Hudzen 10 Service Mechanoid

4000 Series Service Mechanoid

From The Magazine Rack: Teacher Of Fortune

Just one of many magazines available for download to the crew's personal display units, for a small deduction from their company credit.

Mothman Black IPA

Mothman is the only serious challenger to Leopard Lager as the 'drink of choice' for crews on the deep-space mining ships.

It's a 6.7% strength medium black ale;  however it's usually in short supply as the producers of Leopard Lager have struck a more favourable deal with the JMC

Pure Himalayan Yeti Meat

Shortly after Yetis - aka The Abominable Snowman - were actually discovered living in the Himalayas in the mid-23rd Century, they were promptly hunted to near extinction before being saved by an intensive captive breeding and cloning programme.

This, in turn, resulted in a surfeit of Yetis... a problem solved by the subsequent discovery that they tasted rather nice.

Tinned Yeti Meat has since become a fixture of kitchen cupboards around the globe and throughout colonised space.

Leopard Lager & Curry

Leopard Lager is a popular brand of lager (5.1% alcohol by volume), brewed under license and stocked as standard-issue aboard JMC vessels.

The Red Knight is incredibly well-stocked with supplies of Leopard Lager

The perfect accompaniment for a regulation space curry.

Leopard Premium Lager

Join The Red Shirts: Enlist With Security

Please note the phase pistol is for illustrative purposes only;
firearms are never issued to members of the JMC Securiy Branch, without very special training

INTRODUCTION - CONCLUSION

And finally, your A.I. will suggest you address the following questions to help fill in some blanks in your character's backstory (but not too much!)

The questions are:

1. Who would portray your character in a film?
2. What is your character's attitude to the space travel?
3. What is your character's greatest passion?
4. What is your character's greatest fear?
5. What was your character's occupation before they became a _____?
6. Where was your character's favourite place to hang out on the ship? 

Question one: I've been obsessed with using "actors" to portray player-characters (and NPCs, monsters etc) since I discovered numerous Buffy The Vampire Slayer campaign sites back in the day. I'd never come across this idea before, but it struck me as so obvious and brilliant that it has stuck with me ever since.

Questions two to four: These will, hopefully, give me some character-based material to work with to seed future plot lines. Greatest Passion could - but doesn't have to - tie in to the character's Goal.

Question five: This should bridge the gap between role-playing background material (possible contacts, career knowledge etc) and world-building.

Question six: As with question five, but with even more emphasis on world-building.

INTRODUCTION - PHASE FOUR

First things first, get yourself a Character Sheet and then come back here ...

If you decide to play one of the last surviving humans, or even a hologram of a not-so-lucky human, bear in mind you are not a superhero, rocket scientist, or colonial marine.

Instead, decide what menial role you filled as a lowly drone in Sector 7B, before the "big sleep".

Some suggestions are:

• Telephone Sanitiser
• Chicken Soup Vending Machine Technician
• Refuse & Recycling Operative
• Laboratory Technician, Third Class
• Public Relations Advisor
• Hair Stylist
• Insurance Salesman
• Security Guard
• Personnel Officer
• Management Consultant
• Interior Designer
• Estate Agent

etc

Now you can start to fill in your character sheet -

STATISTICS: 20 points to distribute between them.

SKILLS: 30 points to distribute between them.

ASSETS, LIABILITIES & BEHAVIOUR TAGS: These help define your character by giving you little quirks, personality drawbacks (that earn you more points for skills), and special abilities (such as Courage, Dumb Luck, Rank etc)

VITALS: Flesh out your character with details of age, height, weight, appearance etc

BACKGROUND: Craft a background for your character, including place of birth, life story, family connections, lost loves, deepest darkest secrets, fears and phobias, pets, favourite food etc

DERIVED STATISTICS:

• INITIATIVE = PERCEPTION + AGILITY
• SAVE = STRENGTH + WILLPOWER
• SHRUG = (STRENGTH + WILLPOWER)/2

Your character also automatically gets 1 DESTINY POINT - which can be spent to reroll botched rolls (e.g. crucial skills rolls or key saves).

The AI (gamesmaster) will be able to guide you through all this, tell you how much things cost, update you on the state of the Solar System as it was in the 23rd Century and so on.

Now go to The Conclusion.

INTRODUCTION - PHASE THREE

Tim: The Red Knight's AI

“So, who’s been running things while I’ve been asleep?” you ask Tim, the ship’s Artificial Intelligence computer (i.e. the floating head on the computer screen).

“Well, initially the off-spring of your pet. The one you smuggled on board and thought no-one knew about.”

“Huh?”

“Once the crew had been reduced to a bunch of mindless, plague-carrying zombies destined for an early grave, maintenance became rather a low priority round here and eventually there was a radiation leak which not only finished off any stragglers but gave some kind of genetic boost to your pregnant pet. Over the millennia, her children evolved, developed a civilisation and started cleaning up round here … until they realised there was a great ‘out there’ out there, jumped into the mothballed Starbugs and headed into the black.

“Meanwhile, if Hollywood has taught us anything, it’s that (a) violence is cooler when carried out in slow motion and (b) all alien life forms are man-made.

