Your Friendly Telecommunications Company (Comstar Q&A)

[Comstar]

We appreciate your patronage and would like to remind you that any and all messages sent with our service are 100% guaranteed to be accurately delivered - we read them all so that we can be sure we are giving a perfectly accurate transmission!*

I suppose fire away. I have a lot of thoughts, still digesting a lot of how game went, I thought some things went better than expected, some worse, and hopefully everyone had a good time in the end. I can't answer everything, but if there was a plot thread, an NPC, or a crazy theory you wanted to see if I could chat about it, or if you have feedback or things you particularly liked/hated, you can put them here or in a PM.



*Perfect accuracy not 100% guaranteed in all locations or for any messages transferred on any service that isn't the COMSTAR SLDF Pro plan

[Dr. Reinhardt]

What was in the locked room of the starport?

[Felicity]

What were some of your favourite interactions?

How about biggest surprises for you as GM?

What was the weirdest moment, or what made you do a double take?

You really impressed me with the BT maps. How long did they take to make? They were great for fleshing out locations in my mind too. Thank you.

[Comstar]

What was in the locked room of the starport?

It was just a flight log. Total red herring to show you guys how breaching a star league lock could destroy the contents. Didn't expect it to draw such focus.

What were some of your favourite interactions?

There were a couple, and I tried to highlight a few as I went, and I don't want to try and list them all because I know I'll miss some and offend someone.

How about biggest surprises for you as GM?

Players were way more successful at events than expected - I anticipated more nail-biters but people just blew through them and got full successes way earlier... and found things faster than I expected. Players managed to grab hold of certain leads a lot stronger than others, and that surprised me for sure. Pacing mostly was ok but there were moments it felt like I didn't keep total handle on that. James coming out as Clan threw me for a loop as I tried to figure out if that totally broke the plot progression, but I eventually worked out how the NPCs would handle it.

What was the weirdest moment, or what made you do a double take?

Hitting 'next turn' to end a combat and seeing an airplane crash into the Phoenix made me do an actual double take, delete the combat round I'd just posted... it was pretty nuts. I had a few 'they did what?' moments with combat choices, but mostly the surprises were tied to Megamek throwing me a loop (The pilot randomly cracking open a beer in the log) or the like, otherwise a few times characters did surprise/shock me, but not too much from totally left-field.

You really impressed me with the BT maps. How long did they take to make? They were great for fleshing out locations in my mind too. Thank you.

They honestly didn't take super long - since they were based on locations I had already thought through, it was mostly just making interesting tactical layouts as best I could - a few things didn't work how I expected (bridges), but mostly I felt like those came out pretty well.

[Dorgan Bruun]

I had the impression you were prepared for more players than we had, and it seems like having more would have been good in some ways but bad in others. So, overall did you like the number we had and were pretty happy with how that aligned with events and things, or wish for a few more or a few less?

Did Nora get a promotion when the PCs did? I could see her having a pretty dim view of Bruun if he got promoted over her and then promptly captured.

I have plenty more but I'm trying to be judicious.

[Comstar]

I was expecting more people doing the civ/infantry approach based on OOC chatter when I first started planning the game, but overall found the pilot count to be pretty decent. Between 8 and 12 was about what I was looking for.

Nora is still the Chief Enlisted - technically Bruun outranks her but any military person could tell you the chief Enlisted is way more important than any Lt.

[Felicity]

How did Comstar learn of the signal and what caused it to start sending after all this time?

Will Comstar send a bigger force to silence us or destroy the base, or is it mostly job done after the HPG was taken out?

What made Nora so stealthy? What is her backstory?

What religion does Creed follow?

Who is the mother of the twins and what is their backstory?

Who the heck IS Alexei?!

[Comstar]

How did Comstar learn of the signal and what caused it to start sending after all this time?

The signal started sending when the Wolverine/331st transmission was detected. It was an automated behavior after the facility manager didn't respond to the message. Comstar already had infiltrators in the pirate organization - so they were tracking those movements already... and mostly they learned about it the way they learn most things. Reading other people's mail - in this case, the Black Dragon agents said enough to raise some red flags in the local eavesdropping club.

Will Comstar send a bigger force to silence us or destroy the base, or is it mostly job done after the HPG was taken out?

- Wait and See -

What made Nora so stealthy? What is her backstory?

Felicity wasn't the first character in the game with a cat themed secret. Nora has an advantage and a disadvantage both pertaining to the same NPC, and that other NPC has the same, though they don't know it.

What religion does Creed follow?

He's a member of the coreward orthodox church - he converted after growing disillusioned with the combine culture after multiple wars and the damage caused to the nation, and to his comrades in arms, by the behavior of the coordinator in feuding with his son. He met a chaplain they had taken prisoner, and after initially attempting to interrogate the man, he grudgingly found himself becoming best friends with him instead.

Who is the mother of the twins and what is their backstory?

The matron of the Winters family is a somewhat reclusive and mysterious noble in the Lyran Commonwealth - she's overbearing, absolutely heartless, and a complete control freak. She's also been scheming to try and climb as high in the echelons of power as possible for her entire life - and everyone, including her daughters, are tools to that end. Lucretzia, not sharing her mother's mental illness, has spent her life trying to be good enough, and eventually growing resentful and angry when she couldn't win her mother's affection. Anastasia, sharing her mother's mental illness, despises her mother for misusing Lucretzia and wasting the family fortunes and resources on futile power grabs. The sisters both want to be free of their mother's control, each for different reasons.

Who the heck IS Alexei?!

He's in possession of a remarkable collection of skills accumulated through patient and extensive practice. He maintains a surprisingly stable level of health for a man who refuses, point blank, to allow any doctor to give him a proper examination. His full name is Alexei Konstantinovich Preobrazhensky. He likes coffee, logic puzzles, and reading books on rainy days. Calico goes in and out of service roughly every 20 years - being 'decommissioned' and then brought back into service a few years later. He doesn't actually need glasses, but wears tinted lenses to help with eye fatigue. He's accumulated over 30,000 flight hours. His favorite color is maroon, and he likes dark hardwood furnishings, and has used them to help decorate the interior of Calico and make her more homey. He once had a cat who he still thinks about sometimes, he was named Jack.

[James Hall]

I just want to say thanks for running the game. I had a great time.

James coming out as Clan threw me for a loop as I tried to figure out if that totally broke the plot progression, but I eventually worked out how the NPCs would handle it.

I still feel bad about that. As a player, I wish I didn't do it, but it was the thing James would do so.....

[Dorgan Bruun]

1. "he still had to maintain some semblance of command authority... and he'd had weird experiences with women lately" -- What threads have I missed? He's had multiple weird experiences recently?

2. Assuming we get to a future game in this part of the galaxy (I can't wait), how long of a time skip are you currently envisioning?

3. Considering he had a couple of close-ish calls (Mr No Arms), what was the plan if Yuri had gone splat in one of the battles?