5150 New Beginnings - Sven in Space! Step-by-Step

 

One thing I never really got into with 5150 Maiden Voyage was space adventures. It just seemed like a lot of work. You had to make stat sheets for each ship when you encountered them in space, just seemed like a lot of bookkeeping. With 5150 New Beginnings, you have nice counters with the stats already on them, which makes bookkeeping pretty much non-existent. All you need to do is remember a couple things about the captain's rep and his attribute. The most you will encounter is 2 ships, assuming you just use one ship yourself.

This will be a test run with the spaceship rules, combat in space, in particular. I will restore Sven's rep to 5 (he lost one last episode!) but his other stats will remain the same, people 6, savvy 4, Crack Shot, and Nerves of Steel.

First, we need a ship. I think a trader would make sense, so I pop out the trader ship on the battle board.

Trader Spaceship token

 

The numbers and letters indicate certain stats for the ship. Let's take a detailed look:

T: Trader

3T: 3 Thrust

2F: 2 Firepower

3H: 3 Hull points

The trader also has a maximum crew of 5, which is not on the counter.

So now we have our ship but who are we up against. It could be another ship or it could be a random event. For now, we will re-roll random events. We roll a d6 and score a 1, it's a fellow Trader ship.

But first, we need to roll on the "whose flag is flying?" table. We'll say we are in ring 1/3 and roll a 5, it's a Zhuh-Zhuh trader ship. What's the rep of the captain? Rep 4. Attribute? Smooth. Since we're not interacting in this particular scenario, this attribute is moot but could be useful if we were playing for real.

Now what? I ruthlessly attack the trader! We head to the flying tables, which are a set of 5 tables. Who sets their ship on the battle board first? I roll 1d6 and add the rep of the captains. I rolled a 5 and add 5, 10. The Zhuh-Zhuh rolls a 3 and adds 4, 7. Now we place our ships with me placing my ship against theirs, which doesn't matter in a two ship combat but we're doing a step-by-step combat.

Next, we go to the Maneuver table and roll 1d6 per Thrust of the ship. We both roll 3d6 against the rep of our captains, we both pass 3. We go to the "Continue on table," which is sort of like the Will to Fight table. We each roll 2d6 against our reps and we each pass 2d6, so we return to the maneuver table. After a few passed same results (imagine we're fighting but neither of us can get a bead on each other), I finally score a hit! I go to the firing table and count an extra 1d6 for my Crack Shot attribute. I roll against my Firepower of 2 and pass 1, a hit! The loser takes damage and I roll a 1d6 to see what happens. I roll a 5 and see that is 1 hull point to the enemy ship. He now has 2 hull points. We go to the continue on table.

Super realistic FX!!!

I pass 2d6 to his 1d6 and it's back to the maneuver table. We pass the same and go to the Continue on table. I pass 2d6 and he gets boxcars! He's running for it! We both roll 1d6 + our thrust. I get 7 and he gets 6, he surrenders! Now I go to the Surrender table and look under the pirate heading. At first I was confused but then I remembered "it's only piracy if you get caught!" so I'll go with that, pirate. I roll 2d6 versus the boarder's rep and pass 2d6. I get all cargo and items but the crew is free to leave. What are the cargo and items? I was a little confused but then looked at the boarding table. The winning side gets 1/2d6 IRD for the successful boarding and surrender, so I'll go with that. 2d6 IRD is not bad. Victory is mine!

 

Hopefully I did it all right. It was pretty fun. I did get into a maneuver table/continue on table loop but that's just how the dice rolled. In the end, was fun and no bookkeeping at all.