022: Goblin Quest - Rules Hack 6 - Space Interns - Claim to Game

Episode Transcript
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>> Clint Scheirer (00:00):
Space, the final frontier.
These are the voyages of the starship HMS
behemoth. Its to
explore strange new worlds, to seek out
new life and new civilizations, to
boldly go where no man has gone before.
Sounds great, right? If you are even remotely a fan

(00:20):
of Sci-Fi and Starforged Trek in particular,
this Game is for you.
In todays episode we are going to pick up rules hack
number six for Goblin, the RPG
space interns. You signed up for your
internship anticipating adventure, exploration and
excitement. Youre also an expendable underling who
will likely never complete this internship alive.

(00:42):
Welcome to claim to Game, the podcast helping busy people Master
tabletop role playing Games one Game at a Time.
Im Clint Scheirer. Ive been an educator for over twelve years and
have helped gamers of all levels quickly grasp Tabletop
RPG's so they can enjoy playing them to the
fullest. Stay tuned so you can make your claim to
Game

(01:29):
Hello, and welcome back to episode 22,
season one of Claim to Game, a predominantly
educational, fun Podcast in which I am daring to coin
the word fungucational. It's like discovering
a new species of jaguars in the Amazon
rainforest, only to further discover that
you can communicate with them through telepathy.
The Game for this season is Goblin the

(01:51):
RPG brought to you by Game designer Grant Howitt,
whose works include, but are not limited to, Honey
Heist, die, the RPG Spire
Unbound, One Last Job,,, Heart, Eat the
Reich. And now, at the Time of this episode, release a new
Tabletop RPG, Hollows, fully funded on
backer kit. Our running definition of a rules hack
for Goblin Quest is a series of tweaks and twists to the

(02:14):
main Game, which allow you to use it to tell different
stories. The 6th of these hacks to appear in the
Goblin Quest RPG book on page 106,
earned through the Kickstarter stretch goals in
2014, is space
interns.
Since the Age of 13, I have without
a doubt considered myself a Trekkie, and I'm
about to say something very controversial. I

(02:36):
like Starforged Trek more than Star Wars. Now don't get
me wrong, I love Starforged Wars. I just like Starforged
Trek a little bit better. And now that I just
alienated all of you who are Star Wars fans,
see what I did there? Please give me a moment to explain
before you write off this Podcast, vowing never to
return. Think to yourself,
wwbyd what would baby

(02:58):
yoda do? Baby Yoda would stay, bro.
So listen up. for Christmas, the year, I would have officially become a
man in a different culture. I received three presents,
each containing a box dvd set. They
contained the original series of Starforged Trek, which only
aired for for a total of three seasons from
1966 to 1969. The
first season box was yellow, and it was the same

(03:21):
color as the Federation issued uniform worn by Captain
James T. Kirk, played by William
Shatner. The second box was blue
and matched the uniform worn by the first Officer
Spock, played by actor Leonard Nimoy, and chief
medical officer Leonard Bones McCoy,
played by actor DeForest Killy. The third and
final season box was Red, and it matched the uniform

(03:43):
color worn by Lieutenant Uhura, played by actress Nichelle
Nichols, as well as chief engineer
Montgomery Scott, or Scotty, as he was better
known, played by actor James Duhan. I watched
these dvd's on repeat for the remainder of my
adolescence. The crew of the starship Enterprise
became my friends. I marveled at the
creative worlds and stories written and produced by Gene

(04:05):
Roddenberry. His natural interest in science, as well as
aeronautical engineering gave me a sense of verisimilitude,
believability in the World he made. I felt like with
Time, this World could actually exist in the
future, and I so wanted to be a part
of it. What I did not want to be a part of
was the less well known characters in the Starforged

(04:26):
Trek episodes, though the main characters, some
of whom I mentioned, always seemed to escape danger and
get back to the ship okay. On each episode, the
supporting, less tenured characters were constantly
dying. And if they were the unfortunate
crew members to be chosen for the landing party, it was
almost certainly a death sentence.
Now, there has been an interesting observation from

(04:48):
viewers of the original Starforged Trek series, an observation
that has invaded many an Internet meme
forums and common superfan jokes throughout the
years. The Starforged Trek crew members wearing the Red
uniforms known as the Red shirts,
die more than the other characters. This is, "The
belief. Now, in the original series, there has been
counted to be 55 total deaths.

