Thursday, 26 April 2012

"Damage Control to the Disco Lounge!"

A few months ago, I came across Super Galactic Dreadnought's description of "starship non-critical hits".  This immediately grabbed my attention and I decided to copy the idea.  Of course, I needed to add some of my own entries to the table, as well as removing one or two that I felt didn't work for me.

So, how is this table used?  I play Full Thrust at the local games group; we add an extra "system" to each ship.  This is just an empty box which takes threshold checks in exactly the same manner as any other system.  If it is damaged, I then roll on the table below to see what was the "effect" (it works better when I keep the table hidden from the players and just tell them the result).

Of course, this damage has no effect whatsoever on gameplay, unless it's to cause the players to fall about laughing and consequently fluff their next turn.  I am beginning to suspect that some of the kids for whom I referee are trying to work out how to maximise their chances of such a critical, even at the expense of the scenario objectives, just to see what happens.  The occasion when the Petty Officer's candy machine was destroyed is still talked about - there were gumballs all over the floor and as for the toffees, well!

I've even been bitten by this bug sufficiently to create further tables for cargo and passenger types, for when freighters are captured or damaged.  But that's for another day...

So, the table of non-critical hits, with many thanks to Super Galactic Dreadnought:

Roll NON-CRITICAL STARSHIP DAMAGE TABLE
1 Rulebook destroyed: game ends
2 Make it up yourself
3 Roll again twice on this table
4 Forward dry cleaners
5 Starboard pizza oven
6 Arcturan pornography library
7 Holodeck
8 Shuffleboard deck
9 Paint locker (d10: 1-7 gray; 8-9 white; 10 plaid)
10 Chief engineer's still
11 Video arcade
12 Spare dress uniforms
13 Septic tank
14 Petting zoo
15 Swimming pool
16 Captain's disco lounge
17 Stormtrooper target range
18 Aft car rental kiosk
19 Recreational knitting supplies
20 Port sauna
21 EVA window cleaning equipment
22 Dune buggy garage (lose 1-6 dune buggies)
23 Satellite TV dish
24 Intellectual property officer
25 Political officer's quarters
26 Enlisted men's motivational posters
27 Frisbee golf course
28 Marriage chapel
29 Petty Officers' candy machine
30 Communicator sanitising supplies
31 Stuffed tribble collection
32 Last month's overtime records
33 Navigator's manga collection
34 Shipwide volume control (d6: 1-3 too quiet, 4-6 too loud)
35 Command deck vending machines
36 Canteen gravity control
37 Puppet theatre
38 Ship's stock of Gideon Bibles
39 Captain's chair height adjustment controls
40 Klystron Generator
41 Background music generator (stuck on "Easy Listening")
42 Brig security controls

2 comments:

  1. Thanks for the shout-out, Colgar6! I'm glad you enjoyed my original concept, and it's nice to know your players appreciate it too.

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    Replies
    1. Well, I'm very pleased that you liked it :-) . I'll be running another Full Thrust game with my group on Tuesday; we'll see what happens then...

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