#last fleet

[hpowellsmith]

very excited for tonight's Last Fleet session: last time, my boyband-heartthrob-turned-journalist tried to infiltrate a murdercult. Right at the end the head of the cult marched him into a sinister empty room sooo he's in for a bad time and I'm in for an excellent one

(also I'm feeling that Last Fleet is one of the more successful PbtA hacks I've played, it hangs together better thematically/mechanically than some that I've encountered)

[theresattrpgforthat]

Last Fleet Play-Kit

I've got Last Fleet spreadsheets this time! Last Fleet is a PbtA game from Black Armada Games, inspired by Battlestar Galactica, in which you play the remnants from humanity fleeing from an alien threat.

What I'm really proud of in this one is the clocks - I've finally figured out how to put a clock into one of these sheets and that means that if you alter the number in the Size box and/or the Progress box, the size of the Clock and the slices filled will change!

You can make a copy of this spreadsheet here.

You can also take a look at my full library of spreadsheets below!

Clicky.

[muffinlance]

Hi ! prompt idea : What if Zuko was armed during the first episode and was stranded with the water tribe while the avatar left with Katara and Sokka, Iroh on his trail for white lotus reasons.

Oh we are going to have us some FUN with "stranded with the water tribe", say no more.

---

Zuko was dripping, and steaming, and staring down two dozen women and their gaggle of small children, plus that old not-the-Avatar crone from earlier. They were all cowering away from him. Which was--

Good. It was good. If they were cowering, then they hadn’t noticed how steam was not flames. He wasn’t sure he could make flames, not after the arctic water he’d landed in, with that last sight of the Avatar glowing; not after surfacing under the ice pack, after swimming, after kicking slamming breaking through and his ship was gone and there was only ocean all around and

and he’d made it back to this pathetic little camp of the Southern Water Tribe, because that was the only place he knew for sure would have shelter, and he wasn’t going to die just because they were all staring at him, even if felt like he would.

Even if the old not-the-Avatar woman could probably take him, right now. But she didn’t know that.

Zuko pulled himself up, taller than her by at least a few inches, and blew steam from his nose.

“I am commandeering one of your huts,” he said. And added, because Uncle said even a prince should be gracious: “You may choose which one.”

---

She choose her own.

...The only one without children that flames might scar, or younger women to catch a soldier’s interests.

Zuko sat by her fire and determinedly started struggling out of his wet clothes and she was still in here with him--

Zuko pulled one of her animal pelts over himself, and finished fighting off his clothes. When he stuck his head back out, cheeks still reddened from what was obviously the cold, she dropped a parka on his head.

“Dry clothes, Your Highness,” she said.

The parka was much bigger than he was. He fell asleep hoping that the camp’s men were on a long, long hunting trip.

---

He woke up again. Kanna tucked her favorite ulu knife away, newly sharpened, and stopped contemplating the alternative.

---

“I am commandeering a ship,” he said.

The crone led him across the village, all twenty paces of it, to a row of canoes.

“Take whichever one you want,” she said. “Will you need help getting it to the water?”

Zuko looked at the canoes. Looked at the ocean. Watched a leopard seal, easily the size of the largest canoe, dozing just past the ice his own ship had broken through the day before. It was frozen again, a great icy arrow pointing from the waves to the village, snow already starting to cover it over.

Beyond was blue sky and gray ocean and white ice, floating in blocks like stepping stones, like boulders, like cliffsides.

There wasn’t even a hint of gray steel, or smoke. Or any land, besides what they were standing on.

He looked down at the canoes again. Somehow, they seemed even smaller.

“I, uh,” Zuko cleared his throat. “I’ll require supplies. Before I go.”

---

They... did not have supplies. Not extra ones. This didn’t stop them from trying to give him supplies, food and blankets and anything else he could think to ask for. But each blanket was a pelt hunted by someone’s grandfather, had been inked with images and stories by someone’s mother, was the favorite of someone’s husband or brother or uncle or cousin--

They couldn’t go to the nearest market to replace things, here.