(05:10):
24 of those were crew members wearing
Red shirts, while nine had the yellow gold
uniform, seven were wearing Blue.
And there were 15 unidentifiable crew members
that had colors that we couldn't determine. So
roughly 43% of the deaths were Red
shirts. Now, this shouldn't equate to the
observation that red shirts always die.

(05:32):
But with those crew members taking up a majority of
the deaths, it's easy to see why this
phenomena took hold in the minds of Trekkies.
So if you were able to hang with me through all that, you may also
be a Starforged Trek fan. The Star Wars fans may
have stopped listening a couple of minutes ago, but regardless of
your preference, Sci-Fi fans should try this Game.
It plays off the red shirt's always die phenomena

(05:55):
instead of frequently dying crew members being those who adorn
a specific color uniform. However, Grant how
it changed it to crew members who are
interns always die. An intern is
a trainee or student who often may work without pay in
order to gain experience in a specific profession.
And due to the interns inexperience and the
learning curve, when learning any new skill or position,

(06:17):
there are often jokes floating around the Internet regarding an
intern as being incompetent or
expendable for a company, since they aren't a
quote unquote real employee. Now, the truth
bomb here is that we should treat people like human
beings with purpose, worth, and dignity, regardless of
their status within our place of employment.
But all this aside, this Game plays with

(06:40):
that stereotype, much like the original Goblin Quest
Game sees the goblins as expendable cannon fodder to
be thrown at the enemy. So I'm going to
read straight out of the book prompt so that you get an
idea for how this Game is going to Run.
Congratulations. You've been slaving away on
the research ship HMS behemoth for months,
maybe years now, but you've finally made it to the orbit

(07:03):
of an exotic alien World. Not only that,
but youve been chosen to make planetfall and speak to
the natives. What an exciting time to be
alive. You walk into the teleporter room and
grin at your supervisor, who doesnt look as happy about it
as you are, and he outfits you with your
communicator and phaser pistol. Dont
worry, sir, you say with enthusiasm

(07:26):
only an unpaid part Time intern can muster.
If things go wrong, they can always beam us right back
up right, can't they? Your
supervisor, unbeknownst to you, thinks about how
expensive it is to run the teleporters and how far
off budget the ship was last quarter. He smiles
at you. And says, yeah, sure
kid, sure. Gosh, what

(07:48):
an adventure. Now, there is a hilarious
disclaimer for anyone signing up for the space internship
program on the HMS behemoth, funded by the Explorer
Corporation. I won't read this aloud since this
podcast is not an audiobook. My final
thoughts before getting into how to prep play is that due to the
exploratory and improvisational nature of this
hack, it suggested you play this Game with a Game

(08:11):
Master. It will be nice to have someone in the
captain's chair for this.
Alright, here we go. Make it so. Number
one. Oh wait. Whoops. There isn't a number
one. There isn't a first officer of the HMS behemoth
yet. Because you. And your players will need to
make your characters. And making a crew
begins with viewing the table at the top of page

(08:32):
108. Each player will play five
different crew members. all five crew members will have
their own ranks, and that number is a
value of where they fall in superiority
and expertise. So the number is called the
expertise value. The first crew member is, "The
supervisor and their expertise is
four. The second crew member is, "The permanent

(08:55):
intern and their expertise is three.
The third crew member is, "The intern.
Just regular intern expertise of two. The
fourth crew member is a sub intern and their
expertise is one. And then you have the part
Time intern and their expertise is zero. They, are
basically a walking vegetable. Each
character will get a name and a personality quirk. And

(09:18):
the quirk can be a personality trait, a physical trait,
or maybe some type of alien characteristic, since we are in
space after all. When a player attempts to take an
action within the story, if they use their personality
quirk, they are able to gain an extra 1 d 6.
Thats a six sided dice to add to their dice Pool
when they roll. And the player also gets to
determine what color or uniforms the team is wearing. And it

(09:41):
definitely does not have to be Red. Next
comes the specialty. And each team will have their own
unique specialty, which all five of the players characters
specialize in to varying degrees of
expertise. As we mentioned before. And once
per character, you can establish a useful
story fact using your specialty. The
specialty also gives your character a suitable piece of equipment

