The Traveller Adventure – part XIV 

We met on Thursday night in The Dolphin for our fourteenth session of The Traveller Adventure.  The several weeks of hot weather – rather astonishing for the UK – had cooled just a little which was something of a relief.  The pub was as welcoming as usual and indeed, their upstairs function room hadn’t been booked so we were allowed to use that which helped with noise levels, throat stress, and gave a great view of Portsmouth Cathedral across the road.  Unfortunately, one of our number couldn’t make it due to family health reasons, and she was missed, but getting eight of us together is difficult enough so the decision was taken not to postpone.  Her archaeologist character is firmly enough established that, when it came up, we were pretty sure we knew how Lily would react. 

While our food orders were being prepared, we chatted and caught up with each other as usual.  Although five of us work in the Library and see each other daily, we also have two academics from elsewhere in the university and one “external” player – our long time Traveller grognard.  The other thing we did was sort out birthdays!  I’d realized after our last session that we’ve been adventuring with the crew of the March Harrier since the beginning of 1105 and nearly half a year has passed in game time (two years of real life) without anyone celebrating a birthday.  What are the odds of a group of eight people all having birthdays in the latter half of the year?  I’ll leave that to the mathematicians but Lily, our archaeologist had joined us about three months in, so her birthday could be before that.  Prior to the session I’d asked her player about it and as it happens, her birthday is February 18th so that translated to Day 49 quite easily and was prior to Lily joining the ship on Pysadi.  Handy.  Now, round the table, everyone else rolled dice.  Tess, our engineer, kindly loaned us a four sided die for the hundreds figure.  Perhaps remarkably it turns out that everyone else’s birthday does happen to be after Day 170 – although one is only a couple of weeks away.  Anyway, all this is by-the-by for the main plot (main plot?  There’s a main plot?!).  But now we know just when Fred our steward-in-training can surprise the taciturn engineer with a cake she won’t want to acknowledge. 

After we’d eaten we had a quick scene with Bannerji as he’s forced at gunpoint to take the crew back to the orbital station where the March Harrier is berthed.  I hadn’t been going to include this but I thought they were in danger of missing some of the options they have at the end of the ‘Wolf at the Door’ chapter to either turn in him, or blackmail him, or sell their info to a competitor, or even just to report to Giilaan.  With two months between sessions it is very hard to keep all this in mind, particularly for players who nearly all live in the moment and don’t take notes or remember well.  So I had Bannerji whimper about NOT going to the station because he’ll be in trouble as he never announced his arrival in system and then go on to say “I know you could blackmail me, I know you could hand me over” and so on.  This worked nicely in presenting their options in character rather than as a referee as well as fitting nicely with Bannerji’s already established rather complaining character.  His load of nuclear missiles was also noted by the engineer.  It worked nicely too in giving the players some discussion time on the morals of their options and just how moral they were as a crew.  “We don’t try to break the law,” said one to the new player.   

In the end they decided they weren’t going turn him in – or blackmail him for that matter, but nor were they going to linger on the Wolblutn at the station.  A hasty exit back to the Harrier and leave Bannerji to whatever story he could spin the authorities was the order of the day.  I also remembered to get them to tell me what gear of all the weapons and equipment they’d picked up on Aramanx they were taking with them – even though a customs check was making them pay for each item that wasn’t legal (Law Level 4 on Aramanx) to be bonded through to the Harrier. 