And when they talked about food, about what they could spare, they kept sneaking glances to their children, who were sneaking glances at Zuko from the huts, sticking their heads just over the snowy ledges like their fur-trimmed hoods would hide them. Their mothers and aunts shooed them away, and they crept back, like barnacle-crabs. Zuko glared, and they disappeared.

“When are your men coming back?” he asked. “They’re hunting, aren’t they?”

Oh. So that was what they looked like, when they weren’t trying to hide their hate.

---

Zuko wrapped himself up in the same blanket that night. It was printed inside with fine lines and images, telling a story he didn’t know. He wondered whose favorite it was.

---

Kanna wondered how quickly he’d wake—if he’d wake—if she built the fire up with wet driftwood and tundra grass, if she had one of the younger girls boost up a child to plug the air hole, if she let the smoke draw its own blanket down over this fire child.

---

It was hard to know when to wake up, because the sun never set. So everyone was up before him, and they all had spears and clubs and—and nets, and trap lines, and snow googles with their single slat to protect the eyes from snow blindness. Zuko had seen those once, at the Ember Island Museum of Ethnography, where they’d gone when it was too rainy for anything more exciting.

Oh. They were going hunting.

“Give me that,” Zuko said, and took a spear.

The women looked at him. One of them adjusted her googles.

“I can hunt,” he scowled.

He did not, in fact, know how to hunt.

---

“Give me that,” the Fire Prince said, and Kanna almost, almost gave him her ulu. Humans, like most animals, had an artery in their legs that would bleed them quick enough.

She kept skinning the rabbit-mink one of the women had snared.

“I can help,” he said, with less grace than most of their toddlers. Likely with the skinning skills of a toddler, too. She wasn’t going to let their unwanted visitor ruin a perfectly good pelt.

“Chop the meat,” she said, and gave him a different knife. “It’s dinner.”

“...This is really sharp,” he said a moment later, looking at the knife with some surprise.

“Is it,” said Kanna.

---

Things the Fire Prince was convinced he could do: hunt (until he realized he couldn’t tell the tracks of a rabbit-mink from a leopard-rabbit apart); spear fish (at least he could dry himself); pack snow for an igloo (frustrated princes ran hot); ice fish (the prince was a problem that kept coming close to solving itself).

Things the Fire Prince could actually do: mince meat, increasingly finely; gather berries and herbs, once he stopped trying to crush them; dig roots, under toddler supervision; mend nets, after the intermediary step of learning to braid hair loopies.

“Can’t I take him ice fishing again?” asked one of the women, as she watched Prince Zuko put as much apparent concentration into braiding her daughter’s hair as his people had into exterminating hers.

“Wait,” said another woman, sitting up straight. “Wait wait wait. I just had an idea.”

---

Three words: Infinite. Hot. Water.

---

Summer was coming to an end. The sun actually set, now, and the night was getting longer, and colder. The salmon-otter nets were mended and ready. The smoking racks were still full of cod-lemmings. The children were all a little older, the women all a little more used to doing both halves of their tribes’ chores; a little more used to not watching the horizon, waiting for help to come.

The Fire Prince was staring at the canoes again.

“Are you actually going to try leaving in one of those?” Kanna asked.

“...No.”

“Come on, then; someone needs to watch the kids while the women are hunting.”

She didn’t leave him alone with them, of course. But she could have.

---

Elsewhere, the war continued.

The moon turned red, for a moment none could sleep through; they did not learn why.

The comet came and went, leaving their castaway prince laying on the beach, his breath fogging up into the night sky above him, as the energy crashed from his system as quickly as it had come. Above, lights began to dance in the sky; Zuko pulled his hood up, so none of those spirits—children, dead too soon—got any ideas about kicking his head off to be their ball.

The war had ended. The world didn’t feel any different; no one in the south would know until spring came again.

---

Suffice it to say, Sokka and Katara were not prepared for this particular homecoming.

[hinamie]

sidelong

[petricorah]

meeting on the fire nation stairs [ids in alt]

[wickerfox]

"You know, I see you in here all the time. What's your name again?"

