorting out problems, enforcing the law, making a civilization where the wild things are.

Last month, I ran a prologue to the main campaign.  I’m still learning Savage Worlds, a game I’ve played several times but have not ever game mastered.  So, I thought a game absent a bunch of setting and campaign threads might be helpful to both me and the players.

Our final frontier rangers are a motley bunch comprised of a Duarn engineer, a Human mystic, an Empusan pilot, a robot called Willco, and an Ikati warrior.

The Prologue: While on their way to planet Genug (where the campaign really starts), the Rangers divert from their course to investigate a merchant ship failing to respond to hails.  It turned out to be infested with giant spider aliens.  It provided for lots of bug-hunting fun and an opportunity to familiarize ourselves with Savage Worlds combat rules in addition to allowing me to use some Traveller deck plans.

Love the deck plans.

The Prologue (or zero issue) session was successful, I think.  I learned a bit more about how combat works and we all had fun.

On Saturday night, we kicked off the campaign.

The Rangers arrived at Genug a largely desolate desert world with the exception of the narrow valley where the terraforming has really stuck.  Rumor had it that outlaw Waylon Hamer and his gang were using the planet as base of operations.  The Rangers orders were to sniff out if the rumors were true and establish positive relations with the locals.  Through their investigations they met  local law officer Sheriff Jinks, uncovered the hermit Major’s secret (a battlemech in the barn), and thwarted the RoboPocalypse.

Yeah, about that…

The Rangers discovered three robot pilgrims – or robo-theists – who were behaving in a suspicious manner.  Turned out that they were working to resurrect the long buried Sentinel of Infinity, Great Godkaiger, the harbinger of the end times. Inadvertently, the Rangers activated Great Godkaiger.  Rising from the desert dunes, he towered some two hundred feet over the player characters.

I am amazed that two characters in particular were not killed in all the shenanigans.

Before it was all said and done, the Rangers had put down the robo-theists and Great Godkaiger.  End times?  Averted.

I made some mistakes in the game, not the least of which was breaking my primary rule of gaming: start the game in media res.  I have a lot of success when I start things in the middle of the action.  I didn’t do that this time.  As a result, the first half of the game lagged hard which I found more than a little embarassing.  But that wasn’t the most embarassing thing that I did.  Oh no.

I created character names for the robo-theists  that I could not pronounce.

Idiot.

My players laughed as I struggled with names like Impregnable Raigrenrarth and Inviolable Daigobot.

I’m not satisfied with my command of the system.  That’s coming, but I need to run some practice combats between now and the next game.  Players Josh and James – Savage Worlds veterans – very graciously offered clarification.  Still, I’d like to have a greater mastery of the rules.

I’ve got more work ahead of me to better learn the system and to prep the most awesome game I can.

More to come.