The Chamax: Gotta Love To Hate 'Em!

[Whipsnade]

Gents,

Ty Beard posted the following in another thread and I thought it has the makings of a great topic:

I confess to a weakness for bughunt fodder. So giant ants are fine with me personally.

My favorite monster is the Chamax -- Matt, *that* is an adventure you guys should re-write -- and they appear in *every* campaign on mine. Players hate 'em, of course, but I'm good with that.

So, who else here routinely used those lovely "bugs" from Double Adventure 5 to confront, confound, and otherwise drive your players insane? I most certainly did and here are a few example...

One of the few times my players surprised me was during a Chamax Plague session. They and the InStarSpec NPCs had just been run off from the wreck of the Shaarin Challenger for a second time. Their first approach had shown the futility of trying to enter the vessel via personnel airlocks, so they'd rigged a portable power supply to a exterior maintenance panel associated with the port cargo hatch in an attempt to open it. They opened all three cargo hatches instead, immediately realizing the Chamax maternal was situated in the forward cargo hold when the bow doors opened and her "palace guard" cam swarming out. A rather rapid retreat to their ari/rafts followed.

After reaching their ship and washing out their undergarments, the players were watching the Chamax bustle about from the safety of their own open cargo hold. Their ship, a 300dTon trader common IMTU, was hovering on contra-gravity about 50 meters above the desert floor and about 300 meters away from the bow of the Challenger. My players had been quietly talking among themselves while they popped a wounded NPC in a low berth and I used another NPC with a laser rifle to snipe at the bugs milling about.

The player's captain approached me as the InStarSpec pilot and asked if I still thought I could fly the Challenger out. I told him no, the external damage was extensive and the partially systems report downloaded during the hatches fiasco revealed all sorts of other damage. The captain said something like "Alright then" and nodded at a player who was one of the ship's gunner. The gunner picked up two dice and announced:

Firing the dorsal turret sandcaster.

My jaw dropped to say the least.

We took a break while I first dug out Striker and then realized I should simply wing it. Out of the box thinking like that simply must be rewarded, right?

I asked where he was aiming and had him roll an easy task I don't fully remember. I then announced the sandcaster round had deployed as planned sleeting the front of the Challenger, the Chamax, and the desert around both with millions of ablative crystals. I remember saying that the Chamax caught in the hail melted.

After all that, the players used their air/rafts to board the wreck via the bridge windows the sandcaster round had blown out. They then easily found the log tape which mentioned the northern survey party and left the wreck without meeting the few Chamax that hadn't been killed. (IIRC, I'd gone with the average number(1) of 70 bugs aboard and the players had killed all but 4 or 5, a few during both boarding attempts and most with the sandcaster round.)

The rest was anticlimatic.


Regards,
Bill

1 - IIRC, 4Dx5 where D = 3.5

 

[Whipsnade]

Gents,

Another way I inflicted the Chamax on my players was during one of the few merc campaigns I ran. The players were hired by Raschev after the events of the Chamax Horde.

The computer records found aboard the crashed generation ship had revealed many things to the authorities on Raschev, the most frightening of which was that the Chamax sophonts had built hundreds of similar vessels. Two separate vessels had landed during the Horde period and it was fairly certain that many many more were on their way.

Further complicating matters were the facts that the molecular suppression field devices which had won the "war" were in short supply and that every ship which arrived couldn't be assumed to have a cargo of bugs aboard. So, Raschev simply couldn't hire someone to sit in orbit to destroy every ship that appeared and , getting the molecular suppression field devices to each landing site was going to be difficult given local technology.

The players acted more as a quick reaction SAR force than "guns a-blazing" mercenaries. A ship in orbit would detect an incoming ship and track it to a touchdown site while the players scrambled to reach the site and deploy their "magical molecular suppressors". Most of Raschev in uninhabited, IIRC the population was concentrated on the one continent partially mapped in the adventure.

