Covenant Update for November 27, 2023

If you like what you read here, please contribute to our Patreon. You can also join us for games on Twitch every Saturday at 10:30 p.m. Eastern time.

Welcome to this week’s free post for Covenant!

Sazzy is back in the saddle as Force Majeure on Sunday’s playtests, and the players are back in the Sagittarius Arm.

This week’s game, picks up just minutes after the player characters (PC) freed Neeja’s homeworld from loyalists to the old Khan of the ratel Khanate, Baran. Not much happened, as this session was for setting up the latest campaign. But this one promises to be interesting.

Sazzy is linking their campaign with Sean’s Underground Railroad campaign, which happened a few years prior in the game’s history. In the Underground Railroad campaign, the PCs (including the aco Collision, who is returning for this campaign as the gunner on the New Orleans) rescued several acoes from being experimented on by Rekanna Industries in the Archimedean Campaign (AC). In Sazzy’s campaign, the PCs will be heading back to the Orion Arm to deal with a Rekanna “scrapping site”.

Acoes are artificial organisms. They’re sapient but have no rights except in the Covenant, so they can be used and abused however their owners want. In the case of Rekana Industries, when an aco outlives their usefulness, is considered defective, or just rebels against how they’re treated, they’re sent to a scrapping site to be ground down into pet food.

The PCs are being hired to help with evacuating the acoes in one of these scrapping sites before destroying it. Naturally, they were all in.

Like we said, Sunday’s session was for setting up the story, so there was no gameplay. However, Sazzy is planning to have the PCs be a distraction while a larger force of NPCs rescues the acoes at the scrapping site. That could mean a lot of different kinds of gameplay: definitely fighting, but also social encounters, deception, demolition, sabotage, even a little stealth. Whatever it is, Covenant can probably handle it. And if it can’t, well, this campaign’ll give us ideas for fixing that.

Anyway, that’s it for now. We’ll be talking about the game and Sazzy’s campaign on our Friday Twitch stream, and we’ll also be publishing the character creation rules for calerre over on our Patreon. If you’re a patron, you’ll get early access to that. Talk to you when we see you next.

Sean’s urban fantasy book Crossing the Line is available for download on Amazon! Buy a copy for yourself and for the readers on your Christmas list!

Covenant Update for November 20, 2023

If you like what you read here, please contribute to our Patreon. You can also join us for games on Twitch every Saturday at 10:30 p.m. Eastern time.

Welcome to this week’s free post for Covenant!

We’re finally finished with the first chapter of the Underground Railroad playtest campaign. A lot of secrets were revealed, and a lot of questions answered.

To recap, our player characters (PC) were fleeing The Rekanna Industries planet of Sujimma in the New Orleans while Tweak the aco and Jack the risu stayed behind to act as a distraction i the Funny Business. There’s a problem with escaping the authorities in the Covenant universe, or at least in the Orion Arm. Most interstellar traffic goes through portals (think wormholes without the black holes). Most stellar systems maintain heavy patrols around their portals, both to keep invaders out and fugitives in.

However, there are ways around this. Cozen the aco’s social skills once more came into play, and they were able to talk a risu freighter called Stack of Nuts into hiring them as an escort. Piracy is terrible in the Archimedean Confederation, where Sujima is located, and the captain of the Stack of Nuts was happy to hire the New Orleans… after a hefty bribe, of course. Risu are merchants, after all, and the freighter captain wasn’t stupid.

So the PCs (with Tweak, he managed to escape the Sujimma security forces with the help of some helpful bloodthirsty pirates) returned to their employer Vic the Fixer on the planet Janssen, controlled by the rival company-state Janssen Holdings. That where he revealed who set up this whole thing up.

Cozen used to be involved in corporate shenanigans before he was sold out to the aco lab on Sujimma. His old handler found out and hired Vic to put together a team to rescue Cozen. Vic decided to expand the operation and rescue *everyone* in the lab.

That’s when he made the PCs a new offer: making aco rescues like this their full-time job.

Since everyone got to the end of the chapter in this campaign, though, they get to improve their characters! Each PC gets 1 build token, which they can use to buy a new trait, ability, or item. they can also swap out any traits or abilities that they don’t want for others.

We’ll probably have to wait to see how the PCs’ new jobs turn out, as Sazzy’s probably going to resume their campaign next Sunday. We’ll update you on how it goes next Monday. Talk to you then!

Covenant Update for November 13, 2023

If you like what you read here, please contribute to our Patreon. You can also join us for games on Twitch every Saturday at 10:30 p.m. Eastern time.

Welcome to this week’s free post for Covenant!

