Ghost/Echo: The First Run


The Government was unwilling to dirty their hands in a backwater Balkan state, so they used some intermediaries to contract the Black-op branch of Orpheus corporation.
If anything went wrong, the whole operation was deniable as usual, the spindoctors would call it a terrorist strike of the separatist.
Coil, Grip, Hull and Vixen discussed their strategy for the job.
It sounded like an easy one: extricate Herr Professor alive (preferrable) or dead to insure the Opposition will never again have access to his theoretical knowledge of Matrix-construction.
He was temporary held at a secret interrogation camp, waiting for transfer to the headquarters of Herr Colonel.
Simple plans are the best, and victory goes to the bold;
The idea was to ‘borrow’ a chopper of the Opposition; flying under false colours it should be possible to infiltrate the interrogation camp.
Well…a battleplan never survives the first shots…
They found a hidden chopper on a hidden part somewhere in the woods, guarded by a single watchtower, a typical Opposition-setup for a covert-operation camp.
Coil took out the main tower with his rocket-launcher, Grip sprinted to the chopper while the rest gave covering fire.
Some surviving guards stormed out of the tower, but were taken down by a frontal grenade and some flanking fire. The grenade caused some collateral damage in the tower, soon it started burning!
Grip discovered the chopper was out of fuel…
Hull entered the burning tower twice: the first time to secure a single drum of fuel, the second time he was out of luck, something exploded…Hull was blown outside by a fireball!
Badly hurt, Hull was carried by the rest to the chopper to escape the towering inferno.
They decided to push their luck to finish the job.
Boldly they flew the chopper to the interrogation camp.
Vixen fast-talked the ground crew and the commander Herr Colonel to refuel the chopper and to transfer the prisoner.
On their way to home-base, they were intercepted by two Opposition choppers.
Grip tried to channel the ghostfield, hoping to jinx one chopper, but received a migraine instead.
With some luck Coil was able to take down the interceptors with his rocket-launcher!
Returning to home-base was a bit tense, their chopper was almost taken down by friendly fire before Vixen was able to get through to the right channels.

One thought on “Ghost/Echo: The First Run

  1. Dit is op Dreamquest herblogden reageerde:

    One of my players, Niek Ooijman, sent me some feedback on the session

    I’ll put my comments in brackets:

    1. please use printout character cards instead of handwritten, to avoid reading problems.
    (comment: alongside the printout of Ghost/Echo rules, I wrote on index cards the name of the character & 2 skills).
    2. if new players register at the last time, sent them mail beforehand, instead of writing only on the meetup site. ask them to think about the character they want to play.
    (comment: until the very last day I had only one subscriber, we already had extensive mailing ongoing on the subject; the rest subscribed on the same day, too late to sent them mail)
    3. danger check: a high roll is always better? It is better to change this: if rolling for danger, higher means more “danger”. Getting a 5 or 6 when rolling for danger means real trouble.
    (comment: this is a matter of taste)
    4. The goal/danger system is asking a lot of player-creativity , it is annoying to have to state a danger for each goal, that slows down play. In the games I know, the GM tells the player all about the dangers.
    (comment: this is a typical old-school conditioning)
    5. there was some lack of “supernatural elements”
    (comment: this scenario was meant as a foreshadowing of the Shadowrun era, the supernatural still has to intrude into the world, but it was possible to Listen for Echo’s of the supernatural)
    6. The skills were too minimal
    I have some doubts on the claim “quick play”, there still a lot of work to do on the system.
    (comment: the player did not take enough time to read the ghost/echo page)

    My observations:
    The Game has to be worked out, as stated in the two pages

    I was thrilled by the minimalistic setting & rules, a refreshing experience after so many years of D&D tables & rule-lawyering.
    The indie-press rpg-community consist of some high-level roleplayers, ‘quick-play’ has to be seen in that context : 2 page rules with bare bones, the rest to be expanded with existing GM skills!
    No so user-friendly for newbies, but at the other side: the experienced/brainwashed D&D adepts will have serious adaptation troubles!

    Like

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