The first job the players faced was a quick orbital survey of the planet looking for other landing sites that may have gone unnoticed during the war against the Horde. They found two. One on a small island involving bugs that required a nasty mop up campaign conducted on a shoe string about as far from the inhabited regions as one could get. The other was near one of the poles that involved Chamax sophonts. Given that the local climate meant the sophonts would remain in hibernation, the Raschev government decided to simply monitor that site and not tackle any first contact issues.

After that sweep, the players settled down to an almost Strategic Air Command type existence. They were constantly on alert as the orbiting ship-based "DEW" line had trouble detecting the Chamax ships at any great distance. The limited number of suppressors meant there could only be so many reaction teams. Until the players could train local forces and those forces received high speed, suborbital grav transport from off-world they player were it.

During a Black Month period, I threw dozens of landings at them, keeping them moving from site to site with little time to rest. They developed methods of quickly entering ships, i.e. breaching charges, quickly identifying if bugs or sophonts were aboard, i.e. taking a furry bundle outside to see how it "thawed", and quickly dealing with the bugs when identified; i.e. napalm.

As more people were trained and more equipment arrived, I threw another bigger Black Month at them and watched the players handle it with little trouble.

By the time their one year contract was up, they were more than ready to leave. Besides, Raschev was having trouble with the Chamax sophonts, Imperium, Darrians, Zhos, and other by then. It was a good time to get out with their bank drafts in hand.


Regards,
Bill

 

[robject]

Oh, how I love the Chamax bugs

I've used them four times.

The first two times were, of course, Double Adventure 5. That taught the players to treat the bugs with extreme prejudice.

Then, a bit later, they were back in the Lanth subsector and encountered a trader, adrift in a backwater system. Inspection found them in hibernation aboard, but there was no maternal. They reported the derelict for a reward, but didn't bother to take over, out of fear of the Chamax and respect for the referee's low cunning.

Then, a bit after that, they were contracted out by an element of the Arden government as part of a three-escort team to claim and recover a 30 kiloton derelict that had wandered near Arden's then-expanding sphere of influence. The derelict was registered to SuSAG, but since it failed to identify itself or comply with Arden protocols, they considered the property conveniently forfeit. Little did the prize crew know that the ship, a research vessel that conducted its studies outside of Imperial oversight, was experimenting on the Chamax, who are loose on the ship. The ship was otherwise in working order and there was every sign that crew were present and working, only no trace of them remains. The session at one point was basically a dungeon crawl.

I had in the planning stages some material with the Chamax sophonts -- who are much more civil than the bugs -- which never got to see the light of day.

 

[Whipsnade]

I had in the planning stages some material with the Chamax sophonts -- who are much more civil than the bugs -- which never got to see the light of day.

Robject,

A couple of years ago I batted around some ideas regarding the Chamax sophonts. Among other things, I never liked the story in DA:5. It was far too pat in too many ways for my liking. The bit about the sophonts killing off a large carnivore on a "small continent" and thus releasing the bugs from their "biological control" is especially grating when you remember that planet has a hydrography rating of FOUR. There aren't continents on Chamax, there are seas instead.

I also felt the Chamax sophonts would be good candidates for the "alien aliens" I'm always bloviating about.

Nice detail about the SuSAG ship. I've thought for many years that governments, corporations, and individuals would be very interested in the bugs once news of them started spreading... No need to visit LV-426 with Chamax so close, right?

Nice use of the word Them too. Didn't think I wouldn't notice, did you?


Regards,
Bill

 

[Blue Ghost]

I have to confess our group did "The Horde" and "The Chamax Plague", but, for whatever reason, we never revisited them.

Our big staple was "Death Station" and sundry baddies on experimental combat drugs that could be found throughout the Imperium... hey, Reagan was in office and Nancy had her "Just say NO!" campaign going, so we kind of followed the theme in Traveller sessions.

We did both of the adventures for the Chamax, and found them to be formidable. But, and this is just me, one of the most annoying things I found with the initial adventure was the "straggler encounter table". It seemed like every few minutes we picked up another half dozen or so local soldiers who were escaping the rush of Chamax. By the time our group got back to the ship we essentially had a full regiment of "stragglers"; more troops than Chamax... or so it seemed.