One thing I’d completely forgotten last session was Kfouzorr, the Vargr friend of Gvoudzon they pick up on Aramanx and who travels with them for several days through the woods and helps them get to the Wolblutn.  In the book he dies in the final battle, but although we’d had the fight and hasty boarding, in my usual stress over running combat at all, I’d lost track of him.  So I missed a great opportunity for him to have a heroic and/or sacrificial death scene.  Stupid, stupid, stupid.  Maybe I should make index cards for every major NPC I’m supposed to be handling and stick them on stands in front of me or something.  Anyway, I thought about just ignoring him and forgetting him completely but that seemed too easy, so I came up with what seemed to me to be the next best solution.  When the boarded the Wolblutn, some of the PCs had gathered in the lounge, a couple had gone up to the bridge and Tess had gone down to the engine room, so I reasoned that they could have easily have missed Kfouzorr in the melee.  I had them roll for when they last remembered seeing him (as they approached the mining camp turned out to be the answer) and if they’d asked Bannerji he’d have recalled seeing him take a bullet on the loading ramp but assumed someone behind him would bring him in.  As they didn’t ask Bannerji, they just consider him Missing In Action.  The new player did say “don’t we have to go back for him?” to which there was a resounding “no!”.  Even Gvoudzon seemed unfussed about his erstwhile friend going missing.  They particularly liked me repeating the news from last time that although Aramanx was now much closer to all out war thanks to their border encroachments and killings, it was all being blamed on some country’s special forces unit thought to be in the area.  If only they knew! 

We then had a very quick Traveller astrography overview for our new computing lecturer who’d only been to one session previously and had missed the last session.  We were looking at a map of the Aramis subsector and gesturing to the parts of the room and the parts of the city where we reckoned other places would have been on a map of that scale.  We reckoned Terra was back where the Library was, half a mile away.  The Vargr are over here, the Aslan are over there.  It gave me an opportunity to remind everyone about the Zhodani – and thus the Imperium’s attitude to psionics – without making a big thing of it.  We’re just getting to the stage where it’s becoming important.  In fact, I’d prepared for the chapter ‘Psionics Institute’ as I was fairly sure that the increasing incapacity of our one NPC crew member was going to be hard to ignore and that they’d begin that particular hunt.  In addition, at the end of the previous session – which was our fourth evening covering the events of ‘Wolf at the Door’ – I’d asked for an idea of where they’d go next so I could limit preparation time and had got a decision that they would head to Junidy with a cargo option I’d offered. 

But how wrong I was.  Having got in my head that that’s what we’d be doing, I made a couple of mistakes.  Firstly, trying to reproduce something of Marc Miller’s lovely phrase in T5, a “Rich Decision Making Environment” and wanting to give each player something to bounce off, I’d prepared some slips for each character.  Some were serious, some more lighthearted; some were plot related; some were not.  The medic got an interesting note that after their return to the March Harrier with wounds from the events in ‘Wolf at the Door’ they were all healing much more quickly than expected; the pilot discovered his couch had been adjusted while they’d been on the planet and he just couldn’t get it comfortable again; the steward discovered at a most inconvenient time while he was in the ’fresher, that they’d run out of toilet paper; the NPC didn’t need a note but he’d wandered off to check on the squeedle creatures they picked up way back on Aramis and he’s keeping as pets down in engineering (in a VERY secure terrarium built by Tess); Tess, the engineer, had a ship fault to deal with (thank you ‘What’s Wrong With the Ship?’ from DriveThru); Gvoudzon’s eye had been caught by an advert for a Buy One Get One Free offer on some natty capes; the captain got a note about a potential cargo to Zila (as I had the chapter ‘Zilan Wine’ in mind), and so on.  Dr Lewis Alton wanted 56 tons of medical supplies shipped there.  Usually Cr3000/ton but paying Cr5000 if they can depart within 24 hours.   

The humour worked perfectly.  For a while everyone ignored the calls of the steward from the ’fresher.  Eventually, Gvoudzon found an old computer manual that did service until a small shopping expedition could be put together.  The pilot made a running joke of his couch not being quite right and despite being a beginner fitted right in with instant paranoia about who’d been sitting in his chair?  He spent ages wading through security logs and camera footage to see if the workmen repairing their ventilation system while they were away down on Aramanx were the culprits – but no, they’d been getting on with their assigned job and were professional about it and ship security.   He’s yet to work out that it was simply a software malfunction… 

Meanwhile the Captain was looking at the route to Zila and looking at revenue and cargo space.  So to keep him on his toes and not so much to confuse the issue but give him options and pause for thought, I decided I’d throw in one of the Patron Encounters at this point.  ‘Rare Vintage’ (p.64 of the classic TTA book).  Enter Baron Hoffling bar-Zepu who wants 100 bottles of eiswein.  He’s a bit snooty about the March Harrier as he looks disdainfully round, but he’s keen to get his bottles and approaching any ships that might be able to deliver. [1] 

