Patron: Grav-Ball Coach, Ex Grav-Ball Player
Required Skills: none
Required Equipment: starship
Players’ Information:
Harry “Harmie” Mikowski is a Grav-Ball coach that has got a mission from his Grav-Ball League. Since he is currently not coaching any team, his mission is to spread the sport of Grav-Ball to the Imperial neighbors. The first place he is ordered to visit is the Zhodani Consulate. The group meet Harry at the starport at Jewell, where he needs to charter a ship to go to Cipango, Rio and Chronor to find some good athletes, so he can set up a team, that he can train and bring back to Jewell, to compete in a friendly tournament against some teams from the Spinward Marches.
Harry will pay standard charted fees, plus an extra Cr. 10000 per person to act as assistant trainers and helpers.
Original image by BobTheCorkDwarf. This file is licensed under Creative Commons 2.0
Referee’s Information:
If the group has followed the Grav-Ball Series, they know that the reason that Harry Mikowski isn’t coaching any team right now is that he was fired again, (after the top team he coached lost too many games). He is considered the worst coach ever, and now no team wants him.
The reason that Harry has been picked for this job, is because the Imperium wants (and expects) him to fail. The “friendly” tournament is supposed to show the sports fans in the sector that the Imperium is a lot better than (superior to) the Zhodani. Harry strongly suspects that this is just an Imperial propaganda coup, but he is still determined to do a good job, and try to repair his reputation, so that he can coach a real team again.
Harry has bought some antique Solomani books about sports tactics in a game that is a bit similar to Grav-Ball. He thinks he can use some ideas from these books, and surprise everyone with some unconventional tactics that might work.
1. All is as represented. The team Harry sets up is composed of good athletes, but his old school tactics doesn’t work.
2. As 1, but his tactics work so well so that he wins the first few matches. Then the Imperium forces him to play one of the top teams. Then Harry’s team loses. The Imperial media doesn’t say anything about the initial matches, so Harry couldn’t repair his reputation, and the holovids of the matches are missing.
3. As 2, but Harry wants the PCs to help him find the missing holovids, and send these to independent news agencies.
4. As 1, but Harry uses some Clotho (Addaxur) players, that turn out to be awful at the game.
5. As 4, but the Clotho (with their extra arms) are very good at the game, and this makes the team unbeatable. The tour is then stopped by imperial authorities.
6. As 4, but instead of stopping the tour, there will be a final match against a team from the scout service made up of only Githiaskio players that are so good that no Imperial teams plays against them anymore in tournaments. The scout service Githiaskio team usually only plays in some friendly games, and usually wins by a big margin, but they are not allowed to play in any tournaments.
In all cases the referee should determine the flow of subsequent events. The Grav-Ball game from FASA might be helpful when playing this scenario. You can also use the simple and free Grav-Ball rules from the The Missouri Archive.
The scenario can be transferred to any other border region. Playing with a Julian team with some Hhkar players might be interesting.