[mammoth-clangen]

Next

Previous

First

Special pliestocene rabbit?? Tragically, I couldn't find any specific evidence of Megabunnies so this is probably just a cottontail XD

I have come to increasingly dislike this part of the moon but hey ho >-<

The Ice Fang is not nearly as big as she looks on panel 3 but I'm supposed to be Going Fast so I'm not changing it c'x (her shoulder height isnt terribly higher than a Fleet Fang, she's just significantly bulkier)

Oh yeah I think this is the first time the name Fleet Fang is dropped in-comic, so by my own rules it's actually cannon now, yay!

Read on Comicfury

[sainz100]

some Max moments from the 2024 US GP

[sweetmapple]

Wont be able to be by my pc for a while, for consolation here's a wholy unrelated pre-hiatus comic wip

I think its really deliberate and interesting that Ansbach has red eyes underneath the golden clouding but Varre didn't have any clouding and just straight up darker gold eyes

I'd bet my favorite shoes that Varre was mad jealous of Ansbach's sick ass Pureblood Knight eyes. Also I feel like it kinda implies he never went through the knighting ceremony which is a can of worms in itself

[stood-onthecliffside]

mom why are all my heroes so tired? does this mean i'll keep feeling this hurt forever?

[ashleyslorens]

[hpowellsmith]

my Last Fleet ttrpg character is having such a bad time and I love it (he is a beautiful ex-boyband-frontman who dramatically left the band right before the apocalypse, and is now involved in a bunch of space murder while people underestimate him and he tries not to have a breakdown)

[theresattrpgforthat]

The Galaxy Squad Log (Part 1): Last Fleet

So I've started up another series of games with my play group, and this time we're doing space games! I'm also not the only one GM-ing this time around - another one of my friends will be co-GM-ing half of the space games, all taking place in the same galaxy. To kick things off, we decided on Last Fleet, which might as well be Battlestar Galactica: The Game. If you want to take a look at the digital play-kit we used, you can check out my Google Sheets spread here.

The Breakdown

We had an Aries Tactician, a Sagittarius Engineer, a Cancer Influencer, a Leo Marine, and a Gemini Investigator. In the very first session, one of the smaller ships of the fleet went dark, prompting most of the party to go and stage a rescue. The most dramatic moment involved the Gemini Investigator sneaking into the medical bay and taking out an Android infiltrator without anyone seeing. Cue the Marine entering the medical bay to see a dead body and a gun in the hand of the Investigator. Drama ensues.

One of my favourite scenes in the second session was the terse interaction between the Tactician and the Influencer, who was acting as the fleet's therapist. The Influencer happened to be in a relationship with the head of the fleet's airforce, and slipped up in mentioning the Tactician's gambling addiction to the Commander. As a result the Tactician was forced to drop his gambling habit, so he went to his therapist to tell her she needs to break up with her girlfriend if she wants to do her job correctly. He decided to Call Her Out on Her Shit, and rolled a 10+, so she only had two options - either agree to it in order to gain experience, or refuse and mark Pressure. The tension in the air was palpable.

Meanwhile, the Engineer and the Marine ended up getting a bit too drunk, and woke up the next morning in bed together. This was great for our Engineer, who was completely oblivious to most of the intrigue going on, but it was not great for the Marine, who was responsible for investigating missing parts - which was the responsibility of the Engineer. The two of them ended up being sent on a clandestine mission to a civilian ship to try and figure out what exactly was up with the black market in lieu of the Tactician, who was prohibited from investigating it himself, and had to coordinate their efforts from afar.

Our third and final session had no right going as hard as it did. We had our Investigator shut down all access to civilian ships from the military fleet after he found out that a number of refugees were being held in the navy's headquarters. Our Influencer was saddled with calming a bunch of very panicked refugees, while our Engineer tried to get in with the gambling ring and the black market while civilians were actively blocking all military personnel. Everything was tense - and then our Investigator hit his Breaking Point.