While the Captain’s weighing this up, the engineer is trying to decide if the “starboard secondary comms computer” needing a software upgrade is actually something that needs to be done or not.  (The player is an IT specialist and wanted a change log… <sigh>) 

So everyone’s having fun with their slips in one way or another but I’m increasingly seeing signs that we’re headed in completely the opposite direction to the one I’d expected.  (That was my mistake, making Zila too attractive – not the slips themselves which worked well.)  Obvious really as I was also making my second mistake.  In an effort to get away from the railroading of the earlier chapters (which actually worked well while they were all new and needed some guidance), I’ve been determined to be more sandboxy and allow them to do what they want and for me to try to work round that.  So, I didn’t tell them what they’d decided they do last time.  It just felt too much like me suggesting that that was where the adventure was.  So although I’d carefully prepared world maps for Feneteman and for Junidy; come up with stuff to happen and people to meet on Feneteman; briefed myself in detail on the ‘Psionics Institute’ chapter so I knew how I might run that – I essentially threw it all out of the window because I wasn’t giving much of a reason to head that way and not, for example, to Zila.  The other thing the pilot had on his(player)/her(PC) slip were the three paragraphs from the start of Annic Nova about an unidentified ship in three locations.  I’d framed it as a “Notice to Starfarers” I thought a pilot might get.  In my head, I’ve been half thinking of running Annic Nova as a side adventure just for the fun of it.  Not entirely sure it’s a good idea (will it extend TTA past people’s patience if I do that kind of thing?  Will it just confuse things?  Would it actually be much fun?).  But whatever, his paragraphs were nowhere near a strong enough motivation to head towards a potential line extended from the three sightings.  (I’d reversed the three to suggest the Annic Nova was heading their way rather than towards Vargr space as in the text.) 

In a last ditch effort to encourage a Feneteman and then Junidy route, I took an NPC I had come up with for Feneteman and moved her to Aramanx.  She’d been wanting a ride home to Junidy, it wasn’t much of a stretch to simply say that she’d come to Aramanx for reasons, but still needed to get home to Junidy.  I was particularly pleased with this NPC.  She was a Llellewyloly – a Dandelion – with a fabulous hat.  Llinos.  Been prospecting for lanthanum on Feneteman for a year now and come up with nothing.  Wants to go back to her cluster and admit it’s been a wild goose chase.  With my best efforts at a Welsh accent (and why not?!) and a print out of the Traveller Wiki entry on the race plus the lovely colour picture that accompanies the article, that caused much mirth and diversion for a few minutes.  The Captain was immediately teased about his well-known attraction to females and was asked what he thought of Llinos.  “Bit scrawny for me.”  “Wow!”  Was the general consensus, the captain does actually have limits!  But out came the Loyd’s Ladies tables and we worked out that, in Dandy terms at least, she was quite attractive.   

[The Loyd’s Ladies tables for those who don’t recall were born out of an event several sessions back.  The Captain has been playing a forlorn ladies’ man who never has much success.  We had a scene where he tagged along with Lily and a date to the theatre to see a production of Retian and Juniare.  He wasn’t so much of a gooseberry to sit next to them to their great relief and he ended up elsewhere in the auditorium, but immediately wanted to know who was sitting on either side of him.  I had prepared nothing for this as I hadn’t even expected there to be anything of a scene at the theatre (I assumed Lily would go off with NPC and that would be that), so I quickly said a retired couple on one side and a worried looking young woman on the other.  Of course, that was all the captain needed to start enquiring as to whether she was ok or not.  I should have foreseen it.  Something in me “snapped” as regards coming up with YET ANOTHER female and how attractive she was/wasn’t, how attracted to the captain she was/wasn’t, how available or not she might be, what colour her hair was, etc., etc., etc.  So, at lunchtime the next day with Jane P (Fred, our steward) and our map librarian (Gvoudzon), I came up with a bunch of 2d6 and d6 tables that covered all this and more.  Jane even produced a ‘cup size’ table that she says models the real world quite accurately!).  It’s now become standard fare – and not yet lost its humour – when the captain meets someone to produce these and roll on two or three of the options…] 

So, the Captain is deciding: take some medical supplies to Zila but only if you Jump in the next 24 hours (precludes finding cargo for the other 100 tons of space and passengers) or along with normal freight and other passengers, take Llinos to Junidy (offering twice standard High Passage rates).  Actually, the latter offer – which from my point of view was just to sweeten the deal – got them to wondering if she had after all struck lanthanum and was hiding it somewhere.  “Where?  Look at her!”  “Under her fabulous hat, of course!” 