(10:03):
that someone with that specialty would have or
would be carrying. If a player decides to use their
specialty equipment during their turn, when taking an action,
they gain 1 d 6 or an extra
six sided dice to their dice Pool when they roll.
Page 108 has a table at the bottom with four
specialties. And the quickest way to get playing is just to use
the specialties on this table instead of making up different

(10:26):
ones for yourself. You could choose by rolling one D20
four. But here are the given specialties. Number
one is security. Think Tasha Yar, the security
officer from the next generation series. In the
nineties, this means that your team will be all about
weapons, combat tactics, and the given
specialty equipment is grenades.

Number 2 (10:46):
Is the diplomat. Try to emulate
Spock's father, Serek, who was a diplomat
ambassador for the Vulcans. Spock's race,
to the United Federation of Planets. Your team will
be good with culture, psychology, and
speaking. The given specialty equipment is a
holographic projector. And for you Star Wars fans,
this is, "The equivalent of Princess Leia through holographic

(11:08):
projections, saying, help me, Obi Wan Kenobi. You're
my only hope. Number three is
scientific. So this specialty, obviously
I think of Spock, is, "The first science officer who comes to
my mind, but I'm sure there are others. And for
the true trekkies out there, you're already listing them in
chronological order. Right now, your team will be
good with flora, fauna, weather,

(11:30):
biology, and the periodic table. The given
specialty equipment is a hand scanner. And what
does this hand scanner scan? Everything with
surprising accurate data, no matter what youre actually
scanning. that is, of course, depending on the success
of your dice rolls. And the fourth and final
specialty is engineering. some avatars
for inspiration include Scotty Geordi

(11:52):
Laforge, played by actor Levar Burton, or maybe Miles
Obrady, played by actor Cole Meaney. Your team
will be good with machines, tech,
architecture, infrastructure, and anything an engineer would
do. The specialty item is a multitool, the
equivalent of the Sci-Fi swiss army knife, but it
packs a bigger punch to get shit done.
Besides your teams specialty equipment, everyone is given

(12:15):
two items which are very iconic to the Starforged Trek
franchise. Neither of these items gives you an additional
dice to roll during your action, but they do add extra
flavor for this Starforged Trek esque setting.
First, you get a communicator, and this is basically
a cell phone, allowing you to communicate with other members of your team when
they aren't directly next to you within talking
distance. Unless you're playing the supervisor character on your

(12:37):
team, your communicator is unable to reach back to the
HMS behemoth in orbit. Supervisor
communicators must have been given an extra boosted
data plan from the phaser company because their communicators
can communicate back to the ship in both
audio and video transmission. Second,
you get a phaser, which is basically like a
laser gun, and it can only be set to two different

(13:00):
modes, stun or kill. You
can't kind of stun, you can't kind of kill.
Phasers slap you right into that black or white moral
dilemma. Do I preserve this enemy but immobilize
them, or do I disintegrate them into oblivion to save my
own skin? Typically, in Starforged Trek, phasers are usually
kept on stun and only turned to kill in extreme,

(13:20):
necessary, dire circumstances. Now, what
constitutes as follows, "A extreme, necessary, dire
circumstance in this game? Well, that's up to you. Quick
pause. In the episode, have you felt like life is too
crazy busy that the Tabletop RPG Games you've
always wanted to learn and play are passing
you by. The Claim to Game Podcast
has one mission, helping busy people Master tabletop

(13:43):
role playing Games one Game at a Time. If you
have liked what you've heard today, can you help me spread the good
word? Leave the show a five Star review, thumbs
up, positive comment, or written review
wherever you listen to podcasts. You could also
leave a review directly on the
www.claimtogamepodcast.com website. Your
review helps grow the show. And helps others learn

(14:04):
new tabletop role playing Games. So please, after you
finish, rate and review the show. Awwww you.
Now back to the episode. The Explore Corporation is pretty
corrupt and heartless in my opinion, but here is, "The order
of importance as far as the preservation of life of these
crew members. Go first. The supervisors
usually stand around at the teleport site down on the planet,

