Our first go with the Alpha Playtest version of 'Danger Patrol'. The players were my wife and children, none of whom are experience role-players, whilst I acted as GM.

The Characters

(My wife) Grosnox – A robot detective with rather primitive speech circuitry
(My daughter) Sandrat – A mystic daredevil who teleports through dark mists.
(My son) Mr A – An alien warrior from Planet X; green skinned, one-eyed and a total badass.

And away we go.

The Danger Patrol rocketship blasts away from Rocket City, through the atmosphere of Mars, heading towards the source of the distress signal. Our heroes skilfully pilot it towards the moon of Phobos, where they see a stricken rocketship spiralling out of control towards the Martian surface. As they head towards the ship, three dark shapes emerge from behind the Martian moon; great space-bats!

Oh no!

Previously on ‘Danger Patrol'!

Grosnox is stood next to a shallow crater on Ganymede:
“I know what happen to lost mining colony!” he says, with great certainty.

We see Mr A skilfully piloting a rocketship through an asteroid field, fighting an unseen foe.

In dark tunnels Sandrat uses mystic energy to drive back a horde of humanoid evil pink bunnies (sorry – my daughter insisted).

Back to the story!

Sandrat uses her powers to teleport from the Danger Patrol ship to the stricken rocketship. She finds it empty of crew, and rushes to the controls in order to try and fly it out of danger. Meanwhile Mr A pilots the Danger Patrol ship straight at the bats, using the atomic cannon to cause one to implode in a burst of stygian dark-energy. Leaping out of an airlock with his trusty jet-pack, Grosnox attempts to draw the other bats away from the ship, so that Mr A has a clear run at the crashing rocketship.

(The setup was the three PCs on a rocketship, with three space-bats between them and the crashing ship. The bats were each a minor threat, and the crashing ship a major threat with a three turn countdown before it hit the surface of Mars. I added a marker for Phobos as well – local colour which later proved critical).

The mysterious ship is is the ‘Ark of the Covenant’ and is owned by the Rocket City Archaeological Society. Sandrat has great difficulty pulling the ship out of its crash-dive, as its systems seem to be heavily damaged. In addition there seem to be residual dark energies from its mysterious cargo causing problems. It is also leaving a trail of debris which makes it harder for Mr A to catch up with it; it takes all of his piloting skill to do so.

Grosnox loops skilfully around Phobos, shaking off one of the pursuing bats, but the other is still on his tail. However something is seriously wrong; the eldritch forces at play cause a gravitational shift, and Phobos moves out of orbit, beginning its own descent to the Martian surface. (This was a disaster caused by Grosnox rolling very badly indeed). Grosnox mitigates the disaster, using the thrust from his rocket pack and his robotic strength to nudge the moon out of the critical trajectory (In know; there’s no way he’s that strong, but we were thinking on the fly here, and it was FUN). But it was now hurtling out of control, endangering the rescue operation.

Ah, the rescue operation. Abandoning her attempts to pilot the ship of danger, Sandrat shoots a magna-grapple out of an airlock, attaching it to the Danger Patrol rocketship, so that Mr A can tow it away from Mars. There follows an epic struggle against atmospheric friction and gravity, whilst the last bat sucks energy from the Danger Patrol ship, but the ‘Ark’ is soon towed to safety. Grosnox uses his sensors to identify weak spots in Phobos, and blasts it into fragments with his robotic weaponry, before returning to the rescue in time to finish off the space-bat with his trusty Patrol-issue pistol.

So, the ship was saved (along with the bit of Mars it was going to crash onto), albeit at the cost of a Martian moon. But Martian moons are small, and no-one’s going to miss one.

We now go to an interlude in Rocket City:

The cargo on the ship seems to be various artefacts from Pluto, and the manifest was made out to a Professor Wix of something called the Balaclava Institute.

Mr A goes to the Jammy Dodger Bar, where he is accosted by a number of ruffians who wear overalls with the logo of the Balaclava Institute on them. He easily defeats them in a brawl, and it turns out that they are all former workers from the missing Ganymede Mining Colony. A colony that had disappeared when the section of Ganymede it was on was exchanged with a section of crust from – Pluto. Pluto; home of the evil Stygian Adepts!

Whilst buying herself a new magna-grapple, Sandrat encounters an evil pink bunny who claims to be working for a Professor Wix. She follows it discretely (I don’t think we determined which planet they came from, but they are obviously not considered hostile in Rocket City. Perhaps there are non-evil ones as well). The bunny is trailed to a Mysterious Building.

Grosnox goes for a relaxing oil-bath, and uses his robotic computer to access information on Professor Wix. But such information seems well protected, and the robot detective is attacked by a computer virus that seems as much magical as it is technological. Breaking through the defences, Grosnox discovers the Professor Wix used to hold the chair of Nerellian Professor of Psychometry at the University of Rocket City, before being removed from his position amidst dark rumours. He was associated with another individual, Pavlo Trondheim, a mysterious man who had sinister connections with Pluto and the Stygian Adepts.

Meeting up, the heroes decide to pay the Mysterious Building a visit, at which point we had to end the game.

Who is Professor Wix, and what is he up to? What happened to the crew of the ‘Ark of the Covenent’? How much sillier can things get? Find out in the next thrilling episode of ‘Danger Patrol – The Stygian Gambit’!