For reasons which still aren’t clear to me, Loyd decided to stick with the Zila run and – rather regretfully – turned Llinos down.   Perhaps he was put off by her questions.  “What is the ritual for greeting you, Captain?”  “Where are your status marks?  I can’t tell how I’m supposed to address you?”  The only real disappointment here was that I thought Llinos was rather a fun NPC and I feel I’ve thrown her away as it seems unlikely they’d meet her again.  Surely she couldn’t still be on Aramanx or Feneteman when they next pass through?!  Ah well.  Perhaps I can do a write up of her for Freelance Traveller [2].  If nothing else, I’ve learned what an ‘autotroph’ is.  I’m sure we can do the ‘Zilan Wine’ chapter before the ‘Psionics Institute’ chapter although unknown to the players, time may be running out.  

Because, meanwhile our medic Adma’s player had arrived.  He’d been held up by who-knows-what and arrived an hour in, but it wasn’t too late for him to get his bits and bobs.  First were some wound sheets I’d come up with so he could properly diagnose the injuries received in the last session and treat them and stuff.  I’m not aware there are any wound charts in Traveller (although there are in 2300AD) and so I had a quick look online where there were all sorts but not quite what I wanted.  Especially not the vast work of art which seemed to include every part of the body and a d350 or something to go with it.  So, I’d produced a simple diagram outline of a body with a d6 roll for head, arms, torso, groin, legs.  [Yes, this and Loyd’s Ladies can probably go to Freelance at some point.  Once I’ve decided whether or not to include the cup size table…] 

The moment had rather passed for the injury diagnosis which would have worked better at the start of the evening as they returned to the March Harrier, but I could still throw at Adma the fact that recovery from all their wounds – even without the sickbay in a cabin they’d turned down in favour of fixing the noisy ventilation – is happening much faster than expected. 

Along with the toilet rolls, the steward had also bought a new spice to try out in meals in Jump, so the medic immediately fixed on that as the reason they were healing more quickly.  Rather perversely, Gvoudzon had bought an ancient retro computer – even though the manual lying around on board the ship is now missing an index.  Off they go into Jumpspace and the medic decides to experiment on himself.  Eating scrambled eggs with a tiny bit of the spice and then more and then more, essentially resulted in him becoming very sick of eggs and a chronic case of diarrhoea.  No problem.  There’s 40 tons of toilet rolls in the hold!  Ah, I love it when the lunacy of the players all conspires to make it seem like this was all plotted out beforehand.  Fortunately, the newly fixed ventilation system is also handling the smell as well!  It’s almost like this was planned. 

Oh, and before I forget, just before they departed the orbital station I decided to throw another patron encounter at them in the form of ‘Line-Up’ (also page 64 of TTA).  Where Police Lt Sondra Bellate, a 30 something officer, wants Fred to come and stand in an identity parade.  Apparently she’s having difficulty finding many people who look at least a bit like their miscreant.  Given that Fred’s 7ft tall and bald it’s perhaps not surprising.  Of course, the paranoia of the PCs/players at this point knew NO bounds.  Yes, they immediately sussed out the possible options that The Traveller Adventure offers – getting muddled up with the criminal, getting held up so they miss their departure slot to get the medical supplies gone in 24 hours, or is it even a genuine identity parade?  Tess decides to tag along and record as much she can of proceedings for her own ‘evidentiary’ purposes.  Gvoudzon tags along so he can show off not just one of the capes he bought at Belk & Sons, but both of them.  One on each shoulder.  Well, I got Fred to roll the d6 (although I didn’t say why or what the options in the book were) and he rolled a 4. Although I was prepared to go with whatever came up, it all proved to be very straightforward which was a nice outcome.  Although I’m not sure the players believed they were ‘safe’ till they Jumped.  Oh, and of course, the Lieutenant was yet another lady for Loyd to chat up.  She was surprisingly interested in him so maybe there’s that if they come back through the system.  (A couple of the PCs were convinced they’d be delayed by the Captain’s chat up lines!) 