(14:24):
giving the orders in staying in relative safety until
they absolutely have to put themselves in harm's
way. They will first send all of their interns
into the unknown of the dangerous mission, and players
will start at the bottom, using the intern with the least amount
of experience first to try their chances of success.
Because this makes sense, right? And once the
interns are gone, once they've all died off, then

(14:47):
and only then will the supervisor get involved.
Now, I have to make an aside here, so this makes me think of a robot
chicken episode where Seth Green and crew were making fun of the
United States late entry into World War Two.
It portrayed Adolf Hitler, representing the country of
Germany and the nazi regime, as follows, "A student in a classroom
with other students, all of who were sitting at their own desks, each

(15:07):
of them representing their own country or World power.
And slowly, little Hitler kept
acquiring the desks of all the other students who
mysteriously disappeared. He would be like, my
teacher. I will need the polish voice desk as
well. Finally, at the end, the desk of the
United States was the only one left, along with little
Hitler's massive desks all around him from the countries he'd

(15:29):
stolen. The us student, when asked by the
teacher, what's going on, said, it's
not my problem. And then, immediately after saying that, a
japanese student came in and knocked over the fast food the us boy
was enjoying. Then and only then, did the US
boy sigh and say, now
it's my problem. This is, "The

(15:49):
supervisor. In the Game of space interns, you are
the US, and you stay out until the last
possible second. I'll include the link in the show notes if you want
to experience the robot chicken segment for yourself,
players will be sending out their lowest skilled intern first,
and their intern will likely have to communicate back to
the supervisor. So for some people at your table,

(16:10):
this might not feel very comfortable having to switch
back and forth talking to themselves and no problem.
An alternative rule you could adapt to is to assign
each player the role of being the supervisor of another
person's team, so that way they can talk to a different
individual when they are responding back to their
supervisor. This splits up the roleplay so it doesn't
sound like Gollum from the Lord of the Rings-esque talking to

(16:31):
himself. And what happens. If all the
active interns die in a specific scene while
they are away from the rest of the party at the landing site? Well,
you could do a few things. You could use some hand waving
and just send another intern running into the
situation. Or, and this would be my
choice, have the scene end and wrap up the utter
failure of the situation into the overall storyline. How would

(16:54):
this look? Well, maybe you're playing a game with a total of
four players. You land on the planet. Each player
starts the scene sending out an intern from their team to go
explore. Some crazy creature destroys all
four of the interns that we're out exploring
narratively, I would have the communication go
dead. The supervisors become annoyed at the
incompetence and the expense of finding good interns

(17:17):
these days, and then they send out the next group
of interns. However, this is up to you. And
you could easily have a supervisor say to the next intern,
I think they need some help out there, kid. Can you go and help them?
Yeah, do whatever feels the most fun
and keeps things going during the Game. When a player
wishes to invoke their teams specialty during their
turn, a fun and unique Game mechanic is

(17:39):
activated. First, the player will write on an index
card a fact that theyve learned about the planet or their
situation, which they would only know because of their unique
specialty. They will then place that index
card on the table and put a number of six
sided dice on that card that is equal to their
current active characters expertise.

(17:59):
Any other player, when it's their turn, can take
one of those dice off of the index card to add to
their dice Pool, as long as they incorporate the
fact that was created into what their character is attempting
to do. An example, Chuck, a member
of the security team landing party, establishes the fact that
the hostile bear like humanoids that are lumbering

(18:19):
towards them have left their rear position
wide exposed. The
player who is playing Chuck writes this down
as follows, "A fact on the card for other players or
himself to take advantage of Chuck is a
permanent intern. He's survived this gig longer
than most and his expertise is three.