Still, we probably should've used the Chamax a bit more.

p.s. firing a sandcaster on the ground is inspired

 

[robject]

I admit, I never thought of using a sandcaster as a close-range weapon, but it sounds like it would hurt, sort of like how getting hit by several cubic meters of glass shards would hurt.

We never did Death Station, but I was gung-ho about experimentation gone awry, on people as well as bugs. In retrospect I think DS will be a nice addition to my repertoire.

Well Bill, then tell me your vision of the Chamax sophonts. I may want to borrow some details.

 

[rancke]

I admit, I never thought of using a sandcaster as a close-range weapon, but it sounds like it would hurt, sort of like how getting hit by several cubic meters of glass shards would hurt.

I'm wondering how fast that sand is moving when it hits the air outside the muzzle and what effect air resistance would have on the sand's performance.


Hans

 

[Whipsnade]

I'm wondering how fast that sand is moving when it hits the air outside the muzzle and what effect air resistance would have on the sand's performance.

Hans,

Our group followed Marc Miller's depth charge analogy when it came to sandcasters.

The turret launched a canister which then explosively deployed the ablative "sand" in a dispersal pattern. A gunner could manipulate both the distance from the vessel that the canister deployed the "sand" and the initial shape the "sand" pattern took, i.e. cone, disc, globe, etc.

The gunner in this case launched a canister which deployed it's "sand" almost immediately in a cone aimed at the nose of the Shaarin Challenger. With the range only being around 300 meters, I decided worrying about the fine points of aiming and attenuation wasn't worth it.

FWIW, I believe that Striker has weapons stats for sandcaster rounds used in this fashion.


Regards,
Bill

 

[rancke]

The turret launched a canister which then explosively deployed the ablative "sand" in a dispersal pattern. A gunner could manipulate both the distance from the vessel that the canister deployed the "sand" and the initial shape the "sand" pattern took, i.e. cone, disc, globe, etc.

The gunner in this case launched a canister which deployed it's "sand" almost immediately in a cone aimed at the nose of the Shaarin Challenger. With the range only being around 300 meters, I decided worrying about the fine points of aiming and attenuation wasn't worth it.

Sounds reasonable.


Hans

 

[Blue Ghost]

Hans,

Our group followed Marc Miller's depth charge analogy when it came to sandcasters.

The turret launched a canister which then explosively deployed the ablative "sand" in a dispersal pattern. A gunner could manipulate both the distance from the vessel that the canister deployed the "sand" and the initial shape the "sand" pattern took, i.e. cone, disc, globe, etc.

The gunner in this case launched a canister which deployed it's "sand" almost immediately in a cone aimed at the nose of the Shaarin Challenger. With the range only being around 300 meters, I decided worrying about the fine points of aiming and attenuation wasn't worth it.

FWIW, I believe that Striker has weapons stats for sandcaster rounds used in this fashion.


Regards,
Bill

Ingenious.

Will Striker and the rest of the games ever be available in a reprint? We never used Striker, but "winged it" to quote Bill; i.e. a single starship beam laser does 1000 pts. damage and so forth.

Robject; Death Station was one of the funnest adventures I ever ran. One of the players was a horror-flick afficionado who usually laughed at some of scariest stuff Hollywood ever put on screen. BUT, when it came to an interactive experience, this guy was rubbing sweat from his palms to keep his character sheet dry.

It's all about atmosphere (well... mostly, I think) for a successful RPG gaming session. I think it's part of the reason DS went over better with our group than the Chamax adventures. I think we did the Chamax DA book about a year or two before "Aliens" hit the big screen... not sure. But, I can almost garauntee you that if we'd seen "Aliens" before we did the Chamax, then the Chamax might've been a bigger staple in our adventures.

I mispoke when I said we never revisited them. One of our gaming group actually did bring back the Chamax a couple of times when he ran the sessions. I can't remember the context though.

 

[Whipsnade]

By the time our group got back to the ship we essentially had a full regiment of "stragglers"; more troops than Chamax... or so it seemed.

BG,

That happened to you too?