So, in Jumpspace, the engineer received another slip with another malfunction in ship systems (once again, thank you ‘What’s Wrong With the Ship?’).  You may have detected a theme with this, the computer upgrade and the pilot couch bug.  I probably won’t inflict that kind of thing on them all the time, but I think it’s nicely points up the March Harrier being an elderly vessel and increasingly prone to break down.  Another mistake: I gave the engineer player the slip with the ref’s notes on what the Engineering check results would mean (total repair, repaired but fails again after 1D weeks, repaired but fails again after 1D days).  Ah well.  It wasn’t crucial.  The faults gives ’em something to spend their money on anyway.  (Although on that subject, I do wish the trade rules were just a bit easier and quicker to do on the fly in a session as it’s virtually impossible to prepare all the options beforehand and it’s too slow in the session.  So we’re kind of fudging it and I might work something out after the event to get an idea of what they’ve spent/made, but it seems less than satisfactory.)  Just to show the engineer’s usual caution, Gvoudzon has her asked about plugging in his old computer.  Never mind networking it to the ship’s systems, Tess won’t even certify it for being plugged into the mains and promptly snips the plug off the end of the cable.  Gvoudzon now has a nice paperweight.  Good thing it didn’t cost him very much. 

The nice thing about retracing our steps – Carsten on the way back Zila – is that I’ve already developed the worlds a little beyond what’s in The Traveller Adventure, or even on Traveller Map or the Traveller Wiki.  In fact, Carsten you may recall was the stopover that produced my Two Days on Carsten adventure and as it happened, the ever faithful Jane had a printout copy with her.  That meant I could easily describe the backwater world to remind the characters what they’d done (and of course remind the players as well).  And for a couple of players ‘reminding’ them of events their characters had been through when they themselves had not been there – either because they’d missed the session or hadn’t joined us yet.  One thing was certain, the Captain was in no hurry to look up the Pretty Young Thing with her rather formidable mother in tow and the rest of the crew were in no hurry to encounter flisters again.  In fact, they were keen to be sure that a new nuclear damper had been installed so there were no more such incidents.  Oh, and even though he hadn’t been there Jonathan, now playing our pilot, was absolutely certain that he didn’t want to go visit the respirator collection of Teju Chishpish.  He’d heard all about it and didn’t want that dullness over again!  The player wasn’t even there, how could he have known?! 

Also, finally, they’ve not only remembered that the Captain has 3 tons of personal cargo (although he’s never revealed what it is), they’ve also got a wheeled ATV on board taking up 15 tons.  So the pilot fancied taking that out for a spin.  They soon changed their mind about bothering however, when it was pointed out that it had been filled with toilet rolls to save on cargo space.  No one could face getting them all out.  (It really was a joke that kept giving!) 

The doctor meanwhile – not least because he’d recovered from 1d6 worth of damage due to overeating scrambled eggs (for which he’d rolled a 6) rather more quickly than he’d expected – now decided to seek independent medical advice.  Carsten isn’t a bad choice with a decent tech level and, I surmised, probably quite decent – if small – medical facilities for dealing with mining accidents.  I was quite impressed by the battery of tests the player came up with to inflict on poor Egon but he was getting nowhere with finding a solution to why, despite the fact he’d recovered from the friendly fire injuries of Captain Loyd’s rather wild firing of his two SMGs at once, he was still rather ‘out of it’ and only responding to direct instructions or questions but doing/saying little else.  (His intelligence is down to 2).  And yes, we’re still on the OMG joke. 