(18:39):
So the player then places three six sided
dice on the index card to be utilized in future
roles by other players. Those of you who have good attention
to detail may already be asking yourself, what about those part
Time interns? They have an expertise of zero. How many
dice do they get to put down on their index? Cardinal
well, the answer is they don't. They are so

(18:59):
Green, so new, they are not even allowed to use
their specialty in fear of hurting themselves and
others. Remember, they are basically
a walking vegetable. Here's some caveats. A
specialty fact can only be used and created once per
character. A player is not allowed to take more than
one dice at a time from the index card, and

(19:20):
players cannot undo facts made by other players.
An example, another player cannot write down on their
index cardinal. The bear like creatures rear is
actually guarded after all, you gotta respect
the established reality given by the other players. In
improv, this is called finding and playing the Game
of the scene. To reject this stops the

(19:40):
story, stops the momentum, and sometimes stops the
fun. I will probably forever mention what my friend
Robin D20. Laws said in episode 16.
He said, it's called keeping your eye on the Ball
and picking up the Ball when it's handed to you. Don't
be selfish.
Now it's time for some GM prepping. Prepping this Game is
almost as fun as playing it. First stop is to create the

(20:01):
planet the boarding party will be beaming down to on
page 110 in the rulebook. It has a
comprehensive roll table where you'll be rolling
six sided dice four times to establish
most of what the players will be experiencing during the
gameplay. I'll go ahead and tell you what I rolled
as I went through this section. Section one is,
"The terrain. I rolled a five which determined my

(20:24):
planet is an urban city like populated
planet. Star Wars fans, if you're still with me, trying to give you
some love and think Coruscant section 2:
Is one weird thing. I rolled a six. Our
planet experiences days and Nights which can last for
weeks each cycle around the nearest sun.
Section three is, "The aliens here
are. And I rolled a number four. These aliens

(20:46):
are graceful yet cruel. And I am
reminded of spinning a great Fantasy novel by
Naomi Novik where the timeless and beautiful
elven King is beautiful yet merciless
in his actions. And finally, section four is,
"The biggest issue with any planet youre
landing on other than your own. The atmosphere.

(21:07):
Can you or can you not breathe without a spacesuit or
a helmet. I luckily rolled a, one which put our planet
in the breathable category. We can all take a
deep breath without having our lungs explode or dying due
to toxic gaseous asphyxiation.
On to the mission. What is, "The rub? What is, "The beef? What are
we trying to accomplish, acquire or do
exactly as the GM? it's up for you to decide what

(21:29):
is happening during your session, and we'll cover one of Grant's
adventure option prompts on page 112 in just a
minute.
However, the mission, if you can imagine
me saying that with bold letters scrolling in front of your face,
is to boldly go where no man
has gone before with the following corporate directives
guiding your crew's actions. And here they the

(21:49):
primary, defend
democracy against insurrection, war,
terrorism, and restricted freedom. The
secondary directive, engage in diplomacy
first, good for public relations. And the
tertiary or third directive, always
use acceptable air quotes.
Force? Ha. Whatever that means. Sounds pretty arbitrary

(22:11):
and open to interpretation. Set
phasers to kill. The captain of the
HMS behemoth will give a short mission debriefing
before planetfall with what we know so far about this
corporation by how they treat their interns.
Imagine a cagey, dodgy, corrupt dude with a
huge mustache and a cigar hanging out of his
mouth, half distracted, telling the landing crew to do

(22:34):
their best. And they may 1 day be paid employees like the their
supervisors, who by the way, are also
severely underpaid. This Game will follow the three
act structure shown in the original rules of Goblin Quest,
but the tasks are now actually called
acts. The theme of each act is pretty set in
place, so here's how it goes. Act one, spread out to

(22:54):
find out what's happening on the planet, and then you
play through the three scenes where players are rolling dice to
get enough victories to move on to the next scene.
The second act is now that the problem is clear,
prepare for action. And how do you plan to solve the
problem? You go through the three scenes, getting victories to
move on to the next scenes, and then lastly, you finish up

(23:15):
with act three. You enact the solution to
restore balance, control, and hopefully come home alive. Or
at least some of you. And it is suggested that. In
act three, a curveball, much like the misfortune
mechanic in the original Goblin Quest rules, tries to
prevent you from achieving your mission. And you can use
the misfortune rules on page 32 to increase the

(23:35):
appropriate scenes difficulty rating to make the players
work for their success. If the players are able to
get through all three scenes in all three acts, then the
extraction from the planet is pretty simple and kind of
anticlimactic, so feel free to jazz it up.
Basically, the captain will unceremoniously show up,
take all the credit for what you did, and then you'll beam back up to