Now, the player who chose a Gemini Investigator had made his character sheet in a bit of a hurry, so he hadn't fully read every piece of it, particularly his Breaking Point options. And his play throughout the entirety of the game was always at least a little big antagonistic towards the other PCs, which made a few players suspicious, to put it mildly. Neither of us had made any plans behind the scenes - and in fact, he didn't even know that betrayal was an option - until I read out his Breaking Points. And right there, second-last on the list, was this:

Our Investigator didn't hesitate. He immediately switched sides, turning the tables by stating that another NPC who was trying to send out a communication was actually calling for help from another ship outside the fleet - and that the Investigator was trying to bring the civilian ship to our Android pursuers. There was a mad scramble to stop him, in which our Tactician and Influencer pulled out all the stops to set up a chance to turn the ship around, and our Marine sacrificed themself to give the Engineer one last chance to save the civilians and prevent an imminent Android arrival. It was dramatic and heart-wrenching, and after a series of terrible rolls (I'm talking like, snake eyes for at least three different people terrible), the Engineer rolled a 12 and brought us back from the brink. We were all on the edge of our seat, and at the end, emotions spilled out in the most satisfying way.

Thoughts

Last Fleet is a truly special game. What I loved about it was the tight mechanics: the Pressure track on each character sheet provides a resource for the players to improve their rolls, but at the cost of stressing them out and pushing them to do something that escalates the situation even further.

The GM advice is also top-notch. It guides you to create a threat that is always at the back of the players' minds, but hardly ever front-and-centre. The players cause most of the problems themselves, because they all have their own reasons for working just outside of the law - and bringing all sorts of consequences to bear for their troubles. As a GM, I didn't have to do much - just hint at NPCs being suspicious, and throw a wrench into the daily running of things, and the players took it from there.

This game was also great for the players who love instigating or participating in conflict. The moves Call Someone Out On Their Shit and Cover Up allowed them to make demands of each-other, get up to shady shenanigans, and lie to important NPCs. The characters of Last Fleet might be heroes - but they're first and foremost flawed and stressed people, put into a very demanding situation.

Lastly, relationships are key in this game. You have the ability to interfere or support other characters when they're attempting to do something, and while the base move tells you which stat to roll with, you can substitute that stat with your relationship level instead. So having a good relationship with someone makes helping or hindering them much much easier - and that really encourages players to Reach Out to each-other, in the hopes of keeping together something that they desperately need to survive.

What's Next

Next up, a friend of mine will be running Starforged, by Shawn Tomkin. This is a game about spaceborne heroes undertaking perilous quests.

To make this game line up with the timeline of Last Fleet, we had to reconcile some key facts. We knew that in Last Fleet, faster-than-light travel existed as it helped the characters keep just ahead of their robot pursuers. But in StarForged, FTL travel no longer exists. Our Starforged crew decided that something about the drives that powered the Last Fleet caused rips or holes in reality, which made room for supernatural powers and dreadful forgespawn in the Forge. Our Engineer in Last Fleet put forward that for her end-game Breaking Point, her character decided to foolishly alter a fundamental part of FTL technology such that it was impossible for the androids to follow the last of humanity to the Forge. In other words, she used her broken heart to break reality.

Of course, the tragedy that humanity fled was the android uprising, and the Starforged crew decided to continue that legacy of trauma by dictating that advanced computers are not trusted in their version of the forge. As a result, adepts called seers who use mind-altering drugs are responsible for getting ships from point A to point B, and the bio-mechanical precursors of the Forge who survived their creators' deaths are treated with heavy suspicion.

I'm really excited to see where this game goes, and I hope to keep you updated along the way!

[starscelly]

fleet country, let’s sail ⚓️ 🌊

alina müller’s instagram | 11.08.24

[weaverofink]

I've drawn my new clara design twice now, so I am legally obligated to draw a new fleet design as well

[whoishotteranimepolls]

Battle Royale of the Horrible Villain's

Thank you to the person who suggested the theme this one's going to get spicy