Having ruled out, as far as he could tell, any physical causes, he decided there might well be a local psychiatrist on the planet and with a good roll I agree there was as the miners probably need that kind of support as well.  So, another battery of tests for Egon – now beginning to tire under the strain of 2 + 3 hours of testing despite his Endurance of C. 

Still no luck.  But thinking I probably ought to at least begin to advance the plot and also to reward the doctor for his persistence and excellent ideas, I had the local doctor and the psychiatrist suddenly start to look uncomfortable, withdraw to a separate room and return a short while later to shepherd Adma and his patient out as quickly as they reasonably can.  “I’m sorry Dr Lewes, I don’t think we can help you anymore.”  When Adma presses them to share their thinking as he’s a doctor as well and responsible for Egon, I was sorely tempted to “give” the answer, but hastily decided just to have them mumble something about there being “other problems that might afflict the brain or mind”.  My logic being that they might just be happy to mention psionics to each other, but NOT to a stranger they don’t know isn’t some Imperial agent or some such. 

Now unfortunately, Adma’s player, David B, had missed the briefing at the beginning of the session where I’d mentioned psionics and the Imperium’s attitude but there was no way I could raise the subject again without being too obvious.  Added to that is the problem that David B is pretty new to Traveller – but he’s been through the rulebook and ran a successful game at Trav Con (see my write up in the current issue of Freelance Traveller), so he must have come across the idea within the game.  What was perhaps more surprising was that none of the other players seemed to make the connection either.  Including the long time Traveller player.  Perhaps she was keeping quiet because it would have been in character and she’s curious to see how it pans out.  Or perhaps she just hasn’t twigged either.  I don’t know.  Shame Emily missed the session to give her the opportunity to spot the connection.  [For those who’ve been following these reports, no the PCs didn’t take the anolas with them from Pysadi but I switched to Plan B and they are being affected in a similarish way.  (I’ve added the speedier healing to make the whole railroad a bit more palatable.)]  I won’t say what Plan B is just in case someone who shouldn’t be is reading.  But careful readers ought to be able to put two and two together. 

Anyway, on the dun dun durrr of being thrown out and the mystery not being resolved, we called it a night.  It won’t be long before some of the PCs start getting affected like Egon (I have a top secret chart), so perhaps that will drive them to the psionics institute search sooner rather than later.  In the meantime, for the next session, I suppose I’d better knuckle down finally, after all these years, to tackle learning the ‘Zilan Wine’ bureaucracy.  (Also found in Exit Visa or Escape from Arden for those who know it by those names.)  Naming all those NPCs; trying to come up with different mannerisms or voices for them – or at least the main ones; trying to keep it fun rather than tedious; preparing for the PCs to take some kind of short cut as has been described on TML in the past. 

Despite choices I made that might be mistakes, or perhaps weren’t, we had a good evening.  Everyone seemed to enjoy it and they all had an opportunity to engage with their various personal bits.  There was also a fair bit more talking to each other and in character rather than expecting me to do all the work than we’ve seen on occasion, so I really really enjoyed that.  Perhaps it was a result of the individual slips I gave them, or perhaps it was more confidence with making their own choices.  Certainly our newest player seemed content that he’d come back for a second session and I think we’ll see him again.  My only real disappointment of the night was that one of our number, perhaps our best roleplayer, couldn’t make it.    But seeing the others improving was definitely a highlight.

tc

[1] TTA is very unhelpful to refs with this.  What on Aramanx is the size of a cargo like this for stowage purposes?  Let’s say we’re dealing with litre bottles of wine to keep it simple.  Bit of googling suggests that with a really superior quality bottle that could be 2kg per bottle.  So 200kg for 100 bottles but then there’s going to be packing around this.  I decided it might be around ½ ton in total, so in actual fact fairly neglible.  But I didn’t know that.  (And am I muddling weight and displacement tons anyway?  Is it actually more?) 

[2] Am I right in thinking there is no char gen for Dandies?  Not even stats adjustments?  Or word generation?  I vaguely thought there was but can’t recall where if there is.  Right, here’s my quick and dirty: 

STR -2 

DEX +1 

END -1 

INT - as humans 

EDU - as humans 

SOC - variable (see notes on Llellewyloly)