(23:55):
the HMS behemoth. That's if you're not already
dead. Now, you could just play the Game like that, as
is. Or you can invoke the special
nuke it from orbit rule. And if you choose to accept
this huge responsibility, you'll be adding an extra option
for each team supervisor to consider in a
Time of crisis. Nuke stands for

(24:15):
neo uranium kinetic energy
burst, and if all the supervisors agree, once
per Game, a nuke burst can be dropped once
per session, anywhere the characters can see with
their eyes. And this only happens. If all the
supervisors agree to drop the nuke to prevent the
misuse of the nuke, it can only be deployed
perilously close to the interns and

(24:37):
employees. Once dropped, all characters
in action use the table on page 112,
the nuke table, to resolve their actions and their
dice roll results, instead of the normal table that they
use on page 42. In the main Goblin Quest
rulesethezenhe now, the normal table on page 42
has rolling occur like this. And you should know this by now if you've played

(24:57):
all these different hacks and also the main game, rolling a
one or two on your dice results in an injury to
your character. Rolling a three, something bad will
happen, but no injury. It's just story
flavor. Rolling a four, something good
happens, and once again, no victory, just story
flavor. And then lastly, if you roll a, five or a six,
that is a victory. And truth be told, this gives the player

(25:19):
a 36% chance of either injury or
victory, 16% chance of something bad
happening when they roll a die, and 16% chance
of something good happening. What happens
mechanically when the nuke is dropped? Well, on page
112, the table changes to this. It
raises the stakes. Rolling a ah, one is
instant death of the intern. Rolling a two

(25:42):
or a three results in an injury. Rolling a four or
a five gives a victory. And rolling a six is an
astounding victory, which really counts as two
victories. So the new probability is that
now theres a 50% chance the characters will either
die instantly or injure themselves. Rolling a one, two, or
three, and a 50% chance of characters

(26:02):
getting a victory or extra super victories by
rolling a four, five, and six. Greater chance
to succeed, but just as great of a chance to
fail. Not quite the Kobayashi maru,
but halfway there, my friends. And if you didn't get that term?
Go watch the 1982 film the Wrath of
Khan. You'll thank me for it later on page 112.
Grant Howitt himself not a guest Game

(26:24):
designer, Grant how it himself provides six
optional sample missions. You can base your gameplay around.
You can roll a determine which one you. And
your players will enjoy, or choose your favorite.
My favorite one is, "The big Game. And here it is.
The planetary governor is dead, killed
on a hunting expedition. It's up to you to investigate

(26:45):
the case, then find out who did it, who done it, and
deal with them appropriately. You've got a halavid crew
with you as well, working to document your mission for a
training video for new interns. Great.
Good luck. The twist provided for act three
is as the governor is not actually
dead. He faked his whole death.

(27:05):
Why? And what are you going to do with all these
suspects? Are they innocent or are they all in on
it? To wrap this all up, regardless of whether you are in the Camp
of Starforged Trek, Camp, Star Wars, both, or just
fricking love Sci-Fi this hack will truly give you
an opportunity to live long and prosper.
Well, you will not so much your interns.

(27:25):
Join us next Time as we continue our Quest
claiming Goblin Quest. With six rules. Hacks
down, we've got just one more hack to go.
Our final hack is not even really a Goblin Quest
hack. Regency ladies was giving Grant howitt
trouble trying to fit into the core mechanics of the
Goblin Quest rules, and so he said, screw it,
I'll make a new Game. And this Game is your

(27:48):
chance to live out your wildest pride and Prejudice
moments. Search for true love, marriage,
attend a ball. But please, for the love of all that is
good, keep it pg rated. Awwww you. Have you been listening
to the first season of the CTG? And do not yet
have your very own copy of Goblin Quest, the
RPG. Picture yourself pretending to be gross,
grotty little buggers on your next Game night with your closest

(28:10):
friends. Laughs, goofs and goblins
don't wait. Click on the link in the show notes.
Don't like goblins? Enjoy seven different Goblin
Quest setting hacks in the back of the core rulebook. It's
almost like getting eight Games for the price of one.
Enjoy your copy of Goblin Quest the RPG
today. And until the next time we make our claim to
Game one Game at a Time.

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022: Goblin Quest - Rules Hack 6 - Space Interns

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}022: Goblin Quest - Rules Hack 6 - Space Interns