I ran Horde once as a barely tweaked, stand alone, campaign. I used the stock characters and everything else nearly as written. It lasted three sessions IIRC.

By the time the players trooped out to one of the peninsula's western seaports they had almost a battalion of stragglers with them. The ex-army major quickly put them to work building defenses around the ferry terminals and evacuating refugees to the ships there.

In retrospect I should have run with this Raschev "Dunkirk" a little longer because it was something the players stumbled into on their own, but we only had so much time to play out the adventure so I cut things short.

p.s. firing a sandcaster on the ground is inspired

It was a jaw dropper, one of the few times I've been truly surprised as a GM.


Regards,
Bill

 

[robject]

Back to the Chamax sophonts, if I may...

My vision was to make them amenable to chargen, which immediately puts all sorts of mundane spin on them. This may mean I can't use your thoughts about them; I take it for granted that I won't be able to use everything you've come up with. But if you have subtle and insightful ideas, maybe I can take some prize away.

I set them up the way I generally see "pseudo-crustaceans": bilateral with 4 pair of legs, and the front pair evolved as grippers or manipulators. I gave them a keelbone rather than a spine, three genders, and a skill-based caste system.

Adulthood comes after 10 solar years; what that is in their system, I don't know. I'm unsure of what their lifespan "ought" to be; I've set it a bit longer than humans, but I'm open to ideas.

 

[Whipsnade]

Death Station was one of the funnest adventures I ever ran.

BG,

I can't even begin to count the number of times I ran Death Station or some variant of it. It's just so easily plundered and it's so very malleable.

The best version I suppose involved the Active Duty IISS campaign I've written about before. The players were the crew of a Suleiman in the Trin's Veil Subsector and their leader was "tuft hunting" for a knighthood. (That was something the player himself came up with for the character. I gleefully accepted the suggestion because it gave me a great handle on him.)

The group boarded the lab ship off Burtson, IIRC, and immediately ran into one of the survivors. I'd "ginned up" things a bit because the players had 5 or 6 PCs/NPCs including a pair of "gun bunny" types. After another survivor bumped into the group on the bridge all hell broke loose. That led the tuft hunter to lose his patience and he "solved" the problem by venting the entire ship to vacuum.

I suggested via a NPC that venting the ship might be the best choice, calling the idea "simplistic". It was a poor choice of words on my part because he only got angrier. I'll always remember his words as he keyed the venting procedure:

"I like simple. Simple works".

Of course, one of the survivors killed in the venting was a relative of the person the leader needed to sign off on his knighthood application.

Ooops.


Regards,
Bill

 

[Blue Ghost]

BG,

That happened to you too?

I ran Horde once as a barely tweaked, stand alone, campaign. I used the stock characters and everything else nearly as written. It lasted three sessions IIRC.

By the time the players trooped out to one of the peninsula's western seaports they had almost a battalion of stragglers with them. The ex-army major quickly put them to work building defenses around the ferry terminals and evacuating refugees to the ships there.

In retrospect I should have run with this Raschev "Dunkirk" a little longer because it was something the players stumbled into on their own, but we only had so much time to play out the adventure so I cut things short.



It was a jaw dropper, one of the few times I've been truly surprised as a GM.


Regards,
Bill

Indeed it did. For the longest time I thought it was a misprint, particularly when I was running it. I remember sitting at my friend's kitchen table (I think we had a group of five that night) thinking that there had to be something wrong with the encounter table, or that I must have misread it or something.

I really can't remember how my group resolved that adventure... nuke the continent after evac? Not really sure. Part of the resolution was visiting the Chamax homeworld... for some reason (it's been too long to recall). After dealing with the Chamax our group was keen on trying to contact the former civilization that once existed. One guy postulated that the civilization that once existed had adapted to the ocean environment. Being the amenable GM that I was, I granted the wish. And the people who were responsible for letting the Chamax-genie out of the bottle were contacted. I think in the end I came up with a "happily ever after ending"... the Chamax homeworld was cleaned up with Imperial assistance or something.

I'll say this, it would be interesting to do again with perhaps a slightly different setup. Maybe more than one "plague ship" or something.