A picture:

Posted By: John Harper

I think it's great that you blew up Phobos. :-)

We have since decided that it was an error on the part of Grosnox in the heat of the action. It was only a big chunk of Phobos that went rogue and had to be destroyed. the moon itself is still there, but since it was dark, Stygian energies that caused teh problem it may be a hazard to navigation - a moon with tentacles, perhaps :-)

And now, the conclusion:

Our heroes are outside the Balaclava Institute, with the task of getting inside, preferably un-noticed.

(I had a threat on the building ‘How Do We Get Inside Unseen?’. There was a face-down threat beyond the building that they were told wouldn’t be activated unless they did something to trigger it. It had a countdown.)

Their plan was to make use of an entry key card Mr. A had recovered from one of the thugs he’d defeated in the bar, whilst Sandrat used ritual magic to create the illusion that they were Stygian agents. That way they could sneak into the building and deal with what was inside before anyone became aware they were there. It was a good plan, until Sandrat’s roll for the ritual managed to fail totally – a disaster was initiated!

Instead of creating an illusion, the proximity to so much Dark Stygian Energy created a dimensional rift, which threatened to expand and engulf a great portion of Rocket City. Ooops! Bravely Grosnox stepped forward to avert the danger, firing into the portal and forcing it to close, but already Dark Tentacles had wrapped themselves around him, and smaller beasties were swarming out of the rift as well. Grosnox used his rocket-pack to pull away from the tentacles, and evaded most of them, but it was left to Mr. A to use his mighty warrior skills to destroy the rest, as well as the other dark beasties.

Fortunately they thought had dealt with the situation quickly enough that there was still a chance they could enter the Balaclava Institute unseen, so Sandrat teleported herself and Grosnox inside, leaving Mr. A to mop up outside. They teleported straight into a group of Stygian Adepts ….

(Sandrat seriously blew another roll, and kept generating additional threats. They hadn’t even got to the main part of the scene at this stage  . The Adepts were a minor threat, with the additional problem that if they still existed after one round they would raise the alarm.)

Sandrat used a combination of magic and daredevil skills to suck many of the Adepts into an extra-dimensional rift, whilst Grosnox reconfigured some of his sensors to create an electronic stun effect. In doing so he seriously shorted himself out, going into a major robotic brain-freeze (yes, another generated threat; they just seemed to keep coming). By this stage Mr. A had arrived; he had used the entry key to get into the building, and managed to sneak past the security with no trouble at all to join hi companions. Between them, Mr. A and Sandrat finished off the Stygian Adepts, before the alarm could be raised, but Grosnox was now in trouble. He stabilised his systems by rerouting the neutron flow from his left arm, disabling it, but the strain was too much for his systems and he collapsed, unconscious.

Pausing to create an illusion to hide Grosnox’s unconscious form, Sandrat and Mr. A pressed on into the building, entering the central chamber where Danger awaited!

(By this stage Grosnox was KO’d, and Sandrat was pretty much at maximum on her Danger Meter. And that was just from trying to get into the building; the main scene was still to come. Only Mr. A seemed to have any real fight left in him.)

An evil machine dominated the room, a demon-spawning portal already forming at its heart (big threat, with countdown). before it were two figures; Professor Wix and Fluffy, the Ganeymedian pink rabbit. Both were possesses by Stygian dark energies, and stood between our heroes and the machine. Undeterred they leapt into action; Sandrat took on Fluffy, forcing him out of the way, and giving herself a clear shot at the machine whilst Mr. A attacked the Professor, now revealed as a master of dark sorcery.

(With three threats to deal with both characters made a lot of use of extra actions and equipment bonus dice. Sandrat turned out to have robes which resisted magic, for example, and her uniform could be made frictionless, making it harder for tentacles to take hold. She also used her magna-grapple to get up onto the machine, and then pull it over.)

Whilst Professor Wix and Mr. A battled in the centre of the chamber, Sandrat used daredevil agility to avoid Fluffy, and swing up onto the machine itself, where she proceeded to demolish it before it activated and released extra-dimensional nasties into Rocket City. But the noise of the battle had brought swarms of Stygian Adepts into the chamber, and these threatened to overwhelm our heroes. That is until another figure strode into the room, heroically sweeping the out of the way with his good right arm. Grosnox, now recovered from his KO engaged the Adepts, giving his friends time to destroy the machine. But at great cost; the Adepts swarmed over him, and he went down fighting, his robotic body dismantled.

(I allowed Grosnox to recover after a couple of rounds, but he was too close to Vapourised to be able to last long. Engaging the Adepts he scored several hits, but generated too much Danger for me to be able to wave it away in smaller effects. We decided that hi entry was heroic enough to merit an end that saw him go down fighting.)

Mr. A quickly finished off the Professor, who was unable to resist the warrior’s mighty weapon skills and ingenuity, and Fluffy was easily dispatched as well. He turned to see Sandrat finally demolish the evil machine, but already tentacled monstrosities were swarming through the closing portal. Sandrat was in trouble, being slowly dragged through the portal, fighting desperately. Mr. A did what he could, but it was too late; his electro-gauntlets dealt with the monstrosities, but Sandrat was gone, sucked into the Nth Dimension as the machine finally collapsed in on itself.

On a balcony above the chamber a dark-robed figure slipped away; Pavlo Trondheim would continue to plot against Rocket City on behalf of his Plutonian masters.

Rocket City was safe, but at great cost; two members of the Danger Patrol had paid the ultimate price.