We had a successful playtest on Sunday that more or less concluded the first chapter of our Underground Railroad campaign. To recap, the player characters (PC) were escaping from the planet of Sujimma, which was controlled by Rekana Industries in the Archimedean Confederation, when an orbital cutter and three fighters blocked their path. Cozen, one of the aco PCs, used one of his abilities to convince the cutter that they were running away from the fighting on the surface (which they caused, but don’t tell anyone), and the cutter captain told them to dock at an orbital elevator while he figured out what the hell was going on.

The PCs took about half of the session to figure out what they were going to do, but they finally came up with a plan. They would split up, with the acoes on the *Funny Business* transferring to the New Orleans, piloted by Sazzy the Ratel. The Funny Business, piloted by Tweak the aco and the ship’s owner, a risu named Jack who was sleeping on board when they took off, would then try to pull off some of the fighters while the New Orleans made a run for it. Pyro the thk’kok and Collision the aco would man the guns on the New Orleans, while Cozen, who was turning into the party’s face, put out an SOS.

We weren’t able to get a proper space fight last time, but we were able to test another game mechanic: chases. The New Orleans had to make opposed chase bids against the cutter and fighter. If the New Orleans won three of those bids first, they would get away. Otherwise, they’d have to turn and fight.

Collision and Pyro made good use of the game’s called shot rules, with one of their shots hitting a fighter square in its cockpit and instantly destroying it. Tweak and Jack also got off a good shot on the one fighter that chose to chase them, disabling its engines and taking it out of the fight. Sazzy made an insanely close maneuver to the orbital elevator to win one of the chase bids automatically – her pursuers weren’t as crazy as her and took the long way around – and used one of the grapplin arms on the *New Orleans* to throw a giant spear into the elevator’s Command Information Center, destroying it. She won two more bids and managed to get away.

Rekana Industries eventually captured Tweak and Jack, but Cozen managed to find help for them in the form of a pirate fleet in the area. They rescued Tweak and Jack before they could be taken to the surface. Unfortunately, this removed Tweak, Jack, and the Funny Business from the game.

Despite the losses, everyone seemed to have a good time, and everyone had something to do during the chase. We might have a concluding scene later this week or next Sunday, but for now, the game focus is probably going to shift to Sazzy’s campaign. Whatever we do, you’ll hear about it here first.

Covenant Update for November 6, 2023

Welcome to this week’s free post for Covenant!

We promised you that we’d playtest the game’s spaceship combat rules on Sunday. Our players, though, had other plans.

As a recap, the player characters (PC) Pyro the four-armed thk’kok and the acoes Tweak and Cozen were trying to escape from the Rekana Industries planet of Sujimma when four armored cars showed up and started shooting at them. They were scrambling to find another ride out and using guerrilla tactics to wipe out the first wave of soldiers sent against them when a new ship showed up unexpectedly: the New Orleans, flown by the massive badger-like ratel Sazzy and the aco Collision.

Sazzy and Collision had fun shooting at the guards and flinging the remaining armored cars into each other with the New Orleans’ cargo grapples. (Sazzy’s player was inspired to add those grapples from the arcade game Zero Wing, which had a space fighter with a tractor beam) They threw one of the armored cars into a massive squirrel-like risu named Kem, who was one of the cruelest guards at the lab where Tweak and Cozen had been held. However, he had plot armor – no, really, he literally has an ability called “Plot Armor” – so he just got pinned underneath it.

Meanwhile, Tweak, Cozen, and Pyro found an empty spaceship, the Funny Business. As they got ready to take off, they heard that fighters were being sent to deal with them. Kem had also pushed the armored car off of himself and was swinging a massive minigun towards the New Orleans. This was the Force Majeure (FM) telling the PCs to get the hell out of Dodge, and luckily, they did.

A Hammerhead orbital cutter and three Tulwar fighters blocked their path as they climbed into orbit. Cozen didn’t have much to do during this session – he’s more of a face than a fighter – so the FM had him get on the commo in the Funny Business to talk to the cutter.

Big mistake.

The FM Forgot that Cozen had an ability called Liar, which you can chapter-tap – that is, use once per game chapter – to succeed automatically at a deception bid. Cozen chose to use it to convince the cutter that they were innocent spaceships fleeing from the fighting at the spaceport. It was a whopper, but he managed to convince the cutter.

He didn’t convince them entirely, though. The cutter told the Funny Business and New Orleans to dock at a nearby orbital elevator while they sorted out what was going on. That’s where we ended the session. We could still end up with a spaceship fight, or at least chase, if the Pcs try to run next session. Only time will tell.

