Requires the use of the d20 Modern™ Roleplaying Game, published by Wizards of the Coast, Inc.

Welcome to Ronin Arts’ Future: Starship 13 –Ghost Ship, the thirteenth in a series of PDFs foruse with futuristic D20 System campaigns. Thisseries makes some assumptions about your cam-paign; the starship designs in this series will bemost useful in campaigns in which the followingstatements are true:

• The campaign is not a “hard” science setting.Campaigns that are more space opera/adventuremovie are the intended target for this series.

• Starships are not rare or unusual. All of thestarships in this series assume that space travel is astandard and common occurrence – individualseither fly their own ships or ride on passenger ships.Starships and space travel are as common for char-acters as a plane ride is for people of our reality.

• Space combat is not uncommon. It’s justanother exciting adventure when the player charac-ters have to engage the enemy while fleeing fromsome world or other.

• The campaign is packed with action. If thingsaren’t exploding, how much fun can the game real-ly be?

Most of the starships in this series are designedto fill an even number of pages. This is so that youcan print the pages – back-to-back if you wish – anddrop them into a binder. This introduction, and thepage of new starship equipment and assorted infor-mation, can also be printed separately and added toyour binder. The schematic and silhouette page is

designed to be used as a player handout – it’s whatflashes up on their ship systems when they attemptto ID a ship – and GMs need only give the playersthe page when they encounter a ship from thisseries.

About the AuthorMichael Hammes has been freelancing in the

role-playing industry since 2001. Starting small, hehas steadily built his repertoire, and reputation, byworking for such companies as Ronin Arts, AlderacEntertainment Group, Dark Quest Games, and E.N.Publishing. He is currently trying to balance hiswriting schedule with his role as stay-at-homefather. To catch the latest from Michael’s Imagination, please visit www.michael-hammes.com.

e-Future TilesThe Ghost Ship design is based on SkeletonKey

Games’ e-Future Tiles. While this PDF can be eas-ily used on its own you will get a lot more use outof it in your game sessions if you construct the ship– at miniatures scale – using the printable tiles. Theonly tile you will need that are not available in e-Future Tiles is the right side connector on the maindeck – which has been thoughtfully included at theend of this PDF.

To learn more about SkeletonKey Games pleasevisit their website at www.skeletonkeygames.com.

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GHOST SHIP

Introduction

ForewordWhat exactly is a ghost ship? There is no one

true definition of the term. The term ghost ship hasbeen applied to everything from spectral vesselscrewed by actual ghosts to ships found withouttheir crews to real-world raiding vessels that swoopdown upon their prey as if out of nowhere and thendisappear.

The one thing that all of these ships have incommon is that they appear and disappear undermysterious or eerie circumstances. For the purpos-es of this PDF, a ghost ship is a mysterious starshipthat the PCs come across and whose sole purpose isto serve as an adventure location.

The ghost ship in this PDF is the Kapteyn, amissing and presumed lost Fusion Age long-rangeexploration vessel that no one has heard from untilthe PCs encounter it (although they certainly mayhave heard about it; see the PC Knowledge AboutThe Kapteyn boxed text). That being said, let’stake a closer look at the history of the Kapteyn.Please note that, while the history presented hereinis ready for the GM to use, as with all things in thisand any of the other Starship series PDFs, the GMshould feel free to modify or ignore any of the pre-sented information and material in order to makethe ghost ship compatible with his or her campaign.

Commissioned in the early Fusion Age underthe financial sponsorship of several governments,universities, and corporations, the Kapteyn wasnamed after the renowned Dutch astronomerJacobus Cornelius Kapteyn and tasked with explor-ing the Alpha Centauri system in the name of scien-tific research.

The chief purpose of this mission was to defini-tively answer whether Alpha Centauri could, anddid, support life (especially intelligent life) on oneor more of its planets. Assuming the former, it wasplanned that a colony ship would start out for AlphaCentauri once a suitable world had been found.Should the latter also prove to be correct, the crewof the Kapteyn was to make first contact with anyintelligent species discovered and pave the way foreventual diplomatic relations with Earth.

To complete this mission the Kapteyn wasequipped to handle everything from astronomy tospecimen collection and its crew included scientistsfrom disciplines such as astrophysics, psychology,and xenobiology.

Staffed with a robot crew (see the Robot Crewsection) that would operate the ship while theKapteyn’s human crew spent the long journey incryonic stasis, the ship set out for Alpha Centauri.

Initially all went well and the ship sent back reg-ular communications to Earth. But then, shortlyupon reaching Alpha Centauri, all communicationwith the ship ceased. Subsequent attempts toreestablish communications with the Kapteyn failedand, although it took several years after the initialloss of communications for the Kapteyn to bedeclared lost in space, it was eventually forgotten.

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GHOST SHIP

the kapteyn