Legend of the Sky Raiders: Session #1

I’m running Legend of the Sky Raiders for my regular group. Last time I covered my pre-game preparation. Now it’s time to play!

The Travellers

A quick reminder of our players and their characters:

Jon is playing ex-Scout Timo Sosak  8A9B84 Age 38.

Terry is playing Sir Sidderon Dubois 775ACC Age 34.

Thomas is playing Felix "Dusty" Pygrin 478CB7 Age 34.

Setting the scene

We started the game with all the characters generated, but I had yet to set the scene. We spent 30 minutes figuring out why the characters were on Mirayn and down on their luck. We established that although they knew each other from their past, they had each made their way independently to Mirayn and had only now come together. We agreed that Timo’s Type S Scout, The Tyrant’s Fate, was on Alzenei, two parsecs away. (He apparently lent it to a friend. Hopefully it’s still there…)

More than once during this session, I regretted not coming up with pregens. (But then I remembered that I didn’t want to put the work in.)

We began with Lorain Messandi hiring the players to outfit an expedition to investigate the Sky Raiders. As part of that discussion, Timo tried bargaining with Lorain for a percentage of any finds - but rolled snake eyes, so that’s a fail. Hopefully not a sign of rolls to come!

Val Prezsar 

With the offer accepted, the action moved to the town of Val Prezsar. The Travellers are staying in the Loose End, a cheap hotel. They started by investigating Lorain’s father, Jothan Messandi, who went missing in the Outback two years ago. We worked slowly through the rumours and encounters - I’m pleased I extracted them into a more usable form (as I described last time).

After prompting from Loraine, they started thinking about outfitting their expedition. As they didn’t know where to begin, they interviewed the local guides and hired Hal Lewis, one of the NPCs in Legend of the Sky Raiders. Hal gave them a suggested equipment list for an expedition, which I copied from the book.

What I hadn’t noticed is that the list in the book includes the figures that the guides are using to skim from the Travellers. In particular, the food prices are super-inflated. Luckily for me, Dusty had already been calculating how much food they would need (I had shared the rules for exploring the Outback), so I said that he spotted the discrepancy.

(Another example of how not to present an adventure…)

Anyway, Hal’s suggested expedition was much larger than my players had envisaged - as well as Lorain and her team, the guides and labourers it allowed for eight PCs! Eight! (I couldn’t imagine running a table with eight players - we were made of sterner stuff back in 1981.)

The players were thinking about a seven-person expedition - them, Lorain’s team, and Hal Lewis. I suspect when they start planning in detail, they’ll realise they need drivers for their hovercraft. I offered to put all the details into our shared spreadsheet for next time.

Old Lin, and an ambush

I then introduced Old Lin, a survivor from Jothan’s expedition and the only truly critical encounter. He sold them his book and map (Dusty made a superb roll and got it for a song). At this point, I gave the players the detailed map of the Outback and realised I had left a native village on it that I should have removed! Bah.

The players started thinking about routes, but I told them that next time we would use Roll20 so they could scribble collaboratively on the map. (At least, I hope that’s what Roll20 will let them do.)

We ended the session with an ambush. Thugs want Old Lin’s map and book, and challenged them in a dark alley. We ended just as Sir Sidderon started to throw the first punch - partly to end on a cliffhanger, but mostly so that I have time to remind myself of the combat rules.

Actions for next time

I need to:

• Read the combat rules – and produce a summary that we can all work from.
• Put the expedition equipment list into the spreadsheet.

(I know from long experience that it’s not worth trying to get my players to do this. I don’t mind – I have more free time than they do.)

Coming soon: Session 2 and our first combat

Previous parts in this series: #1 My first-impressions review of Legend of the Sky Raiders. #2 Creating characters. #3 My prep.