 

[kafka47]

I took the Chamax modified their appearance slightly and gave them to group of players composed of good guys & pirates in an abandoned Vilani space station that was a First Contact station with the Zhodani from the Imperium.

Essentially, giving an atmosphere of fear & terror overlaid with distrust...

For narrative and pictures follow this link: http://www.meetup.com/Toronto-Area-Gamers/messages/boards/thread/4362775/0#16062003
{narrative}

http://www.meetup.com/Toronto-Area-Gamers/photos/ {pictures}

 

[RKFM]

Wasn't there a JTAS article about using Striker for a Chamax/Horde game?

Striker does indeed have stats for sandcasters and specifically mentions they can be used "as a giant shotgun".

 

[Trent]

I think that in GT the a sandcaster fired in a tactical situation acted like a large area effect frag grenade.

In traveller canon a sandcaster can stop one missile in the PD phase, so they do some damage, especially if focused.

You may have overdone it a tad, but I would have likely allowed the caster to have some positive effect as well.

 

[Trent]

Speaking of bughunts, here's a real issue I'd like to see someone handle:

Acid blood.

OK, the classic "aliens" are the basic fodder for "bughunts", but how does one handle their acid blood? I mean, simply saying "more damage equals more acid spray" doesn't work as a single, high power penetrating round may do more damage than a shotgun, but looking at it one sees that the shotgun likely causes a bigger acid spray that, say, a .50 cal thru and thru.

There's also how far it splashes, do lasers cauterize the wound and not cause acid spray, etc.

A smart thing to do is turn on fire sprinklers as the water dilutes and washes away the acid, of course. This is also one area where fighting in a rainstorm might be helpful to the players.

 

[sabredog]

Wasn't there a JTAS article about using Striker for a Chamax/Horde game?

Striker does indeed have stats for sandcasters and specifically mentions they can be used "as a giant shotgun".

JTAS #17 has the article...we used it when running the scenario with the Striker rules and some modular styrofoam terrain I had made long ago for armor mini wargames.

I bought some bags of little plastic ants at the toy store and the players had their miniatures. The NPC's were represented by a batch of GHQ fireteam stands along with some M60A1 tanks for low tech tracks.

The players set up a command post to coordinate the defense and a "flying column" with their G-carrier and some of the local commando troops so they could bolster any spots in the line that were leaking with the VRF GG in the carrier's cupola. Unfortunately they forgot how fast one of those things eats up ammo and they ran out long before I ran out of bags of ants. At one point they put down to let the commandos out to help some wounded onboard and were swarmed before they could get out. The carrier was damaged and they had to try to fight thier way back to the CP on foot.

They found what was left of another overrun position, and after killing off the last few bugs near it they took the tank. The wounded were strapped to the engine deck and the players road shotgun while a couple NPC's drove it. It was pretty useless as far as ammo goes since it was out of beehive loads and HE, but it made a good firing platform for the players who still had charges left in their laser carbines and the bugs made satisfying crunchy noises when they ran them over.

The tank was in pretty rough shape by the time they made it to the CP, but they were just in time for the final stand against the last of the bugs. First the howitzers ran out of beehive after lowering the muzzles and direct firing into the horde like something out of Korea. Then the machineguns ran out or jammed from overheating, then it was down to grenades and rifles (and a few pistols) when one of the players set up a rotating volley fire line like something out of Rorke's Drift. First line fires, retreats back through the second line...second line then fires and retreats...kind of the reverse of the way it was usually done but it worked.

I might have fudged it a little since it was all so intense, but I think they ran out of ammo just as I ran out of plastic ants.

The guys with the laser carbines traded them in later for gauss rifles and ACR's after they saw the benefit of autofire. Auto-shotguns became standard ship's locker gear, too. And napalm rifles.

 

[aramis]

Striker, AHL, Snapshot, Mayday, Inv. Earth, 5FW, Dark Nebula, Imperium are all in the Games Big Floppy Book... not exactly PLAYABLY, except for Striker, but rules, countersets, and boards are all there.