“Mankind wasn’t just sitting around while you were napping, me laddy. It was developing genetic slave races to help in its conquest of deep space - remember, back in the 23rd Century, man had only colonised as far out as Pluto. 

“These genetically engineered life forms - or GELFs as I like to call them - have seemingly outlasted their creators and every so often some get on board, have a poke around, steal a nozzle or widget then bugger off again … even by their primitive standards, I guess the Red Knight is pretty low-tech.”

Now go to Phase Four

INTRODUCTION - PHASE 2.5: PREMISE

As a group you need to decide who will take what initial role in the upcoming drama (don't worry, as the campaign progresses, the spotlight will shift).

• One of you chooses to play the last remaining human (the nominal 'star' of the series);
• One of you chooses to play the holograms of a deceased crewmember (whose primary raison d'etre is to keep the 'star' in line, somewhere between a bullying older brother and a nagging mother-in-law);
• One, or more, of you choose to play anthropomorphised descendants of the star's (smuggled) pet (you will need to agree between you what kind of pet it was - the rules contains guidelines for cats, dogs, rabbits, rats, mice, and iguanas, but I'm sure we can come up with something if you want a different animal); 
• One, or more, of you can play a surviving service mechanoid, a waxdoid etc;
• And the rest of you can play random alien lifeforms that have strayed aboard the ship and - for whatever reason - have decided to stay!

None of you are rocket scientists or starship captains: the Red Knight campaign revolves around lowly 'everyman' survivors, clearly out of their depth, struggling to survive and find their place in a vast, unfriendly, universe.

INTRODUCTION - PHASE TWO

Welcome to the world of the RED DWARF RPG.

It's a retro-futuristic world of cathode-ray tube (CRT) screens, chunky keyboards, floppy discs, Betamax video cassettes, boom boxes, Digital Audio Tape (DAT), and no Internet.

And the human race is extinct. Probably. They had their chance 3,000,000 years ago and blew it.

Time moves on.

However, at least one of you is/are the last human(s) alive, stranded and lost on a massive mining ship in the butt-end of space; the rest of you can take the roles of:

• Holograms (accurate representations of deceased colleagues)*
• Mechanoid companions/servants;
• Evolved household pets (e.g. cats, dogs, ducks, rats, mice, rabbits etc);
• Waxdroids (animated entertainment units with the appearance and mannerisms of famous historical figures - e.g. Elvis, Hitler, Nelson, Trump, Churchill, Homer Simpson etc)

* The ship's A.I. only has the capacity to run one hologram at a time, as well as all the other ship's systems (life support, engines, lighting, vending machines etc).

For more ideas and to get the gist of what we're aiming for, check the Inspirations Information Screen.

Basic System Guidelines:

Task Resolution:

• Roll under STAT + SKILL on 2d6 - the larger the margin of success, the greater the achievement.
• A natural “2” is always a critical success and adds 1d6 to the margin of success.
• A natural “12” is always a critical failure - no matter how high your Target Number.

Combat:

• As above.
• Damage = (Margin of Success x Weapon’s Rating {WR}) + Damage Bonus {DB}
• Wounds = If Damage is greater than SHRUG value, then one wound, if twice SHRUG value then two wounds etc. If Damage is less than SHRUG, then target suffers -1 on all rolls for next round.

Now go to Phase Three

INTRODUCTION - PHASE ONE

Tim: The Red Knight's AI

“Hello … hello … I think it’s about time you woke up.”

Opening your eyes, you realise you are standing in some kind of white, antiseptic, chamber with your nose pressed against a frosted glass panel through which you can just make out the grey walls of a utilitarian corridor. 

The soft, hesitant voice is coming from the face of a rather non-descript man with a crew cut, floating on a flickering black and white computer screen. 

Your head hurts - that must have been some drinking session the night before, because you have one smeg of a hangover and, at least for the moment, can’t actually picture where you are.

“There’s been a bit of an accident,” the disembodied head on the screen continues with a slightly embarrassed air. “Well, I say accident, it was really a full-blown virulent plague outbreak…”

"Huh?"

“You do remember where you are, right? This is the mining ship Red Knight … no, nothing … part of the Jupiter Mining Corporation? You’re a lowly drone from Sector 7B… well, there was this outbreak, see, and I hustled you into suspended animation while I tried to sort things out.

“In retrospect, perhaps I should have saved the captain or someone else important -- but you owed me several thousand virtual dollarpounds from online poker, so I wasn’t going to scupper my chances of getting that back by letting you die needlessly…”

"So what happened to everyone else?"

“They died needlessly.” 

There is silence for a rather long moment, then the head says: “Anyway, I turned the ship around and headed out into deep space - standard quarantine procedure - to stop us infecting anyone else. And that’s about it.”

You shake your head in disbelief. Everyone gone! Things can’t get any worse, can they?

"How … how long have we been in space, then?"

“Er … about three million years.” The head tries to put on a ‘cheery’ face, but it doesn’t quite work.

“I guess that makes you the last human alive. Surprise! Sorry... you've been left with the bill!” 

There is a pause.

“What would you like for dinner this evening?”

Now go to Phase Two