The FM is seriously considering rewriting the Liar ability and other abilities that give automatic successes after that session. The players, on the other hand, think it should stay the way it is because it was a cool use of the ability. It was. However, the important questions are whether the ability is overpowered and if it’ll break the game to keep it unchanged.

Anyway, that’s it for now. We may be switching to another playtest campaign on Sunday (we have several running at the same time). We’ll let you know next Monday. Talk to you then.

Covenant Update for October 30, 2023

Welcome to this week’s free post about Covenant!
This is going to be a short post this week, unfortunately. We had two players out of four tell us that they couldn’t join Sunday’s playtest, so we had to scrub it until next week. That’s a shame, too, because Sean, the Force Majeure, had planned to run the first real spaceship fight in Covenant history Sunday.
Basically, Sazzy in the New Orleans would help the player characters escape. Either they’d pile on to her ship, or she’d give them cover to find a ship in one of the spaceport berths they were trying to break into to escape Sujimma. Sean was hoping that they’d steal a ship. That would give the PCs some independence from Sazzy and the New Orleans, both of which are pretty overpowered for this game. Then they would blast off and into a fight in Sujimma orbit with three Tulwar fighters and a Hammerhead orbital cutter (both from the good folks at Rekanna Industries).
We have some idea of how we’re going to run the fight. We just have to get them down on paper (which is why Sunday’s postponement wasn’t all bad). If you’re subscribed to our Patreon, we’ll give you some details in our patrons-only post on Friday.
That’s about it for now, though. Talk to you next Monday!

Covenant Update for October 23, 2023

Welcome to this week’s free post for Covenant!

As you might have noticed, we’ve moved our weekly free posts to our existing devblog here on WordPress. We hadn’t been using our devblog for anything else and, really, any public information we have on the game belongs here. So let’s get started.

We had a good playtest on Sunday. As a recap, our four-armed thk’kok swordsman was part of a two-man team rescuing acoes from a secret laboratory. Two of those acoes were PCs: Tweak, a wolf-like anthropological aco from a discontinued line, and Cozen, an executive assistant model with a secret past. They managed to escape and were about to board their ship when four armored cars entered the spaceport firing their guns and their ship took off without them.

That’s where we left off last week.

The FM had planned for the PCs either to fight the soldiers – who were corporate security for Rekana Industries, the company that owned the lab – or lead them on a chase through the city. Instead, the players saw that they were outgunned – only one of them had a gun – and instead decided to do some guerrilla warfare. They unhooked the fuel line on their car and then, when the soldiers got close, Tweak threw a laser cutter into the pool of fuel, burning the soldiers alive.

They’d hoped to hide in the spaceport’s nearby berths and find another ship, but they were unable to. The armored cars then dismounted more soldiers, including an eight-foot-tall risu named Kem. Kem was a cruel guard up at the laboratory whom Tweak and Cozen had tangled with before, and they had the broken bones to show for it. There was no way he was going to show them mercy.

There was another row of spaceship berths, and they decided to make a run across a row of blacktop absolutely devoid of cover to see to see if they could get find a ship there. Tweak threw a Molotov at Kem, and their sniper Dun the gun fired at him, too. Both hit, but they didn’t take him down.

Kem and the soldiers were about to open fire when an ancient ship that looked like a cross between a Veritech and an A-10 Thunderbolt II buzzed the landing field at supersonic speed. They managed to destroy two of the armored cars and make Kem and the soldiers dive to the ground. The other two cars survived, though, and they raised their guns to deal with this new intruder.

And that’s where we left Sunday’s game.

What was notable about this game, at least from the Force Majeure’s perspective, was how much work there was to be done. The FM had to introduce two new PCs who were flying the ship that strafed the armored cars, so he was constantly going back and forth between the main Discord chat where the game was and the private chat set up to introduce the two players. As such, he ditched a lot of more advanced rules and even let the players automatically succeed at some bids just to reduce his workload. This indicates that the rules should be further simplified.

One of the new players, who is also running an aco, also said that they didn’t understand the game’s bidding system, despite getting a cheat sheet and having the basics explained to them. Of course, they’ll be playing several experienced players, including two of the game’s creators, and we’re pretty good at explaining the game’s systems.

Not everyone is going to be able to play with the game’s creators or with experienced players, though. It makes us wonder if we shouldn’t simplify the game or at least try to explain its rules better.

That’s it for now, though. We’ll have another post for our patrons this Friday at the game’s Patreon, so if you want to know more about the game – including getting early access to game material – then think about supporting us.

In any case, we’ll talk to you again on Monday!